24-Dec-91 Changes to Caligari2 which are too new for the manual... The following are a number of changes made to Caligari2 after the manual was printed and some corrections to errors in the manual: FILEMENU The File Menu now has a row of buttons at the bottom for selecting disk volumes. These buttons are present in all versions of the File Menu except "Add Obj". This is because all objects for a particular scene must be in the same directory. If you were to load objects into the scene from various directories, the next time you loaded the scene Caligari would be unable to find all of the objects. A bug that was present in previous versions which caused files with names longer than about 13 characters to be cut has been FIXED. The result of this bug was that the object/scene/polygon would not appear in the list of files the next time the file menu was brought up. VideoScape objects whose filenames have the ".vs3d" extension are now also recognized by the File Menu in addition to the standard ".geo" extension. OBJECT DESIGN The "Axes" button has been moved to the "Navigation" menu. It is now available when in "Num" mode. We have several new cursors which are used when appropriate in Object Design. For example, when Gluing objects a '?' cursor appears so you know the program wants to know what to glue to. There are also new Point-Edit and Slicing cursors. OBJECT DESIGN QUICK RENDER Face picking is now much more efficient and it is more difficult to accidentally reverse a face and create a bad object. When in "Face" mode, there is a toggle between "Set Color" and "Reverse" mode. In "Set Color" mode, any faces which you click on will be immediately re-rendered in the current color. In "Reverse" mode, any faces clicked on will be reversed, and clicking on the same face again will re-reverse it to it's original state. TOOL MENU Due to popular demand, the "Shell" button is back again. NOTE: under AmigaOS 2.0 it is not recommended that the "Shell" button be used if Caligari is launched from some of the "program launchers" that are floating around in the public domain. Many of these use the arp.library to launch the Caligari process, and this is not completely compatible with AmigaOS 2.0. It normally does not cause a problem, but it may when bringing up a Shell. ANIMATION "Set" as described in the manual will only set an Obj keyframe if "Obj" is selected. What is not mentioned is that now clicking on "Set" with "Eye" selected will only create a keyframe for the Eye, and NOT the objects. "Unset" has been enhanced to allow greater functionality and to prevent accidental destruction of keyframes. Whenever you click on "Unset" with "Eye" selected you will be prompted as to whether or not you are sure you want to do it. If "Obj" is selected, you have the option of "Unsetting" either the current object, all objects or nothing. Please note that in the "I/O" menu the buttons which are shaded out do not make sense in Caligari2 because they only work with 24 bit files and/or true 24 bit framebuffers. There is no real functionality lost. In the documentation for the SETATTRIBUTES command it is stated that the range of the HUE parameter when in HSV color mode is -2.0 to +2.0. This is incorrect. The actual range is from 0.0 to 2 * 3.14. BROADCAST RENDERING MODULE A "Disp Image" button has been added to the base broadcast menu. This button will cause Caligari to display the currently buffered image on the selected frame buffer. For more information see the accompanying file "FrameBuffers". Texture Mapping has been vastly improved over the description given in the manual. Previously it was only possible to texture map special cases of objects. It is now possible to apply textures to any type object. All objects created in the Extruder have some type of default texture mapping which varies depending upon how the 2D polygon was swept through space: a) Flat objects have a Planar projection applied to both sides of the flat 3D polygon. b) Extruded objects have a Planar texture projected through the World Z axis when the object appears in the Design Space. c) Objects which are lathed on an edge a full 360 degrees have a single Spherical projection applied to the surface. d) If the object is lathed less than 360 degrees. Then it has TWO Toroidal projections which are essentially mirrors of each other. e) The last possible case of object is that which is lathed 360 degrees, but not on an edge. In this case the texture is projected Toroidally FOUR times; twice on the "outside" of the object, and twice on the "inside" of the object. Again these textures will appear essentially as mirrors. Any object which is imported from the VideoScape, Sculpt4D or LightWave file formats has a Planar Z projection. Currently, only the "Square", "Sphere" and "Bullet" primitives have a default texture mapping. In the Brender "Texture Controls" menu the default Extruder mapping can be overridden with any one of a variety of mappings. Different types of mappings may be applied to different materials in the same object. The Brender mappings are as follows: a) Default; use the mapping created by the Extruder in Object Design. NOTE: primitive objects which do not have any default mapping will not be texture mapped. The same applies for many pre-2.1 Caligari objects. b) Planar; similar to the Planar projection created in the Extruder for Extruded and Flat objects. This projection will "push" the texture map through the space occupied by the object in the specified axis and coordinate space. c) Cylindrical; in this mode, the texture is "wrapped around" the object parallel to the specified axis and coordinate system. The texture will appear on the object surface twice, each time spanning 180 degrees of the cylindrical surface. d) Spherical; similar to Cylindrical, but the texture is not parallel to an axis. Instead, the "top" and "bottom" of the texture meet the specified axis in it's coordinate space. e) Swimming; is a Planar projection which is fixed to the screen. Thus only part of the texture is mapped on the object, according the object's position, size, and orientation. f) Per Facet; is a Planar projection where each face has it's own individual copy of the texture map. The "top" "bottom" of the texture map corresponds to the selected axis/coordinate space. In faces which are not rectangular, a portion of the texture map will be clipped. BRENDER ATTRIBUTES MENU It is possible to pick objects directly by name in the "Attrib" menu by typing in the object name in the field at the top of the menu and pressing return. The "Facet°" field is for specifying the threshold between facet and smooth shading when in Auto Facet mode. Large numbers create smoother objects, while smaller values create object with a more faceted appearance. The default value is 20 and works in 90% of the cases. This value can be animated with the SETATTRIBUTES command. See the manual for more information on SETATTRIBUTES. BRENDER IMAGES MENU A new menu has been added to aid in working with framebuffers and images called "Images". From this menu, the following options are available: a) "View Image" will present a file menu from which you may select the name of any Caligari .6rn/.txr/.e2d 32 bit image file or any non-24 bit IFF file for display. If the file is a Caligari .6rn/.txr/.e2d file it will be loaded into the framebuffer and processed, just as though it had been rendered at that moment. IFF images are simply loaded and displayed. If the image is in HAME or DCTV format, it will display correctly without special processing. b) "Save Image" allows you to have Caligari automatically save an image after it has been rendered in Brender. This option defaults to OFF. c) "Set Output Image Name" presents a file menu for either Selecting the name of the image to be saved after rendering by brender or Typing in a new name for the image. d) "Load Palette" only functions for HAM and HAME and permits you to load a previously saved HAM or HAME image palette. This function is useful when animating a sequence of images to be sure that all images are rendered using the same palette. Typically this is used when a series of frames is rendered, but for some reason all frames cannot be rendered in a single Caligari session. When this happens, the palette can be saved using the "Save Palette" button before exiting Caligari. To continue rendering the same animation with the same palette, load the palette and then go to the display menu and be sure that the "Dithr" button is off. Now when you continue rendering all frames will appear similar and the animation will not appear to "flicker" when compressed and played back. For more information on the function of the "Dithr" button, see the accompanying file "FrameBuffers". e) "Save Palette" saves the current HAM or HAME palette. See "Load Palette" above for more information. f) "Clear Image" will erase the contents of the current frame buffer to black. See the accompanying file "FrameBuffers" for more information on how the "Virtual FrameBuffer" works. BRENDER DISPLAY MENU The manual incorrectly states that it is possible to do Foreground and Background merging. This is not possible since Caligari2 does not work with 32 bit images and our merger ONLY works with 32 bit images. You will notice that the buttons are present, but since they don't work they're shaded out. This may be changed in a future upgrade. The "Wire" button is not present, because color wireframe images can only be output in 24 bits.