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Introduction
The attributes menu is used to assign attributes to nodes in the
CSG tree.
Attributes are surface characteristics that define the appearance
of a
model when being rendered.
The main options available on the attributes menu to assign attributes
are:
add diffuse, add specular, add reflect, add transp, add glass and add volume.
An attribute consits of a number of parameters (e.g., intensity, color, refracion index, etc.). For each of these parameters a value, or a procedural or image map, can be assigned. Multiple attributes can be assigned to a single node. For example, to create a blue reflective material, an add diffuse attribute with a blue color and an add reflection attribute can be assigned. The intensity for each attribute can be specified. To create a realistic effect, be sure the total value of all attributes assigned to one node is 1. Exceptions are add specular, because the intensity for this attribute does not have to be included in the sum of all intensities, and add volume which usually comes instead of diffuse etc.
Attention:
Using the new Texture Editor in the Tools menu, the same materials
found in
the attributes menu can be created, but in the Texture Editor many
more
tools are available to edit and animate textures. We advise users
to use
the Texture Editor instead of the attributes menu. The attributes
menu
remains within GIG for users who prefer to work with it.
Mapping a sequence of images
It is possible to select a sequence of images to be used as a map
for an
attribute.
Click on the input box of the attribute for which you want to assign
a
sequence of images.
Enter: '?' and press <enter>:. The selection submenu will then
be
displayed where you can make your selection.
Comments
The images must be stored in the intmap directory of the active project,
the directory where all images for mapping are stored.
The images must be of the 'Tiff Tile format (the Convertor in the
tools
menu can be used to convert images).
Sequences of images must have names ending in: 'xxxx.tif' (with 'xxxx'
representing the frame number). Images with a frame number corresponding
to
the rendered frame will be used as a map for that particular frame.
The
last image of a sequence will also be used as a map for the following
frames to be rendered.
Images without the xxxx.tif extension can also be selected, in which
case
the image will then be used as a map for the entire animation.
Example 1:
Example 2:
As of version 3.2, it is now possible to have better control over an animated TIFF texture. To use this enhanced functionality, you must create an animation specification file in your intmap directory.
This animation specification file has the extention '.animspec'. The prefix must be the name of the animation you want to place on the object. So if you have an animation that consists of the files foo0010.tif through foo0019.tif, then your animation specification file must be called foo.animspec.
So, what goes in this animation specification file? Well, the file is ASCII, and must contain all of the data fields below, in exactly the same order.
direction swing|forward|backward|chaos loop yes|no start [numerical value] end [numerical value] offset [numerical value]Direction 'swing' means back-and-forth playing, direction 'chaos' will map the framenr onto a random image. If 'loop' is set to 'no', then the animation is one-shot, and all preceeding frames are mapped onto the first TIFF image, and all the trailing frames are mapped onto the last TIFF image. 'start' and 'end' specify the range of TIFF images that you want to use from the 'intmap' directory. All images in this range should be existing. With 'offset' you can offset your map-animation in time. So, for example we could have:
direction swing loop yes start 1 end 10 offset 0Using this example, we get the following mapping:
framenr image used for map
0 foo0001.tif
1 foo0002.tif
...
9 foo0010.tif
10 foo0009.tif
11 foo0008.tif
...
17 foo0002.tif
18 foo0001.tif
19 foo0002.tif
...
