View (3D)
The View node () for 3D components has many options to add light sources and define the light attributes. Other functions include displaying or hiding geometry labels, transparency, wireframe rendering, a numbered grid, and axis orientation in the Graphics window. See Figure 6-19. You can add this View node by right-clicking Definitions in a 3D component and also by right-clicking Views under Results to add a View 3D node.
Also right-click the View node in the component to add Hide for Geometry, Hide for Physics, or Hide for Mesh Import, depending on your current view.
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View Toolbar
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User-Defined Views
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View (1D and 2D)
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About the 3D View Light Sources and Attributes
Figure 6-19: An example of the top of the 3D Settings window for View with all View option check boxes selected. The Graphics window shows what the check boxes represent. In this example, using the Diagonal Mounting Detail of a Communication Mast model, the Fixed Constraint node is clicked in the Model Builder, which then displays the numbers associated to the boundaries (8, 9, 33, and 42). Compare to the boundary numbers shown in Figure 6-17, which is for the same node. The edge direction arrows are not displayed in this view.
Also right-click the View node in the component to add Hide for Geometry, Hide for Physics, or Hide for Mesh Import, depending on your current view.
The View node () for 3D models has the following sections:
View
Select the Wireframe rendering check box to view the edges of the object as solid lines. The Wireframe Rendering button () is turned on or off in the Graphics window at the same time. Wireframe rendering only has effect when mesh rendering is turned off (for a view that normally shows the mesh).
Select the Show geometry labels check box to display the geometry object names in the Graphics window. The labels appear for geometry objects or geometric entities (boundary, edge, or point numbers, but not domain numbers), depending on what part of the model tree you display and the selection mode you are using. If you use wireframe rendering, no labels appear.
Select the Show edge direction arrows check box to display direction arrows on edges in the Graphics window. The direction arrows indicate the directions for which the edge parameterization values increase.
By default, the Show grid check box is selected and displays a numbered grid in the Graphics window around the object. Click to clear the check box to hide the grid.
By default, the Mesh rendering check box is selected. Clear it to not render the mesh, where the mesh normally appears, which can be useful, for example, to get a better view of the inside of complex meshed 3D geometries. This check box is not available in geometry part views and result views.
By default, the Show axis orientation check box is selected and the axis orientation indicator for the global Cartesian coordinate directions is displayed in the lower-left corner of the Graphics window. Click to clear the check box to hide the axis orientation indicator.
By default, the Show axis units check box is selected. Click to clear the Show axis units check box if you do not want to include units for the plot axes.
Select the Lock camera check box to store the current camera settings so that the zoom tools can temporarily be used, for example, but then revisiting the View node restores the camera settings to the values in the view at the time the Lock camera check box was selected.
Select the Lock rotation center check box to lock the rotation center and turn off the automatic or manual rotation center modes. See Moving Around and Rotating a 3D Geometry.
Light
The Scene light setting is a default that always displays and is based on the geometry. The Scene light, Diffuse light, Specular light, and Ambient light check boxes are all selected by default. To hide and disable all light sources, click to clear the Scene light check box. The Scene Light button () is turned on or off in the Graphics window at the same time.
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If the Scene light check box is selected, enter a value between 0 and 1 for the Light intensity (default value: 1) or use the slider to select a level for the light intensity. Watch the changes in the Graphics window at the same time to help choose a level.
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Click to clear the Diffuse light, Specular light, and Ambient light check boxes as needed.
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Enter a value between 0 and 1 for the Ambient intensity (default value: 0.3) or use the slider to select a level for the ambient intensity. Watch the changes in the Graphics window at the same time to help choose a level.
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Select a Color from the list: Custom, Black, Blue, Cyan, Gray, Green, Magenta, Red, White (default), or Yellow. The color is only applied to ambient light. If you select Custom, click the Color button to choose a color from the Custom color palette.
Visual Effects
Select the Ambient occlusion check box to include screen-space ambient occlusion (SSAO) in the view. Ambient occlusion is a shading and rendering technique that is used to compute how exposed each point in a graphics scene is to ambient lighting. It adds soft shadows from ambient and indirect lighting to the scene. You can also select Ambient Occlusion () from the Scene Light () drop-down menu in the Graphics window toolbar.
Ambient occlusion requires the OpenGL renderer.
From the Radius list, choose Relative (the default) or Explicit. With Relative, enter a fractional value (default: 0.4) in the Fraction of scene bounding box field, or use the slider underneath the text field to adjust a relative value for the ambient occlusion radius. With Explicit, enter a value (default: 0.4 m) in the Maximum distance to occluder (SI unit: m). Occluders can be thought of as objects which occlude (or obstruct) your view of other objects behind them.
Enter a value between 0 and 10 in the Shadow strength field (default: 1), or use the slider underneath to control the strength of the shadows (a higher value means more shadows).
Enter a value between 0 and 10 in the Shadow tightness field (default: 1), or use the slider underneath to control the tightness of the shadow. Increasing this value makes the shadow appears more “tight” (see About the Screen-Space Ambient Occlusion Algorithm below).
From the Quality preset list, select a preset quality level: Low quality, Medium quality (the default), High quality, or Custom. The Medium quality settings can be used during on-screen rendering. The High quality settings should be used for image export as it raises the Number of samples, increases the Smoothing, and turns on Normal-aware smoothing (see About the Screen-Space Ambient Occlusion Algorithm below). The Low quality settings can, for example, be used if you have very large plots so that you have a low graphics performance, but as you are showing plots with colors, the high-frequency noise that you get from the Low quality setting will be less noticeable. With Custom, you get the default values from the last selected quality setting for the following quality properties (see also About the Screen-Space Ambient Occlusion Algorithm below):
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In the Number of samples field, enter a suitable number of samples for the ambient occlusion (1 – 300 samples). A higher number of samples gives a better quality.
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In the Roughness field, enter a suitable value between 0 and 1 (default: 1), where 0 is the smoothest setting with no noticeable shadows.
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In the Kernel rotations texture width field contains an integer between 0 and 8. A higher value means slightly higher quality.
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In the Smooth field contains an integer between 0 and 8. A higher value means more smoothing but also somewhat slower performance.
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Select the Normal-aware smoothing check box to provide smoothing that takes the surface normals into account for an improved smoothing quality. It is enabled by default when you choose High quality from the Quality preset list.
About the Screen-Space Ambient Occlusion Algorithm
For each visible point (pixel) on the surface, a hemisphere with the radius equal to the Maximum distance to occluder setting and oriented by the surface normal is added. In this hemisphere, a number of samples are added (the Number of samples setting). For each sample, the algorithm will estimate whether it is in shadow, and the more samples that are in shadow, the darker the current pixel becomes. If the Roughness and Shadow tightness parameters are both set to 1.0, the samples inside of the hemisphere are somewhat uniformly distributed. If you change the Roughness to say 0.5, the hemisphere where the samples are placed will look more like a cone. If you change the Shadow tightness to 2.0, each sample will be moved more toward the center of the hemisphere. As there are more samples closer to the center of the hemisphere, the ambient occlusion shadow will appear more “tight”.
Furthermore, in order to get away with having less samples to gain better performance, the hemisphere is rotated around its axis (the surface normal) by a different amount for neighboring pixels. However, this creates high-frequency noise, so it is therefore done in a tiled fashion (the code divides the image into a number of tiles (say 4x4 pixels large; 4 is then the Kernel rotations texture width). By tiling the high-frequency noise it is possible to smooth it out or blur it with a small blur kernel. For example, if you set the Smooth parameter to 2, the blur kernel will be 5x5 pixels large so that the noise created by the 4x4 rotation kernel can be smoothed out. Moreover, if you enable the Normal-aware smoothing, the smoothing will not only take the distance to the camera from the surface for each pixel into account but also the surface normal for each pixel.
Environment
These settings are used to add environment maps to the view. See also About Environment Mapping.
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From the Environment map list, choose one of the available environment maps: Indoor or Outdoor. The default is None, which does not display any environment map.
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From the Sky direction list, choose where the sky should be located: Positive X, Negative X, Positive Y (the default), Negative Y, Positive Z, or Negative Z.
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From the Sky rotation list, choose a rotation of the environment map around the chosen sky direction: No rotation, Rotate 90°, Rotate 180°, or Rotate 270°.
The Environment reflections check box is selected by default to show reflection of the environment map in the model geometry (when Show Material Color and Texture is enabled and any selections are cleared).
Select the Skybox check box to project the environment map onto a skybox, which can make the image in the environment map give an illusion of a distant surroundings. The following settings only apply when you use a skybox:
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You can blur the image by entering a value between 0 (completely clear; the default) or 1 (completely blurry) in the Blur field, or use the slider underneath.
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You can blend the image with the background by entering a value between 0 (no blending at all; the default) or 1 (not visible) in the Blend field, or use the slider underneath.
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From the Projection list, choose Special (the default), which does not take the camera’s zoom level into account when rendering the skybox, or From camera, which uses the projection from the camera that is part of the view. If you chose Special, you can specify a field of view for the skybox (1–180 degrees; default 110 degrees) in the Field of view field (unit: degrees). The smaller the field of view is, the further the view moves into the skybox image.
Select the Rotate environment check box to make the environment map reflections rotate when you rotate the geometry. If you clear this check box, the environment map is still when you rotate the geometry.
Transparency
Select the Transparency check box to turn on transparency. The Transparency button () is activated in the Graphics window at the same time. Enter a value between 0 and 1 in the Transparency field (default: 0.5), where 0 means a fully opaque color and 1 means a fully transparent color, or use the slider to select a transparency level. Watch the changes in the Graphics window at the same time to help choose a level.
When you have selected the Transparency check box, select the Fresnel transmittance check box if desired. Enabling Fresnel transmittance results in that the transparency depends on the angle of incidence, which can improve realism. Surfaces that have their surface normal pointing more toward the camera will become more transparent, and surfaces that have their surface normal pointing more orthogonally to the view direction will become more opaque. You can also turn on Fresnel Transmittance () from the Transparency drop-down menu () on the Graphics window toolbar. In addition, Fresnel transparency is available for individual plots under Results in a Transparency subnode.
Fresnel transmittance requires the OpenGL renderer.
By default, antialiasing is enabled for transparency rendering. You can turn the antialiasing on or off using the Enable antialiasing for on-screen transparency effects check box (selected by default) on the Graphics and Plot Windows page in the Preferences dialog box.
Colors
Clear the Show selection colors check box if you do not want to include colors indicating user-defined selections.
Select the Show material colors and texture check box if you want to include colors and texture indicating the material used in the geometry.
See Selection Colors for more information.
Clipping
In this section you can control the clipping tools looking inside of 3D geometries. You can also do so from the Graphics toolbar (see The Graphics Toolbar Buttons and Navigation). See also About Clipping of 3D Model Geometries.
By default, the clipping tools are active when added to the view. To disable the tools, clear the Clipping active check box. If that check box is selected, you can enable or disable the following clipping tools (by default, all of them are selected to be active):
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The Clip faces check box controls if the clipping will remove faces or not.
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The Clip edges check box controls if the clipping will remove edges or not.
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The Clip points check box controls if the clipping will remove points or not.
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The Clip primary hover effect check box is selected by default. The primary hover effect is then affected by clip features. Clear the check box if you want the primary hover effect to disregard any clipping features. The full entity that you hover on will then be seen.
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Select the Clip contextual hover effect check box to make clip features affect the contextual hover effect. Clear the check box to see all contextual hover effect lines.
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The Highlight intersection check box controls if the intersection between the clipping tool and the 3D geometry should be highlighted or not. When selected, you can specify the coloring of the intersection using the Color list: Choose From theme (the default), any predefined color, or Custom to choose a color from a color palette.
Highlighting of intersections only affects the rendering when you use the OpenGL renderer and are not available when using software rendering.
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The Apply clipping check box control that the clipping action is active. Clear it to disable the clipping.
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The Show frames check box controls if the frames that outline the clipping action will be displayed or not. When displayed, you can use it do drag and resize the clipping tools (clip planes cannot be resized).
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The Show gizmos check box controls if the gizmo that indicates the position and action of the clipping action will be displayed or not. You can use the gizmo to move and rotate the clipping tool.
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Select the Show cross section check box to display cross sections between the clipping tool and the model geometry. The Colorize check box is enabled by default. Select Domain (the default) or Object from the Colorize per list to assign colors per domain or per object for the cross sections of geometrical entities. Colorizing per domain can be useful when defining materials and physics, for example, whereas colorizing per object can be useful during geometry modeling. With the Colorize check box selected, each domain gets a a color if it is not already colored by either some kind of selection or a material. Select the Make transparent check box if you want the cross section to be transparent. Enter a value between 0 and 1 in the Transparency field (default: 0.2), where 0 means a fully opaque color and 1 means a fully transparent color, or use the slider to select a transparency level. The Highlight overlapping domains check box is enabled by default to show where overlapping domains appear. From the Color list, choose From theme (the default) to use a color from the color theme, or select another color from the list.