View (3D)

The 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 window. See Figure 6-19. You can add this node by right-clicking in a 3D component and also by right-clicking under to add a node.

Also right-click the 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 node in the component to add Hide for Geometry, Hide for Physics, or Hide for Mesh Import, depending on your current view.

The node () for 3D models has the following sections:

View

Select the check box to view the edges of the object as solid lines. The button (

) is turned on or off in the 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 check box to display the geometry object names in the 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 check box to display direction arrows on edges in the window. The direction arrows indicate the directions for which the edge parameterization values increase.

By default, the check box is selected and displays a numbered grid in the window around the object. Click to clear the check box to hide the grid.

By default, the 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 check box is selected and the axis orientation indicator for the global Cartesian coordinate directions is displayed in the lower-left corner of the window. Click to clear the check box to hide the axis orientation indicator.

By default, the check box is selected. Click to clear the check box if you do not want to include units for the plot axes.

Select the check box to store the current camera settings so that the zoom tools can temporarily be used, for example, but then revisiting the node restores the camera settings to the values in the view at the time the check box was selected.

Select the 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 setting is a default that always displays and is based on the geometry. The , , , and check boxes are all selected by default. To hide and disable all light sources, click to clear the check box. The button (

) is turned on or off in the window at the same time.

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If the check box is selected, enter a value between 0 and 1 for the (default value: 1) or use the slider to select a level for the light intensity. Watch the changes in the window at the same time to help choose a level.

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Click to clear the , , and check boxes as needed.

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Enter a value between 0 and 1 for the (default value: 0.3) or use the slider to select a level for the ambient intensity. Watch the changes in the window at the same time to help choose a level.

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Select a from the list: , , , , , , , , (default), or . The color is only applied to ambient light. If you select , click the button to choose a color from the palette.

Visual Effects

This effects include ambient occlusion and direct shadows, which, when used together (which is recommended) can provide 3D images with photorealism.

Ambient Occlusion

Select the 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 (

) from the (

) drop-down menu in the window toolbar.


	Ambient occlusion requires the OpenGL renderer, optimized for quality.

From the list, choose (the default) or . With , enter a fractional value (default: 0.4) in the field, or use the slider underneath the text field to adjust a relative value for the ambient occlusion radius. With , enter a value (default: 0.4 m) in the (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 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 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 list, select a preset quality level: , (the default), , or . The settings can be used during on-screen rendering. The settings should be used for image export as it raises the , increases the , and turns on (see About the Screen-Space Ambient Occlusion Algorithm below). The 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 setting will be less noticeable. With , 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 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 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 field contains an integer between 0 and 8. A higher value means slightly higher quality.

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In the 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 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 from the list.

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In the field, enter a suitable value between 0 and 1 for the SSAO resolution (a higher value can give a smoother appearance).

Direct Shadows

Select the check box to include direct shadows in the view based on a shadow mapping approach. Shadows are a result of the absence of light due to occlusion. When the light rays from light sources in the window do not hit a geometry object because it gets occluded by some other geometry object (the occluder), that geometry object is then in shadow. Shadows can improve depth perception and visual understanding of a 3D geometry. You can also select (

) from the (

) drop-down menu in the window toolbar.


	Direct shadows require the OpenGL renderer, optimized for quality.

The field and slider control the softness of the shadow. The shadow softness is 0 (no softness) or a positive number. A larger number gives more smoothness and a large penumbra — the space of partial illumination between the perfect shadow on all sides and the full light.

The field and slider control the strength of the shadow as a value between 0 and 1, where 1 represents full strength, which is what a shadow displays when created by an opaque occluder. However, the default value is set to 0.5 in order to lessen the contrast between in-shadow and fully lit areas so that it becomes a little bit easier to perceive the underlying plot colors.

From the list, choose (the default), , , , or . Even if low quality is often sufficient, it is recommended to use a higher-quality setting when exporting images. In general, the quality settings have more effect when you use a lot of shadow softness. With , you get the default values from the last selected quality setting for the following quality properties:

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In the field, enter a suitable number of samples for the occluder (1 – 200 samples) to take during the search of occluders. A higher number of samples gives a better estimation of the size of the penumbra, and, thus, a better image quality.

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the field, enter a suitable number of samples used during filtering of the shadow maps. The size of the filtering kernel is proportional to the size of the estimated penumbra, and a higher number of samples gives a better quality.

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In the field, enter a suitable value between 0 and 1 (default: 0.5) for determining the resolution of the shadow maps (a higher value can reduce aliasing artifacts along the shadow borders).

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Select the check box to prevent the algorithm from varying the amount of filtering samples taken, as, by default, the number of filtering samples taken are proportional to the estimated size of the penumbra. When selected, the noise patterns seen in penumbra regions can look more smooth.

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Select the check box to make the algorithm spend extra effort on limiting the size of the view frustums used when generating the shadow maps. Selecting this option can help in reducing aliasing artifacts seen along the shadow borders. The positive effect of this option becomes greater when the camera is zoomed in on the model.

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Select the check box to make the algorithm take a different approach when comparing depth values. This option can alleviate artifacts in shadows that are particularly observable on concave surfaces. When selected, you can also select the check box to make the filtering of the shadow map also take the geometry normals into account.

If shadow artifacts appear on surfaces expected to be fully lit, it might be possible to get rid of those by tweaking the biases available. From the list, choose or . The custom values can be tweaked in order to avoid self-shadowing artifacts caused by a limited numerical precision. If you choose , enter bias values between 0 and 1. The applies a constant margin when comparing depth values from the shadow maps with analytically computed ones. The scales how much the margin should also depend on the angle between the surface normal and the incoming light direction. The determines how much the sample positions should be moved away from the surface in the direction of the surface normal. A recommendation when tweaking these values is to first set them all to zero before slightly increasing one by one until the self-shadowing artifacts are gone.

About the Screen-Space Ambient Occlusion Algorithm

For each visible point (pixel) on the surface, a hemisphere with the radius equal to the setting and oriented by the surface normal is added. In this hemisphere, a number of samples are added (the 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 and parameters are both set to 1.0, the samples inside of the hemisphere are somewhat uniformly distributed. If you change the to say 0.5, the hemisphere where the samples are placed will look more like a cone. If you change the 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 ). 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 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 , 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 list, choose one of the available environment maps: or . The default is , which does not display any environment map.

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From the list, choose where the sky should be located: , , (the default), , , or .

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From the list, choose a rotation of the environment map around the chosen sky direction: , , , or .

The check box is selected by default to show reflection of the environment map in the model geometry (when is enabled and any selections are cleared).

Select the 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 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 field, or use the slider underneath.

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From the list, choose (the default), which does not take the camera’s zoom level into account when rendering the skybox, or , which uses the projection from the camera that is part of the view. If you chose , you can specify a field of view for the skybox (1–180 degrees; default 110 degrees) in the field (unit: degrees). The smaller the field of view is, the further the view moves into the skybox image.

Select the 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 check box to turn on transparency. The button (

) is activated in the window at the same time. Enter a value between 0 and 1 in the 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 window at the same time to help choose a level.

When you have selected the check box, select the 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 (

) from the drop-down menu (

) on the window toolbar. In addition, Fresnel transparency is available for individual plots under in a 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 on the Graphics page in the Preferences dialog box.

Colors

Clear the check box if you do not want to include colors indicating user-defined selections.

Select the 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 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 check box controls if the clipping will remove faces or not.

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The check box controls if the clipping will remove edges or not.

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The check box controls if the clipping will remove points or not.

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The 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 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 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 list: Choose (the default), any predefined color, or 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 check box control that the clipping action is active. Clear it to disable the clipping.

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The 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 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 check box to display cross sections between the clipping tool and the model geometry. The check box is enabled by default. Select (the default) or from the 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 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 check box if you want the cross section to be transparent. Enter a value between 0 and 1 in the 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 check box is enabled by default to show where overlapping domains appear. From the list, choose (the default) to use a color from the color theme, or select another color from the list.