General Properties

Realsoft Graphics Oy		General Properties
	Common Properties of Geometric Objects

The General Properties tab includes some frequently needed properties of geometric objects.

Name: The name of the selected object(s).

Class Icon: At the right side of the name gadget, a small icon shows the class of the selected object. The associated tooltip tells the name of the object class (rectangle, cube etc.).

The Visibility Frame

Miscellaneous visibility options.

Invisible in real time rendering: Hides the object (and its sub objects) from real time view rendering (both GDI and OpenGL).

Invisible in photo realistic rendering: Removes the object from ray tracing and other 'final' rendering systems.

Camera Invisible: Makes object invisible for the ray tracing camera. Invisibility covers only the direct view from the camera: the object remains visible via reflections, casts shadows etc.

A camera invisible red sphere in front of a mirror

Reflection Invisible: Object will not show in reflections or trough transparent objects.

The red sphere is now reflection invisible

Shadow Invisible: If set, the object will not cast any shadows. This can be used as a rendering optimization trick. For example, room walls can be made shadow invisible if the camera and all light sources are inside the room.

The red sphere made shadow invisible

No Shadows: If set, the object will not receive any shadows cast by other objects or the object itself. Light sources do illuminate the object; only the shadows are eliminated.

Hit Invisible: If set, the object will be ignored in collision detection, 3D painting and in the surface projection of various tools such as the particle brush tool and the paste tool. For example, you can make a water surface hit invisible before brushing some rock particles into the bottom of a lake.

No Shadows set for the floor

Not Selectable: If set, the object (and possible sub objects) cannot be selected by clicking or dragging the object wireframe on a view window. The object can still be selected from the select window. The option is useful when editing complex scenes with lots of wireframe.

The Volume Frame

Volumetric object properties for Boolean operations and volumetric rendering effects.

Volume Inverted: The object fills the exterior of its natural volume with matter. For example, a tiny sphere becomes an infinite space with a small bubble in it.

Fog bubble

Inverted fog bubble

Paint in Boolean Operations: If set, the object keeps its original surface attributes when cutting another object. By default, the first sub object of a Boolean AND operation level defines the properties of the result.

Wooden cubes cut with a marble sphere. The marble cutter at the right has the 'Paint' option enabled.

Hollow: Makes an object hollow i.e. an infinitely thin surface without a volume. This shows up when Boolean cutting the object or if the object is made of transparent, refractive matter.

Two glass cubes made of the same material. The one on the right is hollow

The Animation Frame

Object behavior in animations.

Rotate in HPB: By default, object rotations are animated using so called Quaternions, which produce rather intuitive smooth rotations. This option selects a more machine like rotation interpolation in the Heading-Pitching-Banking angle space.

Animate only when selected: Objects can be animated by modifying them animation recording on. Sometimes objects change (because of a lattice map connection etc.) even when they are not selected. This option helps preventing unintended animation event recording for unselected objects.

Animation Protected: If set, the object will not record any key frames when modified in animation recording mode. This helps to avoid unintended key frames.

Key frame animation only: This option is similar to the previous one, with the exception that already animated attributes do record new key frames. Unanimated attributes remain unanimated.

Hide Choreographs: Hides all choreographs associated with this object and its sub objects. This option is useful when managing scenes consisting of thousands of animated objects and you don't want to see them all in the Choreography Window.

The Object Space Frame

Object space transformation components. You can see the object space position and orientation on view windows trough the coordinate handle which appears when you select the object. The X axis is drawn in red color, the Y axis in green color and the Z axis in blue color. You can remember the color order easily by checking the view window orientation guides - each axis is labeled there.

Translation: The position of the object space origin (pivot point).

Scale: The total scaling of the object (measured along object space axes).

Rotation: The total rotation of the object. The three values are the heading, pitching and banking angles which rotate the world space XYZ axis system to the current object space axis system as follows:

Heading angle first rotates the world X and Z axes around the world Y axis.
Pitching angle then rotates the obtained Y and Z axes around the rotated X axis.
Banking angle finally rotates the obtained X and Y axes around the rotated Z axis.

Skew: The shearing angles of the object space. If all angles are 0, the object space is orthogonal.

The Lattice Space Frame

The transformation components of a lattice mapped object. A lattice mapped object has an additional transformation matrix which specifies the object orientation in the lattice space. For example, making a curve mapped object to follow the path is simply a matter of animating the lattice space translate x component to increase from zero to one.

Disable Lattice Mapping: If set, modifying a lattice object to which the object is mapped no longer affects the objet.

Translation: Object position in a lattice space. For example, if you place the pivot point of an object to the beginning of a path curve and then map it, the lattice translation will be (0,0,0). Lattice mapping an object to the middle of a mesh will set the translation to (0.5, 0.5, 0).

Scale: Object scale in lattice space.

Rotation: Object rotation in lattice space.

Skew: Object shear in lattice space.


Color Tab		Mapping Tab