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Components

Components

This section lists the various components that can be added to 3D objects. Each object can have multiple components, but only one of each kind; each component adds a behavior to the object.

Transform

Transforms give the position, orientation and scale of objects. It is the only component that is mandatory.

Mesh

A mesh contains a single geometry, and the material used to render the geometry. By itself, a mesh is not enough to have an image -- you also need either a Camera, a Videoprojector, or an Unwraprenderer.

Materials can be given an emissive TextureArea, which will be visible when rendering, but the mesh needs to be UV-unwrapped. If your mesh doesn't have any texture coordinates, you either need to unwrap it in a 3D package, or to create another object which projects a Decal on it.

Videoprojector

A Videoprojector is a virtual camera that renders the scene from a specific point of view. Unlike the Camera component below, Videoprojectors are taken into account when computing the illumination of the stage, when computing the softedge, or when using AutoCal.

Videoprojectors need to have their datasheet set, otherwise some features may not work.

They can render on different surfaces:

  • Media Servers (on the full Media Server output for Media Servers that have only 1 output; or on each sub-part of any Media Server, for Media Servers that have multiple outputs)

  • TextureAreas

Outputting directly on a Media Server is more straightforward, but outputting to an intermediate TextureArea can have several benefits: you can more easily adjust the output resolution, you can animate the deformation, etc.

Camera

A Camera renders the scene from a specific point of view, just like Videoprojectors; but unlike Videoprojectors, they don't take part into any lighting computation (illumination mode, resolution mode, AutoCal, etc).

It is used to provide customer previews.

Unwraprenderer

Unwraprenderer renders the scene in a mesh's UV coordinates.

Decal

Decals provide an easy-to-use alternative to manually unwrapping the 3D mesh in a separate 3D editor.

Decal components should not be created directly on the mesh, but on a separate object. A decal will behave like a virtual gobo light, that will project the contents of a TextureArea on whatever mesh is on its path

Multiple decals can be added in the same scene; however, they currently overlap in an unspecified order, so you should avoid overlapping multiple decals in spectator-visible zones.

TrackingCamera & TrackingZone

Together, these two components configure the Tracking Study mode. See the related section.

Light

Lights add either omni-directional lights (light bulb), or directional lights (sun). These lights can't have any media playing on them -- they can have only one color.

Lookat

This component permanently rotates an object towards another object.

PointCloud

Point clouds are like meshes, but without triangles: only the vertices are known. Point clouds are usually the output of a 3D scan, either from a LIDAR or from AutoCal. Onlyview accepts point clouds in OBJ format.