The Interface

Windows

The viewing area of the SOFTIMAGE 3D display contains four windows. This is your workspace. By default, one perspective projection and three parallel projection windows (Top, Front, and Right) are displayed as shown. Other windows such as Ortho, Fcurve, Schematic, DopeSheet, and Spreadsheet can also be displayed.

You can change the default window or access the additional windows by clicking the window title (such as Perspective). This displays a menu listing ten window options that are described in detail starting on Top, Front, and Right Windows: Front, Top, Right, Ortho, Perspective, Fcurve, Schematic, DopeSheet, and Spreadsheet. Freeze is not a window type, but an option for using the windows - see Freeze Window.

Window Title Bar Options

The window title bar contains a set of options which allow you to perform various functions relating to the window, such as changing windows or view modes (shade, wireframe, depthcue, etc.), changing the window's size, selecting it for rendering, memorizing camera settings, and modifying the window's layout.

Letter Identifiers

A letter identifier (A, B, C, and D) appears in the upper-left corner of each of the four windows to help simplify the way that the windows are referenced. Any window can display any type of view. A refers to the upper-left window, B is the upper-right, C is the lower-left, and D is the lower-right window.

Window Title

Clicking on the window title (such as Perspective) displays a menu listing the window options: Front, Top, Right, Ortho, Perspective, Fcurve, Schematic, DopeSheet, and Spreadsheet. These are described in detail starting on Top, Front, and Right Windows. If you like, you can display more than one window of the same type. You can also toggle between the previous and currently selected type of window by middle-clicking the window title.

Right-click the window title on the left side of the title bar to activate or deactivate a window. When a window is inactive, or "frozen," its title is dimmed. A frozen window is not refreshed, so the display in the remaining active windows is updated more quickly. You can also freeze a window by selecting the Freeze option from this menu.

Memo Camera

The Memo Camera option allows you to memorize and retrieve up to four different camera view settings in each window. This feature is especially useful for quickly toggling between points of view while working on complex scenes.

To enter the current camera setting into memory, middle-click one of the four boxes in the window border. The box is filled to show a view has been saved.
To retrieve (recall) one of the settings from memory, click the box representing the desired setting.
To cancel or reset the memory, right-click the desired box.

Tip:: You can recall a camera position by placing the cursor in the appropriate window and pressing the Supra keys 1, 2, 3, and 4 to select the four memo cameras from left to right.

Sizing Icon

The sizing icon in the upper-right corner of each window resizes the window so that it fills the entire screen (full view), a horizontal half-view (landscape), or vertical half-view (portrait). You can easily toggle between these views and reduce the window to its original size (quarter-view) at any time.

To toggle between a quarter-view and full view, left-click the sizing icon.
To toggle between a quarter-view and a landscape view, right-click the sizing icon.
To toggle between a quarter-view and a portrait view, middle-click the sizing icon.
To toggle between a half-view (portrait or landscape) and full view, left-click the sizing icon.

Note:: You cannot toggle directly between the landscape and portrait views.

Layout

The ruler icon is used to change the window's layout. Selecting it with any mouse button opens the Layout dialogue box. The Schematic window has different options than those available for the other windows, but you open the dialogue box the same way (see Schematic Layout).

The dialogue box options for all other window types allow you to modify the window grid rulers, set point snaps using a set of Magnet options, set the fast play back mode for the selected window, and activate a TurnTable option that allows you to move an orthographic camera in the parallel projection windows.

Grid Lock

This option allows you to move an object (centre) or points by the exact amount set by the grid size. This allows you to line up objects precisely. Always select this option for X when using the Fcurve window. This avoids moving keyframes to a non-integer frame (such as 4.87 or 34.26).

Tip:: You can also use the FcrvEdit -> Set Keys on Frames command which makes every frame an integer number.

Grid Size

This option sets the size of the grid for the grid lock in SOFTIMAGE units.

Grid Display

This option sets the size of the grid for the grid display in SOFTIMAGE units.

Grid Visible

This option shows or hides the grid.

Axis Visible

This option shows or hides the axis-reference icon in the lower-left corner of each window.

TurnTable Visible

This option allows you to orbit an orthographic camera about one axis in any of the orthogonal windows (Front, Top, or Right) so you can view your scene from various angles. You can study your scene's overall "look" as you work, simply and quickly. You can also use the Ortho window and orbit the camera using the o Supra key for a similar effect.

To activate the TurnTable, select the check box next to the TurnTable visible option. If you like, alter the incrementation step by changing the Angle increment value.

The TurnTable control icon is displayed in the upper-right corner of a window.

Tip:: To display the TurnTable control icon in all three orthogonal windows, click the All Views button at the bottom of the Layout dialogue box.

There are three ways to rotate the camera:

Drag the point around the circle.
Click the arrows to move the camera by increments (as specified by the Angle increment value).
Type the desired angle value directly into the text box in the centre of the circle.

To reset the orthographic camera to its default position (0.0), click the R button.

When you select more than one object with the Multi menu cell, the orthographic camera rotates around an average centre of the selected models, but the interest of the camera remains at the centre of the selected model. To reset the orthographic interest, click the R button or deactivate the TurnTable option altogether.

Note:: When the TurnTable option is deactivated, it is automatically reset to the default position (0.0) with the point at the bottom of the circle.

Ruler Visible

This option shows or hides the rulers in the parallel projection windows (Top, Front, and Right).

Field Guide

This option shows or hides the field guide on the Perspective window. This shows the safe projection area, the safe action area, and the safe title area. These options help compensate for differences between video and film, and are often used for title sequences.

The percentage of each option is 100, 90, and 80 percent respectively of full size for the height and 133.333, 120, and 106 percent respectively for the width. These percentages are the same for NTSC, PAL, and SECAM.

You can also set the field guides as you like with two environment variables in the .softimage file (see the SOFTIMAGE 3D Installation Guide for more information). These variables are:

SI_SAFETITLE: This is the percentage of the full resolution image covered by the safe title guide mark. For example,
SI_SAFETITLE = 80
means 80% of the image, which is the SMPT standard default.
SI_SAFEACTION: This is the percentage of the full resolution image covered by the safe action guide. For example, SI_SAFEACTION = 90
means 90% of the image, which is the SMPT standard default.

Magnet

This option allows you to snap points on the selected object as follows:

Off: Point snaps are set off by default.
On Point: When adding or moving a point, the point snaps to the nearest point on an unselected object by default.
On Tag: When adding or moving a point, the point snaps to the nearest tagged point on an unselected object (by default).

You can specify that points snap to objects as follows:

Unselected Objects: Points snap to points on unselected objects.
All Visible Objects: Points snap to points on any visible object, including the object containing the point you are moving.

Fast Play Back

Selecting the Fast play back option lets you quickly play back a wireframe animation for the selected window. The animation is saved to a buffer and when played again, it plays back much faster (the frame rate is maintained). When Fast play back is active in one window, other windows are not updated during playback.

Tip:: Choose the PlayControl menu cell in the Motion module and set the Frame Step to 1 for the first playback and then specify the frame rate.

The r Supra key resets the fast playback so that if it is interrupted, all frames are recalculated. If you drag the time line pointer, the other windows are updated when you release the pointer.

Fast playback remains active in shade or depthcue view modes. In a shade view, the animated objects are displayed in wireframe until you stop the playback. In a depthcue view, the animated objects are displayed in wireframe and without depthcue until you stop the playback.

Tip:: To display your animation in real-time, choose the PlayControl menu cell and set the Frame Step to zero. SOFTIMAGE 3D adjusts the frame step (skips frames if necessary) so that your animation is played back in real-time when you select the forward or backward arrow in the playback box.

All Views

This option sets the layout settings you have selected for all windows. The Layout parameters for each window are saved when you save the scene.

You can create a default Setup File for the Layout parameters. For more information, refer to the Preferences -> Setup File command .

View Modes

You can select different viewing modes in which to display your scene. By default, the view mode name displayed is SHADE. Clicking on this name displays a pull-down menu that lets you access the Wireframe, Shade, Rotoscope (wire or shade), Depthcue, Ghost, or Matte view modes, which are described on the following pages.

You can also toggle between the previous and currently selected view mode by middle-clicking the view mode name displayed in the title bar.

Wireframe View Mode

By default, the wireframe view mode is displayed in each window. A wireframe is an image made up of the edges of objects, and drawn as lines resembling a model made of wire. This image displays tracing features such as edges or contour lines without removing invisible or hidden parts, or to fill surfaces.

Shade View Mode

Shade provides a quick-shaded (hardware shaded) view of your scene which closely approximates its realistic "look," but does not show shadow, reflection, or transparency. You can view icons for objects such as the lights, curves, and waves, and you can also display textures.

Tip:: For a more realistic view of your scene, choose the Matter module's Preview command. This lets you view special material attributes such as transparency, reflectivity, and refraction.

To set up the Shade option, select it from the menu and then click SETUP in the window's title bar. The Shade View Setup dialogue box is displayed.

Select this option to enable and disable the display of textures in the Shade view. When this option is enabled, textures are drawn using the graphics capability of the hardware and not SOFTIMAGE 3D.

Affected Models: You can select to display textures for selected objects that have a texture, or for all textured objects.
Texture Repeat: Click Grid to enable the repeat factor of the texture (tiling). Click None to disable the repeat factor. The texture repeat is disabled by default.
Blending Approx: You can specify how to blend the material colour with the texture colour. Without Mask ignores the alpha component of the texture, and Alpha interprets the alpha component of the texture as a proportion of texture colour to use against the material colour.

For more information about 2D textures, see the 2D Textures section of the Defining Materials and Textures User's Guide.

You can select what types of textures you want to display in the shade view.

Current Globals enables and disables the display of the current global texture of all models (depending on the setting of Affected Models).
Current Locals: All Materials enables and disables the display of the current local textures for all materials. Current Materials allows you to enable or disable the display of the current local textures of the current materials only. When this option is enabled, the local textures associated with the "non-current" materials are not displayed.

You can display icons such as curves and lights in the shade view by selecting this option. The icons are always displayed in wireframe.

Select this option to enable and disable antialiasing on the scene. On an SGI Reality Engine, antialiasing is handled by the hardware so there is no decrease in speed in the shade view. However, for other platforms, antialiasing is implemented by SOFTIMAGE 3D, which results in a significantly slower performance.

For information about using a garbage matte, see the Creating a Virtual Set with Real and Computer-Generated Actors section of the Animating User's Guide.

Select the Show Garbage Matte option to enable or disable the display of the garbage matte in the shade view. The garbage matte is represented by the red areas of the shade view.

The shade view supports infinite tiling of textures, meaning that the texture is replicated on the object surface until the object is completely wrapped. To see the tiling of a texture, scale it down so that it does not occupy the entire surface of the object.

Note:: You can only activate this option from the Spreadsheet window. See Options Available Only from the Spreadsheet for details about activating the infinite tiling option.

You can specify how the shade view is drawn when you are performing an interactive operation such as zooming, orbiting, translating, or rotating.

None: the scene is displayed in shade mode with textures.
Shade: the scene is displayed in shade mode with no textures.
Wireframe: the scene is displayed in wireframe mode.
Surface Precision: This option allows you to specify the "surface step" for all patch and NURBS surfaces displayed in the shade view. This setting does not affect the actual step values of the objects in your scene. For example, you can set high step values in the Info -> Selection dialogue box for high quality rendered images while setting a low surface precision in the shade view for a faster display. A surface precision value of 0 uses whatever value is specified in the Info -> Selection dialogue box.

Rotoscope (Wireframe) and Rotoscope (Shade) View Mode

These two view modes allow you to perform rotoscoping in wireframe or shaded modes. Rotoscoping is a technique in which individual frames of a video or film are imported into SOFTIMAGE 3D and "traced."

The 2D background can be a static picture or a sequence of images. The scene can be zoomed and panned while maintaining perfect registration with the background.

When zooming in the Perspective window, you must use the rectangle zoom option (Shift-z Supra key) to define the zoom area; this takes a snapshot of the rectangular area and magnifies it to fill the screen. The camera position does not change. You can then use the zoom option (z Supra key) to pan, zoom in, and zoom out on the defined area. When you pan, it has the effect of moving the snapshot in front of a still camera.

Note:: The Rotoscope view has two modes: locked and unlocked. When it is locked, the zoom in/out and pan applies to both objects and images. To lock the view, do a rectangular zoom. When the view is unlocked, the zoom in/out and pan has an effect only on objects. To unlock the view, click on 1:1 in the window title bar.

The mouse buttons are configured as follows:

Left mouse button pans.
Middle mouse button zooms in.
Right mouse button zooms out.

To reset the zoom or pan, select 1:1 displayed in the window title bar when the rotoscope mode is active, or choose Camera -> Reset.

Note:: You can use the forward or backward arrows to advance the sequence of your animation.

When you select the Rotoscope option, the Rotoscopy dialogue box is displayed for that window.

Select: This button opens a browser. You can select a file name instead of typing the name in the text box beside this button. This is the file name of the picture to be displayed as the background.
Pixel ratio to 1.0: For images that have a different pixel ratio than 1.0, SOFTIMAGE 3D scales it to 1.0 if you select this option. If you deselect this option, the image is not scaled and the wireframe objects are adjusted to the pixel ratio of the picture.
Static: Only one image is used as the background.
Sequence: A sequence is used as the background.
Use Frame: Sets the starting and ending frames and the step of the background image sequence for each frame of the actual scene.
Sync Frame: Sets the frame number for the actual scene where the background image sequence starts.
Number of frames to keep in memory: Loads frames into a memory buffer so that you can play a sequences of images without reloading the pictures each time you display them. You can play back a sequence or move the time line pointer to quickly see the scene with the background picture you're loading in. The first time the system displays a specific frame, it reads it from the disk and keeps it in memory so that the next time you call up this frame, the system simply has to draw the picture and the scene. You can specify the number of frames stored into memory in the Original and Reduced text boxes.
Original: Sets the buffer size of the original picture. This is an image that fits into the quarter-window or displayed in the enlarged view when you maximize one window to take up the full screen. If you have very large images, keep this buffer size small to avoid too much memory swapping. Note that the original picture is always used when you do a Rectangular zoom in to the scene.
Reduced: Sets the buffer size for the pictures that have been reduced to fit in the quarter-window.

Depthcue View Mode

The Depthcue view mode provides fast colour wire rendering. The portion of the model closest to the camera appears "brighter" in colour, giving the sense of depth in the z-axis. It is usually used to derive more visual feedback from the models displayed on a screen because the hardware shading is often too slow for complex models and scenes.

By default, the object's colour outline fades as its distance from the camera increases, although this effect can be reversed by selecting the Reverse Fading option in the Depthcueing dialogue box that is displayed when you click SETUP.

Tip:: Tips for using Depthcue:

You can change the colours of the wireframe objects by using the Colour box. For more information, see The Wireframe Colour Box.
In the Perspective window, use the Camera -> Orbit or Camera -> Dolly command for the best visual feedback. In other windows, use the Turntable option (see TurnTable Visible).
When transforming a model for optimum viewing in a particular orthographic window, save a temporary keyframe using SaveKey -> Object -> Transformation. For more information, refer to the command descriptions on SaveKey -> Object and FcrvReset, respectively.

To set up the Depthcue shading option, select it from the view mode menu and then click SETUP in the window's title bar. The Depth-cueing dialogue box is displayed.

Min/Max According To Selected Object computes appropriate Start and End values for a selected object to allow maximum contrast and fading.
Min/Max According To Scene computes appropriate Start and End values for a selected scene to allow maximum contrast and fading.
Min/Max According To Clipping Planes computes the Start and End fading distance values relative to the clipping plane settings to allow maximum contrast and fading.
Min and Max displays the allowable slider range. When Selected Object is selected, the minimum and maximum values represent the closest and furthest distance in SOFTIMAGE units that the selected object is from either the global origin (in the Ortho window) or the perspective camera (in the Perspective window).

When Scene is selected, the values represent the distance that the closest and furthest objects in the scene are from either the world origin or the perspective camera.

In the Perspective window, when Clipping Plane is selected, the displayed values are the same as the Near and Far settings in the Camera -> Settings dialogue box. They represent the closest and furthest distance that each clipping plane is from the world origin or the perspective camera. The clipping plane settings must be changed in the Camera Settings dialogue box. For more information on camera settings, see Camera -> Settings.

Note:: For windows other than the Perspective window, the clipping planes are defined in the Window.rsrc file. The near and Far clipping plane values cannot be changed interactively in SOFTIMAGE 3D, only from the Windows.rsrc file.

Start and End: These sliders adjust the depthcue start and end points, although they cannot be adjusted beyond the minimum and maximum values displayed above the sliders. The Start value must always be less than the End value. If necessary, the sliders automatically adjust to maintain this relationship. Start corresponds to brightness and sets the near fall-off point of the depthcueing. End corresponds to contrast and sets the far falloff point of the depthcueing.

Tip:: To find the desired brightness and contrast, try first setting the Start value at a fairly low value, then finding the falloff point for the End value. Readjust the Start value to attain the desired visual effect.

If you are working with Selected Object or Scene and you want to adjust the sliders beyond the allowable minimum and maximum settings, move the sliders to the minimum and maximum values, and then select Clipping Planes. This allows you to adjust the sliders further.

Reverse Fading: When activated, the visual depthcueing effect is reversed. Objects further away from the perspective camera or global origin appear brighter than those that are closer.
Values Relative To confirms whether the values previously described are relative to the global origin or the perspective camera. If you are working in an Ortho window, the values are relative to the global origin. In the Perspective window, values are relative to the perspective camera.

Three RGB sliders allow you to define the background colour.

Note:: The background colour and fading effect as they appear in the window may not accurately represent the colour and fading in the rendered image. The colour displayed in the Depthcueing dialogue box is a more accurate representation of the background when rendered.

Antialiasing switches hardware antialiasing on or off.
Automatically Refresh View: When activated, the window is automatically refreshed as you adjust parameters.

Ghost View Mode

The ghost view mode allows you to display a series of frozen snapshots of your animated objects at the current frame, next keyframes, and previous keyframes. This option helps you to view and edit your animation using traditional animation in-betweening techniques.

Keyframes are displayed by default, or you can select any frame in the animated sequence to display as a static (reference) frame. By default, the current ghost keyframe is white, the next two keyframes are violet, and the previous two keyframes are fuschia pink.

You can customize the colours of Keys "Behind" and "Ahead," as well as Frames "Behind" and "Ahead" in the Ghost Frames Setup dialogue box. These frames remain in the view regardless of the position of the time line pointer and are used to provide a reference point. You can then manipulate your objects and keyframe their new values.

To set up the Ghost option, select it from the view mode menu and then click or middle-click SETUP in the window title bar.

The Ghost Frames Setup dialogue box is displayed.

This scroll box displays a list of the current static frames and shows their associated colours. The slider bar below the scroll box allows you to specify a frame number to be included in the static frames list.

Clear clears all selected frames from the list.
Unselect removes the current selected frame from the list.
Select adds the frame number specified to the list.

The Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) sliders allow you to colour the selected static frame, Frames Behind and Ahead, and Keys Behind and Ahead.

The default number of frames Behind and Ahead is zero.

Behind sets the number of frames you can see that are behind the current frame (the frames that were already played). The default colour is red. To customize the colour, use the RGB sliders.
Ahead sets the number of frames you can see ahead of the current frame (the upcoming frames). The default colour is blue. To customize the colour, use the RGB sliders.

The default number of keys Behind and Ahead is 2.

Show All Keys displays all frames corresponding to a keyframe.
Behind sets the number of keyframes you can see that are behind the current frame (the keyframes that were already played). The default colour is fuschia pink. To customize the colour, use the RGB sliders.
Ahead sets the number of keyframes you can see ahead of the current frame (the upcoming keyframes). The default colour is violet. To customize the colour, use the RGB sliders.

Note:: Supra keys r and R reset the fast playback frames.
Note:: On platforms that do not support 24 bitplanes in double buffered RGB mode, the background colour may differ slightly from the wireframe view.

Matte View Mode

You can view the matte value layer of your scene in the Matte view mode. The matte value of an object can have a value between 0 (black) and 1 (white). All the values between 0 and 1 are shown as levels of grey.

For more information about setting the matte value of an object, see Info -> Selection.

SOFTIMAGE 3D Reference - 18 APR 1996