SimPose-ium: Operation: The "Lights/Camera" Page

 

 

The above image is from v8.0. From version 9.0 onwards the user defined camera and lighting preset controls are on a tabbed control that also displays the animation timeline.

Camera/Lights controls

The main control in this group is a droplist that selects the feature to be controlled:

bulletthe background colour
bulletthe ambient light
bulletthe camera
bulletthe three directional lights
bulletthe animation 'selected frame indicator' (causes the background to change to this colour on the selected keyframe).

Depending upon the feature selected, the four sliders, the check box and 'Change' button become enabled as appropriate.

The required check box: directional lights and background colour only.

For the lights - is this directional light required?

This control is also enabled for the background colour if an image backdrop has been loaded - use the image as the backdrop or the background colour

The 'Change' button: for all but the camera.

The patch to the left of the button is the colour associated with the selected feature. Pressing the button displays a standard Windows colour selection box to change that colour. Note for the background colour, this is associated with whichever Sim (Sim1 to Sim4) is currently selected, so they can have different background - to reminder you which is being controlled.

The remaining four controls, the sliders, control the position of lights and cameras around the characters. The characters can be thought of as being at the centre of a sphere, with the lights/camera positioned on the sphere and pointing in towards them.

The 'Direction' slider moves the lights/camera 360 degrees around the characters (think longitude)

The 'Elevation' slider moves the lights/camera 180 degrees from below the characters to directly overhead (think latitude)

The 'Zoom' slider moves the camera only toward/away from the characters (think radius)

The 'Offset' slider moves the centre of the sphere. Without this, the camera tends to be looking at the characters feet! The centre of view can be moved up and down (useful when zoomed in).

When background colour is selected, an additional button 'Add picture' is available. This enables you to load a BMP image to use as a backdrop. If the bitmap is larger than the 3D display window, it can be scrolled and dragged (see the description of the right mouse button controls) otherwise it is stretched to fit.

Viewpoint and rotation

These select a number of fixed the camera angles, and whether or not the characters are rotating on their axis. The N, S, SE etc positions are intended to mimic the views of the characters in the game. When a camera position is selected from the droplist, the camera slider controls move to reflect the same position.

Lighting notes:

bulletto get the look of a character in the game use a white ambient light only (this is the default on installation)
bulletcalculating lighting effects is time consuming, so the program may run slow with all three directional lights enabled
bulletto see the effect of the directional lights, the colour of the ambient light must be changed from white (otherwise it swamps the other lights). If the ambient colour is black, the characters are only lit by the directionals