Artlantis 4™ Demo Script Note : Each camera view belongs to a

Artlantis 4™ Demo Script
Note : Each camera view belongs to a separate Artlantis 4 feature.
1 – Full Radiosity
As you can see in the preview window in the upper-right hand corner of the screen, the
demonstration begins with a view for which the radiosity is unchecked. Explain that the
scene is displayed in pure ray-tracing with direct light only. As a consequence, parts
without direct light will stay totally black. For a realistic view of the project with indirect
lighting, Artlantis integrates the real time radiosity feature.
Activate the radiosity in the toolbar by checking the Radiosity option.
2 – Autolight adjustment
Artlantis can automatically balance the intensity and adjust the tone of the light. If some
lamps are turned on in a room during the daytime, they wonʼt be visible from outside of the
building. The sun being more powerful than the lamps, it will take over the lighting of the
scene and the lamps will lose their effect.
To show this, go to the Heliodon inspector and play with the time of day slider. By setting it
to night, the lamps will show their effect inside the building.
3 – Sky simulation
Instead of images, users can choose the 3D sky for background. It will simulate a very
realistic, natural sky with clouds evenly lit in the entire scene.
Activate the clouds in the Heliodon inspector and play with the sliders. You will show the
four different types of clouds, and their distribution on a 360° sky dome by rotating the
camera in different directions.
You will also show the position of the sun based on a time of the year, or the
manual positioning. Grab the sun in the sky and drag it toward the horizon to simulate the
sunset.
4 – Integrated PP
Show the different effects of the integrated post process. These settings wonʼt change the
rendering time at all, and they allow you to make personalized renderings.
Open the Post Process palette by clicking on this icon in the upper – right-hand corner of
the Perspectives inspector:
5 – Tones
Show the Tone Settings: - The Light Tones slider will help you to avoid the burn-out effect
on bright surfaces, while the Dark Tones slider will brighten up those parts of the image
which are too dark.
6 – Shader editor
On this outdoor scene you will explain the different settings of shaders. These are the
points to follow:
With a right click on the shader in the preview window, you will get a contextual menu and
choose: Create Shader from... Show the palette of this function. In version 4, the shader
parameters can be completed with the Fresnel transition.
7 – New Fresnel Shader
Artlantis 4 offers a new type of shader, the “Diffuse Fresnel” shader. It is part of the basic
Artlantis catalog and it can be found in the Shaders > Surface folder. The Fresnel
transition slider will set the transition between the diffuse color of the surface and
reflection. Show how it works on the car.
8 – Horizontal Texture
From now on you can make textures follow the horizontal direction when they are mapped
on gable roofs. This option can be chosen from the list of mapping types.
9 – Explode by Mesh
Open the shader inspector and click on the building from the preview window. The whole
volume is set with the same material. Artlantis 4 allows you to explode mesh geometries.
In our case, each door, window, or frame will get an individual material. To explode it, right
click on the building and choose the “Split Material by Mesh” command.
Drag and drop shaders on different surfaces to show their separation.
10 – Rich media
In addition to the basic catalog containing library parts for Artlantis, Abvent offers a wide
range of additional media adapted to different professions.
Show these additional media, such as the 3D trees with an optimized geometry and
changing aspect based on the heliodon date, or the beautiful cars available on different
DVDs, the collection of shaders including the Cultured Stone CD, or the billboards.
Users can see the content of each media CD on the internet at www.artlantis.com.
Some of the objects in the Objects folder of the loaded Media, are samples coming form
one of these CDs. Drag them into the scene. Explain that
they will automatically detect the surfaces and the depth, so they will always remain
scaled.
11 – Gravity Dupplication
From now on, we can duplicate trees by taking into account the gravity.
Open the 2D window and select the trees on the hill. Hold down the Alt + Shift keys on
your keyboard and drag a line representing the direction of the duplication. Click on the +
or - signs to adjust the number of copies, then hit Enter.
12 - IES lights
This view will allow you to show the different light types for spots.
You need to open the Light inspector and choose the light called “spot_IES” from the
drawer.
Change the default 360° angle to 120° and you will get a spotlight. Show the different
types of fall-off and play with the power slider if necessary.
13 – Layers
Here you will need to show several things:
●Automatic and manual placement of media;
●Visibility by View
●Layer management: create and delete layers;
A : Automatic and manual placement of media
The placement of media is set to automatic mode by default. As a result, trees will be
placed into the “3D Plants” layer, objects into the “Objects” layer, or objects with light
sources into the “Light Objects.”
If we un-check the “Auto” check box, we switch to the manual mode, and we must choose
the destination layer.
B : Visibility by view
Place some objects (trees and people) in front of the house. Show how quickly you can
make these objects “disappear” from view. The visibility of layers can be set in the
Perspective views inspector.
Please note, that a hidden layer will stay invisible in the final rendering, too. If you wish to
have trees in the final rendering, you will need to set visible, for example, the “Plants 3D”
layer before launching the final calculation.
C : Create and delete layers
Show that you can create a new layer by clicking on this button: And you can delete it with
the “Delete layer” button:
14 – Transparency
Sometimes architects like to present plants and billboards half transparent in order to show
more of the building, the core subject of a presentation. You can show this new feature by
selecting the 3D plants and billboards one by one, and moving the “Transparency” slider in
the inspector.
15 – Parallel Views
Being in Parallel Views, you can quickly and easily create plan views for example:
16 – Panoramas
The panorama function has evolved in Version 4 of Artlantis. The goal is to show how to
create a panorama with multiple nodes in no time.
First step: create a new node. Open the 2D window, hold down the Alt key on your
keyboard and drag a copy of the existing node.
Second step: link the nodes. This joint will allow the navigation between views in the final
panorama. To do it, select a node in the 2D window, click somewhere inside its circle and
drag the mouse toward the other node you wish to link with.
A line will appear between the two nodes showing that they are linked.
Show the panorama example you can find in the demo file folder.
Plan views can also serve for navigation in panoramas. To create these plans, you need to
do the following:
1 - create a plan view in Parallel views
2 - activate the Clipping Box if you wish to see more than one level of the building
3 - Name your plan view 00.jpg
4 - Put the final renderings into the “special” folder of the calculated panorama
5 - When you open the panorama again, (.html) a new icon representing a plan will appear
6 - If you wish to add more floor plans to the navigation, create new parallel view called
01.jpg , 02...03 etc...
17 - VR Object
This presentation mode works the same as before. The final result will be a QuickTime
movie where the camera moves around a point.
18 – Animation
The last chapter of the presentation is about creating animations in Artlantis.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: Switch to Open GL mode first with the help of this button in the
upper right-hand side corner of the preview window.
Why do we use the Open GL mode instead of the radiosity?
It's simple: when reviewing an animation in radiosity mode, the preview will be refreshed
automatically at each frame and the result won't be clear on the screen. The Open GL
mode avoids this problem, so it's good to activate it right at the beginning.
A- Camera animation
You'll need to create a path for the camera. To do so, open the camera inspector and the
2D window.
Activate the Edit Path mode:
Once activated, drag the red dot representing the camera from its start point to its end
point.
The path has been created and you can easily modify it with the help of the tangents.
Show how you can add new control points and tangents to distort the path even more:
make a right click on the path and choose Add Control Point.
Close the Edit Path mode after you finished editing.
B – Animate a person
To do it, open the Object Inspector.
You will find an animated people sample in the basic catalog of Artlantis. Drag and drop it
over the asphalt. It doesn’t have a path yet, however, it is already animated. The list of
behaviors from its inspector is set to “talk” mode. You can choose from three different
behaviors and the slider below allows you to preview the animation.
To add a path, you will need to make the same steps as for cameras. Stay in the object
inspector and open the 2D window. Open the “Edit Path” function from the toolbar.
Drag the object from its initial position into its final position.
A rubber line will appear that you can edit with the help of the tangents. As soon as you
finished, close the “Edit Path” mode.
As soon as the path was assigned to the object, the list of behaviors changes to “walk”.
The animated people object will move along its new path.
In the behavior list, the “run” option too appears, too.
C – Animation de l'Heliodon
To do it, you will need to open the Heliodon inspector.
Drag the camera to the start position on the Time Line and turn on the recording mode.
To reach the end point of the sequence, click on this button:
The goal is to enter the date and hour of the final moment of our sequence. Artlantis saves
the different information for the beginning and end of the sequence and it will extrapolate
the values between these two dates.
You need to decide the date and hour for the end of the sequence. In our example, we will
simply change the hour to 11PM to show the passage between the day and night.
D - Water and clouds animation.
To animate clouds, open the Heliodon inspector and Advanced palette with the help of this
button:
All you have to do is check the Wind option, choose a direction and an intensity.
To animate the water surface, open the Fresnel water shader settings in the inspector.
Check the Animation check box and set the intensity of the motion.
________________________
At the end of the presentation, ask the audience to download the evaluation version of
Artlantis from www.artlantis.com.