Last week I posted part 1 where I talked about Shaders, Lua and Blendshapes. I'd like to add to the LUA subject, as it seems to be a commonly asked question, that there are no additional tools in the SDK to deal with custom LUA bindings. The docs suggest to use available solutions.

3D Compass

The 3D Compass is a translation handle/gizmo like many of us know it from other DCC (Digital Content Creation) tools like 3ds max or Maya. The good thing is, that it includes handles for translations on planes too (unlike Maya or Unity3D). I really miss them in tools that only provide translations along one axis.

If you look at edges of the pane-translation handles, you will notice an additional arc. These can be used for rotations. I like this solutions, a good enhancement! The yellow pivot does not do a 3-axis translation (I never liked those!) but uniform scaling. This also is a good approach. So overall it's a bit like a universal transformation handle. Therefore there is no variation for rotation-only or scale-only modes. Which means - unless I overlooked it - there is no way to use the 3d compass to do a non-uniform scaling.

Another good addition is the ability to clone easily the selection by holding SHIFT while translating. It does a duplication with few dependencies - the 3d entities get cloned with attributes but not the mesh etc. Good for building content/levels.

The 3D Compass works with the available coordinate systems: local, global, view, parent. (About the ref. guide I am not sure). Something that didn't work yet was the angle snapping when using the rotation handles, but maybe that was fixed for the final release. If not, use the old method. Something that wasn't yet possible too, is the ability to show/hide the 3D compass as in some situations it might be disturbing.

Enhanced Content Protection

VSL code and Shader code can now be encrypted and therefore shared without knowledge transfer. This allows to create a more solid commercial environment for 3rd party component developers and freelancers/consultants.

The password can be specified in the variable manager. Having the correct password allows to decrypt (unprotect) the content. I don't know how solid this is but at least it's one more level of obfuscation and should be good enough for most cases.

For some unknown reason are LUA scripts excluded from this protection scheme. Another problem is, that you can't select multiple items in the editors and un-/protect them all in one go. While the Shader Editor handles at least the first selected item, the VSL Editor just doesn't react. So going one-by-one is not very effective, when dealing with more complex content.

New Building Blocks

XML: When Dassault Systemes added XML BuildingBlocks to Virtools 4.0 but restricted them for deployments for VR/XE/Office players I thought "Oh my!". I mean, if you want to create some interesting online content XML as document-format standard is just omni present. For example WebServices. Looks like Dassault Systemes finally became aware of this and now the XML BBs can be used for Webplayer projects too. Personally, I've only tried to use them once under 4.0. They didn't seem to be very stable  (which might have changed in meanwhile) and I ended by dropping them in favor of a custom VSL solution. Anyways, it's still a good addition that should have been done much earlier.

Thus from now on, they can be found under Narratives/XML Parser. The good thing is, that it can be used via VSL too. Moreover there is a visual XML Debugger window. The documentation could be better, I think, especially as the usage is not always totally clear - for example "XML Load Document" may fail but without any hints why.

Content Processing: I couple of new, useful BBs for examining and processing content: Merge Materials and Merge Textures (to find duplicated/identicals inside a group), Hierarchy Parser Upwards, Dependency Parser , Is Child Of 2D/3D (checks the entire hierarchy upwards)

Camera Movement: Pick And Pan BB, Pick And Rotate, Camera Zoom Extend

The basic idea of BBs for common operations, especially for configurators and the like, is nice. The execution of that idea is "suboptimal". First of all in the beta version the Pick BBs ignore a 2D hit. This means that while a user interacts with the GUI, he might modify 3D content that is hidden behind the GUI without intention. A developer would thus manually check for a 2D hit and deactivate the behaviour, making the "out-of-the-box" idea less effective (less fast ). The pick and rotate BB rotates a picked object along all 3 axis. No idea where this is useful, because reorienting an object towards a desired orientation is very hard to achieve this way, I think. It would be more universal (= fits to more use-cases) if it has options to constrain it to one axis.

Is Key Down BB:  LOL, finally! No more to say about that I guess everybody had their own custom solution for that (i.e. via VSL )

Set World size BB: resizing a 3D entity by giving the desired world size.

Spherical/Cartesian coordinates converters: the spherical coordinate consists of a vertical Angle, a horizontal Angle and a distance value. It sounds interesting and I wonder for what user-scenario these have been designed … GeoInformation systems? It also sounds like that we could simulate the content in 2D and display it on a spherical surface i.e. pathfinding and move-to, using the built-in solutions which might be difficult otherwise. Here two images from the Virtools documentation showing the coordinate systems:

2D Texel = Screen Pixel BB: this BB adjusts UV coords of 2D entites to fit texel/screen pixel ratio, a bit like screen mapping. The docs says "This is particularly useful to ensure sharp 2D GUI display by avoiding resizing artefacts".

To be continued …

Ok, I think we covered the major new features so far. In the 3rd part there will be some more and a final conclusion.