User Guide

ADOBE ATMOSPHERE 101
User Guide
performed in order to generate this top-level Solid Object. In the Scene Editor, Solid Objects appear as rigid bodies
which can be moved around, rotated, and scaled as a whole.
Connectors, Welding, Constraints and Layouts
Another concept upon which the Atmosphere Solid Object Editor is based is that of welding Connectors together. In
the previous section, we saw that Primitives were at least partially defi ned by their Connector positions. Thus, a Floor
Primitive will have it’s four corners defi ned by it’s four Connectors. The solid space contained by the Floor Primitive
will “build itself” around those Connectors. You can never create just a single polygon or a single sided object in the
Atmosphere Solid Editor. Connectors defi ne solids procedurally, not by outlining their surface polygons directly.
The Atmosphere Solid Object Editor tries to make the design of spaces or environments easy. One of the ways it
does this is to allow Connectors to be welded or “snapped” together. When two Connectors are welded together, they
essentially become a single Connector. From that point onward, the one or more Primitives that share that Connector
will all be affected by moving the Connector. So, for example, you could weld together a number of Floor Primitives
to construct a single, larger and more complex fl oor for a room. If you wanted to reshape the outer edge of this fl oor,
you could move one of the Connectors on it’s edge, and the entire shape of the fl oor would change. You could also
weld a Wall Primitive to a Floor Primitive to create a right-angled wall-fl oor section. If you moved the Connector at
the bottom of this assembly, both the wall and the fl oor part would change simultaneously. They would stay “stuck”
together.
In order to make layout editing easy, there is one more concept that has to be considered. The Atmosphere Solid
Object Editor also provides “constrained Primitives”. A constrained Primitive is one in which it’s shape, size, or
location is intelligently computed so as to maintain some sort of predefi ned constraint or rule. For example, the Floor
Primitive in Atmosphere always is constrained to remain “horizontal”. This means that, if you grab one of the Floor
Primitive’s defi ning Connectors and move it vertically (in Y), all the other Connectors for the Floor Primitive will also
move the same amount in the same direction. The goal of the constraint in this case is to keep the Floor Primitive
horizontal. You cannot tilt a Floor Primitive by moving one of it’s Connectors. Similarly, the Wall Primitive is
constrained to be always vertical, you cannot tilt a Wall Primitive from the vertical by moving one of it’s Connectors.
If you snap together a Wall and a Floor Primitive, then the angle between them will always be 90 degrees.
In combination with Connector welding, constraints give you the ability to rapidly construct complex layouts and
modify them by moving one or more Connectors. You do not have to worry about whether the “room” will go
out of “true”, and you do not need to worry about moving all of the surfaces of the room so that they continue to
“match up”. Because of the combination of Boolean operations, Connector (procedurally) defi ned solids where the
Connectors can be snapped together, and constraints on Primitives, this layout behavior becomes possible.
This may sound complicated, but if you drop a bunch of Primitives into the Solid Object Editor, snap them together,
and start moving Connectors around, the process should become immediately apparent.