User Manual

Controls Tab
The first tab in the Inspector is the Controls tab. It includes the primary controls for determining
the overall size and shape of the Cube 3D node.
Lock Width/Height/Depth
This checkbox locks the Width, Height, and Depth dimensions of the cube together. When
selected, only a Size control is displayed; otherwise, separate Width, Height, and Depth sliders
are shown.
Size or Width/Height/Depth
If the Lock checkbox is selected, then only the Size slider is shown; otherwise, separate sliders
are displayed for Width, Height, and Depth. The Size and Width sliders are the same control
renamed, so any animation applied to Size is also applied to Width when the controls
are unlocked.
Subdivision Level
Use the Subdivision Level slider to set the number of subdivisions used when creating the
image plane.
The 3D viewers and renderer use vertex lighting, meaning all lighting is calculated at the
vertices on the 3D geometry and then interpolated from there. Therefore, the more subdivisions
in the mesh, the more vertices are available to represent the lighting. For example, make a
sphere and set the subdivisions to be small so it looks chunky. With lighting on, the object looks
like a sphere but has some amount of fracturing resulting from the large distance between
vertices. When the subdivisions are high, the vertices are closer and the lighting becomes more
even. So, increasing subdivisions can be useful when working interactively with lights.
Cube Mapping
Enabling the Cube Mapping checkbox causes the cube to wrap its first texture across all six
faces using a standard cubic mapping technique. This approach expects a texture laid out in
the shape of a cross.
Wireframe
Enabling this checkbox causes the mesh to render only the wireframe for the object when
rendering with the OpenGL renderer in the Renderer 3D node.
Common Controls
Controls, Materials, Transform, and Settings Tabs
The remaining controls for Visibility, Lighting, Matte, Blend Mode, Normals/Tangents, and
Object ID are common to many 3D nodes. The same is true of the Materials, Transform, and
Settings tabs. Their descriptions can be found in “The Common Controls” section at the end of
this chapter.
Chapter – 80 3D Nodes 1650