Getting Started with VNS 2 Part 4B. Draping Images on Terrain


26. Switch the Main view back to realtime mode.

27. Depress the space bar to manipulate the camera and activate Rotate Mode . By default, camera rotation is allowed around all axes so Heading , Pitch , and Bank are enabled. All we're going to do is pitch the camera down. Disable Heading and Bank to keep from accidentally rotating the camera in those directions.

28. Pitch the camera view down to see just terrain. The axes we disabled will stay disabled as we switch to the Move and Zoom modes, so keep that in mind when you manipulate the camera later on.

29. To create a camera path for the Main Camera, activate it in the Plan view and select Create.

30. The Create window will confirm that we're creating a new path for the camera Main.

31. Let's say we want to check the Camera Editor while we're digitizing the path. Open the Main view popup menu and select Edit View's Camera.

32. Go to the Position & Orientation page.

33. We can retrieve the Create window, and any hidden window, by going up to the Window menu item and selecting the window we're looking for.

34. The default Create window settings depend on the type of vector being digitized.

35. On the Mouse page, we're set to draw in the Single mode, with one point for each mouse click.

36. Conform defaults to Small Plane, with matching Elevation, Smoothing, Point Space and Speed settings. Increase the Elevation to 10,000 meters and the Speed to 600 m/s.

37. Left-click a starting point at the west end of this canyon, left-click again where it meets the canyon coming up from the south, and right-click to finish.

38. The Input Request box gives us the time of the flight path based on the Create parameters. Confirm the length and save the project.

39. Play the animation. The Main Camera is targeted so it follows the target as it moves along its path.

40. Stop the animation and return to frame 0.

41. Go to the Camera Editor General page. Change the Camera Type to Align to Path.

42. Play the animation.

43. The Main Camera is aligned to its flight path but the pitch is a little off. Go to the Position & Orientation page and change it to 60°. Go back to time 0 and play the animation.

44. Save the project and render a preview.

45. Let's try to reduce the visible polygons in the cliffs by increasing the Fractal Depth. Slide down the lower Scene-At-A-Glance pane and open the Terrain Parameter Editor.

46. Increase the Maximum Fractal Depth to 3.

47. Save the project, and render another preview.

48. Increase the Maximum Fractal Depth to 5.

49. Render again.

50. It doesn't look like Fractal Depth is the problem, so drop the Maximum Fractal Depth back to 0. The terrain resolution isn't good enough to give us terrain detail at this elevation, but that's easy enough to fix.

51. Go to the Database Editor and disable the YNP-100m DEM.

52. Select one of the YNP-10m tiles, select the 10m Layer, and Enable.

53. The realtime Plan view will refresh white because the resolution based overlay image is now out of date.

54. Open the View Preferences to the Overlay/Gradient page. Regenerate the Ecosystem Map.

55. Save the project and render a Main Camera preview.

56. The 100-meter terrain render took about 5 seconds at Fractal Depth 0. The 10-meter DEMs required more than a minute to render the same view, but they give us much better looking terrain. The final animation, YNPCM.mov, is in the animation folder on the Tutorial 2 CD.



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