Getting Started
with WCS 6 Part 1C.
Getting Started
58. Let's use another method
to place our Main camera at a new location. If the Main camera
is not active, activate it by Alt+clicking on it in the plan
view. Ctrl+click a new location a little west of where it is
now. An Input
Request box will pop
up giving you the current terrain elevation at that point.
59. Let's place our camera a
few hundred meters above the ground, at 2075 meters.
60. Rotate the Main camera view
so you get something like this. Save the project.
61. Run a preview render of the
Main camera. Click around the rendered scene and watch the Diagnostic Data window; it's giving us values for each
pixel in the render.
62. So far, we only have only
2 Components: Island Ground and Island Sky.
63. See the radio buttons along
the right side of the window? RGB/HSV is currently selected,
which is the normal color channel we're used to seeing in images.
You can also look at other buffers or channels in the render
like Normal, Illumination, and Slope.
Normal buffer or channel
Illumination channel
Slope channel
64. The sliders at the bottom
of the window scale the range of buffers shown in gray scale.
Aside from seeing your renders in a different light, so to speak,
these buffers give you useful visual terrain information.
65. We won't be using them just
yet, so click back into RGB space.
66. Let's do something about
that dull gray Ground Effect. Go to the Land Cover Task Mode and expand the bold categories. We have
an Environment, which all projects have, a Ground Effect,
and 2 Image Objects.
67. Open the Ground Effect Editor by double-clicking it in the Scene-At-A-Glance
or double-click terrain covered with it in a preview render.
68. If you go to the Materials
page, you'll see that the Ground is gray because that's what
its Diffuse Color is.
69. We could click on the color
well, which will open the new Color Editor, and choose
a different color.
70. Instead, Cancel out
of the Color Editor and we'll load one of the pre-built Components
that come with WCS. Click the Component Gallery  button
on the right side of the Editor.
71. The Component Gallery will open to the Ground Effects section.
Find the Mars Ground Component and double-click it to
load it.
72. Save the project and run
another preview render.
73. It's starting to look more
like real terrain, thanks to the Mars Ground Effect. Now
when we click on the terrain, the Diagnostic Data tells us it's covered with the Mars Ground Component.
74. We'll use a simple Ecosystem
from the Component
Gallery to add trees
to our up and coming island paradise. Right-click the Ecosystems
category in the Scene-At-A-Glance and select the Add Component from
Gallery option.
75. When the Component Gallery opens, make your way to the last page and load
the Spruce-Fir Forest.
76. When the Load Ecosystem box
pops up asking if you want to scale the Elevation Line to the
current DEM, click Yes.
77. We'll look at Ecosystems
more in a later section, but for now let's just look at the Rules
page. We use the Rules-of-Nature to tell WCS what terrain
polygons to place the Ecosystem on. These Rules give the Ecosystem
an upper Elevation Line well above our DEM and place it
on polygons with a Maximum Slope of 45 degrees and a Minimum
Slope of 0 degrees. For more information on these and the
other Rules-of-Nature, use the F1 key to check
out the Interactive Reference Manual.
78. Save the project and let's
see how this looks with another preview render.
79. So where's our Spruce-Fir
Forest? Just having an Ecosystem in the project does not add
it to our scene. We have to attach it to a Vector, Color
Map, or Environment so WCS knows where to place the
Ecosystem.
80. Since we don't want to limit
the lateral extent of the Ecosystem, we'll add it to the default
Environment, which has a global effect. Expand the Ecosystems
category in the Scene-At-A-Glance, select Spruce-Fir Forest, and
click, drag, and drop it on the Island Environment.
81. When asked, confirm that
you want to add the Ecosystem to the Environment.
82. Open the Island Environment Editor to the Ecosystems page and you'll see the
Spruce-Fir Forest.
83. Save your project and run
a preview render.
84. The Spruce-Fir Forest Ecosystem
is made up of 24 Image Objects of grass, weeds, and trees.
You may have noticed them added to the Scene-At-A-Glance Image Object category as the Ecosystem
was loaded from the Component Gallery.
85. The best place to access
them is from the Image
Object Library, which
you can open from its button 
on the upper toolbar. Here you can add and remove Image Objects,
and edit image properties. To optimize image loading and render
time, go to the Keep in Memory section above the thumbnail,
select Load Fast and Apply to All. This will create
fast loading file versions of the Image Objects. We're done with
the Image Object Library so close it out for now.
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