Getting Started with WCS 6 Part 1E. Getting Started


110. Right-click the Cloud Models category and Add Component from Gallery. Load Cirrus Streaks.

111. Answer Yes to the scaling box question.

112. Activate the Planimetric view and zoom back with the minus (-) key until you see the cloud bounds box.

113. The Cloud Model is still the active item and we're still in the Move Mode, so we can click and drag the clouds north so the southern extent is near the Main camera. We'll look at clouds in more detail in the Skies section.

114. Save the project and render.

115. Even though our camera is fairly close to the water, the horizon still seems to end prematurely. We'll use atmospheric haze to lessen that effect and increase the apparent humidity of our island scene. Expand the Atmospheres category in the Scene-At-A-Glance.

116. Open the Island Atmosphere Editor to the Haze & Fog page. We already have the Haze Component WCS assigned to our project, we just need to change the distance where it reaches full intensity. 5000 meters seems like a good starting point, so enter the value in the Haze Range field and Enter.

117. Save the project and render.

118. Last but not least, I promised you a high tension tower to complete our idyllic scene. Go to the 3D Object Task Mode, select the 3D Objects category, and click the Create button on the Icon Toolbar.

119. The Create window tells us we're going to create a new 3D Object with an attached vector.

120. Left-click once on the foreground ridge to place a vertex and right-click, or Esc on the Mac, to finish digitizing.

121. When the Input Request box pops up asking for a vector name, call it Tower.

122. The next box will ask us if we want to use the Tower vector for position or alignment. Since we want to place our 3D Object tower at that vector point, select Position.

123. Go to the Industrial page of the Component Gallery and load the High Tension Tower.

124. The Load 3D Object box will ask if we want to center the object on our DEM. We're placing the object with a vector, so answer No.

125. Activate the Main view, and switch back to realtime mode with the F8 key. There you'll see the tower right where we placed it.

126. Save the project and render a preview. That's as much as we're going to do with this project right now, so it's time to render our Main view to disk.

127. For that, let's go back to the Render Task Mode.

128. Expand the Render Jobs category and you'll see that WCS has created a Render Job for us.

129. A Render Job is comprised of a Camera and Render Option. You can have many Render Jobs allowing you to render many camera views with different Render Options. The default Render Job is already set up for the Main camera, so let's take a look at the Render Options.

130. Click the Edit button to open the Render Options Editor. We're already set up for a 720x480 image size and video aspect of 0.9 on the Size & Range page. We don't have to worry about frame range because we're rendering a single image, not an animation.

131. Go to the File Output page where we'll specify the type of file to save.

132. Click Add Output Event to add the IFF file format to the event list.

133. We can change this with the Format dropdown box, but I like IFFs for the small file size and lossless compression, so let's leave it alone.

134. WCS chooses a file name based on the project name and the file will be saved in the WCSFrames folder. WCS will overwrite a saved file by the same name, so rename the old file or choose a new Image File name when rerunning Render Jobs.

135. Open Render Control from the toolbar, make a last check of the Camera, Options, and Save fields, and Go .

136. If you'd like to watch the full size render in progress and don't mind slowing the render down, check the Show Rendering box.

137. We've got strange sky reflections so let's break up the water surface.

138. Close out the Render and Render Control windows and go to the Water Task Mode. Right-click the Wave Models category and Add Component from Gallery.

139. Load Generic Waves.

140. Scale the Wave Model's position to current DEM bounds.

141. To use these waves in our Ocean, open the Lake Editor to the Water Material page and select the Waves tab. Add Wave Model .

142. Select Generic Waves when the Ocean (Material) window pops up.

143. Save the project and run a preview render.

144. That takes care of our reflection problem, so open Render Control and Edit the Island Render Options.

145. Go to the File Output page and tack an A on the end of the Island file name.

146. Show Rendering in Render Control and start rendering.

147. There we go, great reflections and good looking waves to boot!



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