Product Technology Blog

Apr 01

Create and edit your 3D models through the eyes of Vega Prime

Wed, April 01, 2009 - 17:53.
Posted by Yannick Lefebvre.  
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While working on the creation of a 3D model in Creator, a graphic artist often has to go back and forth between the editor and the final image generator where the model is going to be used.  This is done in order to see the final result and validate how the model would look at different times of day or with different lighting conditions.

To address this need, a new viewing mode was introduced in Creator 3.4 based on the Vega Prime rendering engine.

By simply selecting the Vega Prime option in the view menu, users will be able to see their 3D model rendered as it would be when running inside of a Vega Prime 3D application. A small dialog can be used to configure some elements of the Vega Prime scene such as the time of day and the cloud cover to be able to see different lighting effects applied to the OpenFlight model that is currently being edited. It is also possible to display both the regular Graphics view and the Vega Prime views side-by-side so that the Vega Prime view will update based on the manipulations that are done in the 3D editor pane.

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Beyond being able to get a quick preview of the final result, another big advantage of the Vega Prime viewing mode is the ability to preview model elements that do not show up in the 3D editor such as the new enhanced textures that were also introduced in version 3.4 of Creator. These new texture effects, including light maps, bump maps and reflections, will all show up in the rendered view and accelerate your development of visual models. If you are still using older versions of Creator, as I regularly see when I visit customer accounts, consider upgrading to the latest version of Creator and see everything that you have been missing.