Modules for Vue 8 - AdvancedGraph
The SmartGraph Function Editor
Almost all the parameters in the material editor can be controlled by a function (or set of functions). The function editor is where the true power of material editing lies.
There are hundreds of available nodes to choose from, ranging from numerous types of noises and procedural functions to mathematical nodes, mixers, combiners and filters.
Almost any node can be connected to any other, allowing the creation of highly elaborate materials or special shaders such X-ray, velvet, or cartoon. Reaction to the environment is further enhanced with nodes such as distance to object below or angle of incidence.
You can rename or add comments to any SmartGraph node, in order to improve the readability of your graphs.
E-on developed the SmartGraph technology (inspired by artificial intelligence systems), to help you overcome the sheer number of possibilities presented by the function editor. Thanks to this technology, connecting nodes and creating custom shaders is much more intuitive and fast.
Scene Graph
Vue 8 lets you manipulate the elements of your scene in the standard, straightforward way. With AdvancedGraph, you gain access to a new way of handling your scene that lets you focus on the interactions between the elements of the scene. This is known as the scene graph approach.
Each object, each material in your scene has an associated graph that displays the item's properties as graph outputs. This graph is easily accessed by clicking the graph icon in the World Browser. You can then access any property of any object or material in the scene and use it in the graph to control the outputs of a particular object.
This way, you can define custom relationships between all the objects, terrains and materials of your scene, by visually connecting their properties using a graph of nodes.
This is a powerful concept that lets you create incredibly elaborate scripts to control terrain, material or animation properties based on other items of the scene.
MetaNodes
MetaNodes let you group several nodes or links into a single node, known as a MetaNode. MetaNodes will greatly simplify the readability of your graphs by letting you organize your graph into functional modules.
When you create a MetaNode, you can easily decide which internal parameter needs to be accessible from the top-level. This is known as "publishing". Publishing greatly simplifies the use of MetaNodes by letting you define a simple "interface": expose only those settings that are relevant to the behavior of the MetaNode, and hide away all other "internal" parameters.
You can complete the library of preset MetaNodes that ship with Vue 8 by saving your own MetaNodes for future use.
New Material Control
Sea Level
A new material mapping option, “Relative to sea”, is now available for material altitudes. With this new option you can create materials that appear at certain altitudes, either relative to the sea, or absolute in world coordinates.
A new input node, “Sea level”, is also directly accessible from the Function Graphs.
The External Dependency nodes of the Function Graph can express object positions and dimensions in user-definable real-world units (meters, feet, etc). This is also the case for other nodes that express real world dimensions, such as Distance to object below, distance from camera, etc.
Also, real world dimensions can now be fed into the Position and Size outputs of the object graphs.
These new material and function options are also available in the free Vue 8.4 update.
Multi-Materials
Multi-materials let you change in one single operation all the materials of any given object. Multi-materials can be saved for future use. They can also be copy-pasted or drag-dropped between the different objects of your scenes.
These new material and function options are available in the free Vue 8.4 update.
Graph-Based Animation Scripts
Using the Scene-Graph approach, you can create complex, graph-based animation scripts to control the properties of your animated objects.
Access each object graph with a click of a button, then build a function to control the properties of the object and connect it to the desired output (e.g. position, orientation, size, etc). Inside the function graph, you can access the properties of other objects in the scene. Using this, it's easy to control your object based on the properties of other objects.
Loose Dynamic Nodes
On top of the easy-to-setup loose forward dynamics introduced in the "loose tracking and linking" section above, Vue 8 features a set of new nodes dedicated to creating naturally flowing animations. This includes delay, integrator, differentiator, PID and constraint nodes.
Complete Feature List
- Powerful scene control based on the Scene Graph approach
- 4th Level of material Edition
- Control all material parameters via function graphs
- Advanced Python node for custom functions
- Advanced SmartGraph input nodes: screen position, angle of incidence, distance to camera, distance on ray, depth in object, distance to object below, incident light angle, light direction, light color, reflected direction, etc
- Detailed function output observer
- Detailed node previews in function editor
- Group parts of SmartGraph graphs as MetaNodes
- "Publish" specific MetaNode parameters for easy access from the level above
- Build your own MetaNodes library of commonly used graph snippets
- Control distribution of materials on terrains from within the procedural terrain altitude function
- Procedural terrain preview in function editor
