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Flux Studio terms and definitions
- Boolean Operations
- Named after a French Mathematician named George Boole. It is the joining together or exclusion of something from one or more sets of things. Typically AND and OR statements. In
Flux Studio it is used in CSG (constructive solid geometry) operations. To join a square AND a sphere would be a Boolean Union in
Flux Studio. A Boolean Extraction would be to subtract a square from a sphere where the two overlap. A Boolean Intersection will yield the object that results where the two items overlap.
- H-Anim
- Short for humanoid animation. Standardized names for the body parts (limbs or segments) and joints. This is an International Standards Organization (ISO) standard which defines the joint model of a human-like body. The shin bone connected to the knee bone, knee bone connected to the thigh bone, etc...
- Faces
- Individual facets, planes or polygons which may make up a more complicated object. A cube has six faces.
- Translate
- To move something from place to place. (in X, Y, or Z)
- Rotate
- To turn something around or pivot on an axis.
- Scale
- To make something larger or smaller by a factor or multiplier.
- Inline
- To include another file into a scene by a simple reference to that other file. Does not physically include the geometry or points of the other file, it just refers to that other file. The Import Inlines option will merge the two files into one.
- IFS - Indexed Face Set
- A collection of faces each defined by a number (the index number). Most 3D objects are composed of many faces or flat planes.
- NURBS
- Nonuniform Rational Bezier Splines. This is a method of defining an smooth curves mathematically using just a few control points instead of using Indexed Face Sets. Fewer points equals smaller file size, but it does require more work on your PC to do the calculations of where the surface is.
- Hide
- Makes an item invisible so you can work on another item. YOu may want to hide the walls on a house so you can arrange the furniture. Does not delete the item, just hides it from the current view.
- Materials
- In VRML this means the colors of an object. Colors have three components (Diffuse, Specular, & Emissive).
- Diffuse Color
- The base color of an object.
- Specular Color
- The "shiny" color of an object.
- Emissive Color
- Color of an object that emits light. A hot piece of iron emits an orangish light.
- Reparent
- VRML is made of hierarchies of items. These nested groups are often referred to as parents and children. To reparent would be to move a group to be children of another group in the scene hierarchy.
- Clipboard
- The windows operating system supports a buffer area commonly called the clipboard. You can copy or cut something to the clipboard and then paste it elsewhere in the scene. This makes two complete copies of the item. There is a more efficient way in VRML called DEF/USE or in
Flux Studio called the REFerence. You DEFine the geometry once, and then USE that same geometry elsewhere without having all the points that make up the item in the file twice.
- Copy State
- Copies the state of an item; the position, orientation, & scale. Useful to paste the state of one item on to another if you want two items to have their origin in the same location. Very useful when doing animations.
- Position
- Where an item is located.
- Orientation
- How an object is oriented (tilted, rotated)
- Appearance
- How an object appears. A combination of the objects material and it's texture.
- Texture
- An image, picture, or pattern that is a graphic such as a JPG or PNG file. GIF is no longer supported in
Flux Studio because the company that owns the patent on it demands outrageous fees for authoring applications like
Flux Studio. A grayscale texture will allow the underlying material color to show through.
- Animation Keys
- Animations in VRML are composed of key frames or positions, the browser interpolates the motion between these key points to generate a smooth transition from one key frame to the next.
- Avatar
- A users representation in Cyberspace. The character that represents your location in a 3D world.
- X Section
- A cross section or one slice through an object. Several of the editing tools in
Flux Studio use a series of cross sections to create items.
- Spine
- Literally a backbone. The spine can be thought of as a central rod or line on which cross sections (ribs) can be moved up or down.
- Browser Simulation
- Flux Studio has a built in viewer which simulates viewing in a VRML browser plug-in. It has other features to help you step through animations or take pictures or even movies of animations.
- Debug Animation
- Allows you to step through an animation (perhaps slowly) in order to observe it and correct it if you do not like what you see.
- Browser Sim. Options
- Allows you to temporarily over-ride the time steps or slow down an animation to make debugging easier.
- Render Options
- Render means to convert the numerical representation of a scene into a visual representation. The render options control how the scene is shown.
- Open GL
- Open Graphics Language. An Open Source and widely distributed method (set of rules & utilities) of drawing on computer screens.
- Axis
- The three directions of movement in a VRML scene or center of rotation of an item. In VRML the axes are X, Y, & Z. X is left/right, Y is up/down, and Z is in/out. You can turn off the green axis indicator with the render options.
- Icon Options
- Icons are the little images or buttons that you click to start an action. The options allow you to resize the images and to reset the tool bar to it's original state (in case you hide something, and later want to find it).
- H-Anim Options
- This applies logic to control how much and in which direction a joint can rotate. (i.e. an elbow only rotates up and down and not backwards)
- Extrusion
- Literally to shape (as metal or plastic) by forcing through a die. In VRML this means making a cross section and then lofting it or making a second copy of that cross section some distance away. Like forcing Play-Doh(tm) out of a Play-Doh machine. The top and bottom cross sections are joined with parallel sides.
- Swept Surface
- Same as an extrusion, but the top and bottom cross sections do not have to be directly lined up, the top (or bottom) can be skewed to one side or the other.
- Sculpted Surface
- Another extrusion method, but the cross sections do not have to be the same, the sides do not have to be parallel. This is the most powerful and flexible building method.
- Revolution
- Similar to extrusions, but it takes a profile or side view of an object and revolves it around the central axis to make a cylindrical style of object, think vase or lamp base.
- Group
- Grouping nodes have a field that contains a list of children nodes. Each grouping node defines a coordinate space for its children. A "Group" in
Flux Studio is not the same as a "Group" in VRML, but rather approximates a Transform node.
- Anchor
- The Anchor grouping node retrieves the content of a URL when the user activates (e.g., clicks) some geometry contained within the Anchor node's children. It is similar to a link in HTML.
- Billboard
- The Billboard node is a grouping node which modifies its coordinate system so that the Billboard node's local Z-axis turns to point at the viewer.
- LOD
- The LOD node specifies various Levels Of Detail or complexity for a given object, and provides hints allowing browsers to automatically choose the appropriate version of the object based on the distance from the user.
- Switch
- Turns off or on geometry for display based on the Choice parameter. Can make stuff appear or disappear from the scene.
- Reference
- In VRML this is the USE part of a DEF/USE set. DEF defines geometry, USE says to use that exact same geometry elsewhere by referencing it. This makes the output file smaller because the referenced geometry is stored only once in the file.
- Viewpoint
- A location for the camera to appear. This is the users point of view. The standard height is 1.75 meters above the "ground" surface.
- Background
- The Background node is used to specify a color backdrop that simulates ground and sky, as well as a background texture, or panorama, that is placed behind all geometry in the scene and in front of the ground and sky.
- Fog
- The Fog node provides a way to simulate atmospheric effects by blending objects with the col our specified by the color field based on the distances of the various objects from the viewer.
- Navigation Info
- The NavigationInfo node contains information describing the physical characteristics of the viewer's avatar and viewing model. NavigationInfo node is a bindable node.
- Sound
- The Sound node specifies the spatial presentation of a sound in a VRML scene. The sound is located at a point in the local coordinate system and emits sound in an elliptical pattern (defined by two ellipsoids). The ellipsoids are oriented in a direction specified by the direction field.
- Light
- Lights illuminate the scene or object. There are three types; directional, point, and spotlight. Lights shine through all geometry and do not cast shadows.
- Directional Light
- Parallel rays that light up a scene in one direction.
Like a wall of light all moving in one direction. You will need to use more
than one directional light if you wish to have a room evenly illuminated.
- Pointlight
- Light emitted from a point source in all directions. Like
the Sun or a bare light bulb in the middle of a room with the rays radiating in
all directions. This will cause darkness on the back sides of objects.
- Spotlight
- A cone of light that illuminates a specified radius. It
has a limited distance and is typically used to highlight special items that
you need well lit. Like a sculpture or painting.
- Sensor
- Used to set off or trigger other events or actions. There are several kinds; touch
sensor (click on), proximity sensor (when near something), and visibility
sensor (when the object is visible).
- Touch Sensor
- When an item in the same group as the sensor is touched or clicked on, it starts something happening.
- Proximity Sensor
- Triggers an event when the user gets within some specified area (within proximity) of the item. An event can also be triggered when the user leaves this area.
- Visibility Sensor
- Triggers an event when something is visible to the user. For instance, an animation may start when the user rounds a corner an can see an object. When they leave the room the animation will stop. This saves CPU cycles on the users machine.
- Animation
- A series of changes to an item over time. This can be position, scale, rotation, color, etc. The author defines a set of Key Frames over an interval divided by time steps. The browser interpolates or calculates the intermediate positions between defined key frames.
- NURBS Deformation
- Several mathematical techniques which deform or distort an item or group of items in a predictable fashion (twist, bend, blur, swell).
[Nonuniform Rational B-Splines]
- Wizard
- A "canned" procedure or work flow that does many steps towards one particular goal automatically. After you run a wizard, you can then fine tune the results if you wish.
- Cookie Cutter Wizard
- A quick and easy way to make 3D shapes out of the wingdings or webdings fonts on your computer. It does a quick extrusion on a traditionally 2D font item.
- Camera Wizard
- A quick and easy way to add an animated Viewpoint or camera to a scene. You can start with this and fine tune the results once the initial setup has been created.
- HUD Wizard
- A Heads Up Display. Useful as a menu that stays in from of the users face as they move about the scene.
- Animation Wizard
- A quick and easy way to add an animation to the selected object. Useful to rotate, scale, or translate an object.
- Create H-Anim Avatar Wizard
- The easy way to create a humanoid joint model. This wizard can make models with several different Levels Of Articulation depending on the complexity of the avatar you want to make (LOA1, LOA2, LOA3).
- Create H-Anim Animation
- A quick and easy way to add an animation that has all of the h-anim joint model added as animation nodes.
Created on ... April 07, 2003 by MrPhillip
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