SceneComposer Usability Improvements

Reusable Solution Library

The main goal of a shareable component library (SCL) solution is to make all the resources from a particular SCS solution available to be used in other solutions. SceneComposer provides the possibility to reuse any part from a solution that is exported as a SCL.

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Appearance Wrapper

In some circumstances it could be necessary to expose for the user just those properties which should be modified to get a desired setting of an object. The Appearance Wrapper feature allows to expose only some properties of an appearance attached to a node or the properties pertaining to its containments (material, render node, shader, uniform setter, texture).

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Shader Details

Shader requirements are now available in SceneComposer. This includes the number of lights, materials and textures. They are displayed in a new tab "Details" in the Property Grid, when a shader program is selected. The tab also contains the available attributes and uniforms.

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Problem Viewer Extensions

Due to the huge quantity of informations which can be displayed on the Problems browser, it is possible to suppress warnings or messages solely related to imported content.

To get focused on problems related to SceneComposer solution configuration, many changes were made related to problem management:

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Bitmap Usage Validation

Custom formats available for each bitmap converter will have an additional property to specify for which engine are they supported (Candera2D, Candera3D, Mixed). This information is displayed in the properties panel of the BitmapProfile used by the Bitmap (see property CanderaModelType). During validation of the solution, if CanderaModelType of the bitmap profile used by the bitmap does not match the texture, effect, widget, a warning will be displayed (Mantis 4461).

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Activate Referenced Items

The possibility to activate items referenced through paths has been added. The Activate button will load the item in the property grid and in others panels linked to the type of the item (Mantis 4621).

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Uniform Auto Activation

Uniform setters contain some flags used to enable the activation of various auto uniforms (camera position, lights, material, texture, etc.) which are defined in shader programs.

A new property was added to uniform setters:

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Multi Materials Import from FBX

This feature enables the user to import FBX objects that have multiple materials (Multi/Sub object) associated to the geometry (For example different polygons are associated different materials). As Candera does not support multi-material objects, an object that has a multi-material is split into separate objects in which the polygons share the same material. Therefore, such an object will be imported as a group containing the sub-meshes that sum up to the FBX object.

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Auto-hide in Selected Panels

Auto-hide is offered in selected panels, similar to VisualStudio. Also available are the following options: Float, Dock as Tabbed Document, Hide and Close.

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Perspective Support

It is now possible to save a new perspective layout, which will be based on the current perspective. Also the possibility to delete, to export and to import a perspective was added.

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Scene Templates

Scene templates are now supported in SceneComposer. A scene created by the user can be made template by checking its IsTemplate property. The dialogue used to create new scenes was modified to allow the user to select an existing template or import.

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Import Fonts Button

A new "Import Fonts" button was added in the Text Style Palette section from the Solution Options ("File" > "Solution Options"). If there are no fonts already imported, the user can import any available fonts by using the "Import Fonts" button which is placed on the upper-right corner of the Text Style Palette section.

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Support for Display and Device Meta-Info

Display is now a dynamic item and has dynamic properties (like widget, render target, effect and layouter properties). Device Package is a new dynamic item which is displayed as the root element in the Render Target Explorer panel.

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Render Target Preview

Preview functionality for render targets has been extended: when deactivating/activating a render target - by unchecking/checking the checkbox - in order to disable/enable the preview of it, the render target gets also unloaded/uploaded. Therefore, one can make use of several WindowSurfaceRenderTarget objects having the same layer by activating only one of them - the others will not be uploaded (Mantis 3935).

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Import KTX Image Format

A new image format - "Khronos Texture" (.ktx) - can be imported and used in SceneComposer.

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Global Cameras Rendering Order

The global cameras rendering order changed. The rendering sequence for 2D and 3D cameras is:

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Minor Improvements

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