by abenedik
2. September 2015 18:26
I am happy to inform you that a new version of Ab3d.PowerToys has been released.
The biggest new feature of the new version is the introduction of a new camera type - FreeCamera. The FreeCamera is a camera that allows free rotation around any axis.
The first difference between FreeCamera and other cameras from Ab3d.PowerToys is that the FreeCamera is not defined by Heading, Attitude and Bank angles. Instead the camera is defined by CameraPosition, TargetPosition and UpDirection. Another difference is that the FreeCamera can be rotated freely around any axis and not only around Y axis as other cameras. This extra freedom can be useful for an experienced user.
But you need to be careful when using the camera, because most of the users can quickly become disoriented and can struggle to align the objects correctly. With other cameras you rotate the camera as you would have your target object on the desk and you would move around the object and view it from different corners. This is the most natural way to rotate the camera. The felling of horizontal plane and up direction is preserved and you can easily navigate around.
It is also interested that some previous versions of Autodesk products (for example 3D Studio max 2009) allowed users to rotate the camera in a similar way to what FreeCamera allows. This was allowed only with ViewCube rotation. When camera was rotated with mouse the rotation was not free but was bound to Y axis. The interesting part is that later versions (3D Studio Max 2014 and Autodesk Revit 2014) removed the free rotation with ViewCume and now ViewCube allows rotations only around fixed y axis. It looks like at Autodesk they found out that increased rotation freedom is not better for users and therefore they removed it and used the proven and more intuitive rotation around y axis.
Some users have been asking for FreeCamera for quite some time. I hope that they will be satisfied. Though I would recommend them to at least test this with their users.
The new version of the Ab3d.PowerToys also brings some other improvements and fixed. Many of them are related to the Ab3d.DXEngine and improve using Ab3d.PowerToys in the Ab3d.DXEngine. The Ab3d.DXEngine is a brand new DirectX 11 rendering engine that can render existing WPF 3D graphics with a super-fast and much more accurate DirectX 11 rendering engine. The engine is already available as release candidate version and can be downloaded form the Downloads page. Some additiona information about the engine can be froud on its web page. You can expect more information about the engin in the next blog post.
Here is the whole list of changes and new features:
- Added FreeCamera - a new camera type that can be used to freely rotate the camera around without locking the rotation around y axis.
- Fixed reading materials with ReaderObj - before a black EmissiveMaterial was added to each material.
- Moved CameraLight and ShowCameraLight properties and StartRotate, EndRotate and all related methods from SphericalCamera to BaseCamera (this allows its usage on FreeCamera).
- Added AutomaticallyUpdateWhenOriginalModelIsChanged to WireframeVisual3D
- Improved WireframeVisual3D to not generate the wireframe geometry until it is added to the parent Visual3D / Viewport3D. This can prevent multiple wireframe geometry generation in the initialization phase. Also improved xml comment (for help) and sample regarding that.
- Improved changing ShowCameraLight property at design time (before light was not always changed when the ShowCameraLight property was changed).
- Improved using ShowCameraLight's Auto property - before when this property was set to Auto, the camera light was not shown if the scene contained AmbientLight; now camera light is added in this case (it is not added only when DirectionalLight, PointLight or SpotLight are defined).
- Improved automatic finding of Viewport3D in BaseCamera faster and more reliable (when TargetViewport3D is not set).
Changes related to Ab3d.DXEngine:
- Updated BaseCamera to correctly find the Viewport3D if used inside DXEngine and if TargetViewport3D or TargetViewport3DName are not set.
- Fixed updating line color when the line color is changed after the line is already shown (when rendered with hardware accelerated in Ab3d.DXEngine).
- Improved EventsManager3D when EventsManager3D.CustomEventsSourceElement is not set - now the default event source is DXViewportView instead of Viewport3D.
- Improved MouseCameraController - it is not needed any more to set the EventsSourceElement to DXViewportView; now if EventsSourceElement is not set, it will be automatically set to DXViewportView.
- Improved sending lines data to Ab3d.DXEngine (so that the lines can be created in geometry shader).