Entity Display

This page covers how Entities are displayed in Simulation in an Entity Type Node and in Cache Replay in a Simulation Cache Proxy Node:

Display Attributes

 
Display Mode

Mode used for preview rendering  (see below)
Display Color Diffuse color for the Entities belonging to this Entity Type. When particles will be emitted from a Population Tool Locator, the rgbPP PPAttribute of the particles will be set to this color (for more explanation about how to use PPAttributes, see PPAttributes Handling). By default, the color considered to shared the Entities will be the one stored in the rgbPP PPAttribute. It is also possible to use the color defined in this attribute by unchecking the "Use Rgb PP" checkbox in the Crowd Manager Display Attributes.
Display Color Weight

Weight of the Entity Color in the final shading.


Color Weights ranging from 0 to 1
Draw Selected Entities BBox

Show the bounding box of the selected entities
Use Far Clip

It is possible to limit cache proxy display, to only show entities closer than a distance to a specified camera. This improves the display performance of the crowd when far crowd display is not required.
Far Clip Camera

Far clipping camera reference
Far Clip Distance

Far clipping distance from camera reference.

Animation Bones / Physics Shape Display Attributes

The following attributes are available only in "Animation Bones" or "Physics Shape" mode:

Bone Radius Radius factor used to compute the width and depth of the box used to display bones
LODPixels Size A LOD system is available and allows bones smaller to a size in pixels to not be rendered. LODPixels size value of 8 (default) sets the preview renderer to discard bones which on-screen size is lower than 8 pixels

Render Previz Display Attributes

The following attributes are available only in "Render Previz" mode:
Geometry Tag

Type of Character Geometry Files to use during Simulation or Cache Replay
Two Sided Doesn't perform triangle culling based on its winding. Every triangles are visible from both sides.
Shading Mode

Mode used to shade the Render Previz geometry:

  • From FBX: shaders will be loaded from the meshes saved in the FBX file listed in the Geometry part of the Character file  This is only valid if using a FBX file, GCG does not store shaders information.
  • From Maya Scene: shaders will be loaded from the current Maya Scene (according to the shading assignment defined in the Geometry part of the Character file).
Shading Namespace

Name of the Maya Namespace to add to the to the shading assignment defined in the Geometry part of the Character file. This attribute only works if the Shading Mode is set to From Maya Scene.
Refresh Geometry

Flush the geometry cache and reload them (fbx and gcg files).

Display Modes

Cylinders

Cylinder is the simplest preview mode
 
Cylinder is the simplest preview mode. It is a modified cylinder, which thinner part indicates entity's direction. Radius and height of the cylinder are entity's properties defined in the Entity Type Attributes (see above). They both are scaled by the Entity scale.

Animation Bones and Physics Shape

The same skeleton viewed in "Animation Bones" and "Physics Shape" modes
  • The Animation Bones mode displays a box for every bone composing the skeleton. The length of the box is the distance from the bone to its children median position. Its width and depth are a fixed ratio (0.25) multiplied by the Bone Radius attribute.
  • The Physics Shape mode displays the physics volumes of the skeleton. Those properties can be edited in the Character Maker.

Render Previz

Render Previz show geometry mesh with asset repartition
 
Render Previz is available if you assign a Rendering Type to the current Entity Type. Once you set up the Character with the assets repartition and a corresponding geometry file (fbx or gcg), the Entities will be properly rendered. You will see the same mesh asset repartition as in your Simulation Render.
 
The Render Previz will search and use the shader assets (diffuse texture or diffuse color) applied to the mesh. An orange Diffuse color will be binded if the shader is not present in Maya. For more comfort, the diffuse textures are loaded in the background. You may see them pop when running the simulation for the first time. The shader output plug color name used can be changed manually see "Color Attributes Names" below. If the geometry file is modified, you can refresh the Render Previz using the Refresh button in the attributes or using the Refresh button in the Character Maker.
 
The Render Previz mode is performed by an OpenGL shader (.glsl). This shader can be found in the Golaem shaders directory, edited and overriden from the Crowd Manager.
 
The indications below only apply to viewport display not rendering!
Notice that this display mode does support:
  • Classic Linear skinning (other skinning methods will fallback to linear skinning)
  • up to 682 bones per Character for a GPU allowing 8k texture. Recent hardware could manage bigger textures, thus more bones, see hardware capabilities stats here.
  • up to 14 active blendshapes per mesh
  • up to 4 skinned bones per vertex
  • geometry cache animation using the Geometry Animation Behavior
  • Rendering Type Mesh Assets repartition
  • texture files and diffuse colors

It doesn't support

  • shading/texture variation (mainly for performance issues). This means that in Render Previz mode, all assets of the same type will have the same texture and you'll have to render the scene to get a visualization of the shading variation.
  • UDIMs assignment (mainly for performance issues)
  • most advanced shading features: alpha, bump maps, displacement maps...
  • per-face shading assignment. If a Mesh has several Shader Groups assigned, only the first one will be assigned to the whole mesh in the previz and you'll have to render the scene to get a visualization of the per-face assignment.

Previz Lighting


Maya viewport Lighting Panel

Previz supports up to 16 lights which can be either spot, omni, ambient, point or directional Maya lights. Use the Lighting menu in the viewport panel to activate it.


Shadows are supported when using Viewport 2.0

Depth Of Field (DoF)

The display of entities, either in simulation or in cache replay, should be compatible with the depth of field cameras, without any additional configuration. The algorithm matches the one suggested by Maya team.

Viewport 2.0 and DirectX11

Golaem Crowd is compatible with Viewport 2.0 using OpenGL rendering. On some hardware, Maya only allows Viewport 2.0 using DX11 whether you chose OpenGL display. If the Viewport 2.0 display is DX11 entities will only be displayed with orange bounding box and an error message will appear in the console.


Golaem with DX11 display compatibility mode.