Main Menu - View

Owned by thomas (Unlicensed)
Last updated: 04 Jun, 2014
5 min read

“View” provides functions for customizing the viewport windows and various shading modes. It is surely one of the most often used menus during creating and simulating your scene. Please keep in mind that “View” does not manage the visibility of a node. If you want to make an object invisible or visible, you need the according "Display" panel. The entries of “View” can be seen here:



Redraw the viewport to switch back to RealFlow’s default point of view.

Displays objects as bounding boxes when moving, rotating or scaling. Especially with large scenes and many objects, this is a good means to increase display speed. Even standard fluid particles are drawn as boxes, while grid fluids are still represented as particles.

To make use of this option, a camera is required. After the camera view has been enabled you can see two frames around the viewport. The outer frame is in cyan and exactly matches the camera view, independent of the viewport’s aspect ratio. The inner frame is blue and shows the title-safe area of the current view.

With this option it is possible to print some basic information about the current scene directly to the viewport. The data are written to in the top right-hand corner and represent your settings under

Preferences > Display > Top Right Caption

There you can enter either your own text or choose from a couple of variables, for example frame rate, frame width or the scene’s name. The preview caption can be defined under the previously mentioned "Preferences" section, for example:

Grid Fluid Comparisons @ $(FPS) frames : $(FRAMEWIDTH) x $(FRAMEHEIGHT)

You can fit a bitmap into a viewport as a background. If you have several viewports open, it is possible to turn the loaded picture on or off for each viewport separately. RealFlow does not store the loaded image and it has to be applied with each launch.

Choose a bitmap to load into the viewport as a background. Supported file formats are TGA, BMP, JPG, PNG and TIFF. Please keep in mind that screen textures cannot be saved with a project or a layout file. Each time you restart RealFlow, the background image has to be applied again.

With this function all scene elements fit into the viewport.

If you want to fit the currently selected node(s) into the viewport, click on this entry.

Centre the select object(s) in the current viewport.

During animation the currently selected node will always be in the viewport’s centre.

This submenu is used to display the currently selected object in one of the following modes: “Bounding Box” is a wireframe box, covering the volume of the object. There are no visible shapes or polygons, even emitters are displayed as simple boxes. In “Wireframe” mode, only the polygon edges are shown and you can still see underlying objects. With “Flat Shaded” the object shows its faces as shaded polygons. The faces of “Smooth Shaded” objects appear even. Higher polygon numbers create better and more accurate results. Particles and non-polygonal nodes cannot be shaded. IDOCs are an exception and they can be shaded like any other polygon object.

 

 

A bounding box is just a box-shaped representation of a node's maximum dimensions. You will not see any particles, vertices, polygons or other structures. The viewport representation will only be changed for the currently selected node.

In wireframe mode, the selected polygonal object is displayed as a transparent grid.

In flat shaded mode you can see the individual polygons of the selected object – the surface looks jagged.

With RealFlow's smooth shaded option, the selected object is evenly lit and the shape appears smooth without visible polygons. Fluids are always represented as particles, except in bounding box mode.


 

The mode of operation of these entries is exactly the same as described above, but here all nodes of the scene will be affected.

With this function it is possible to show the inside of objects when their normals are inverted.

RealFlow also supports a textured view and draws an object’s texture based on its UV coordinates.

This menu contains a list with all of RealFlow's node types and you can choose which elements you want to display or hide in the viewport simply by checking or unchecking the desired entries.

 

 

To hide or show the viewport grid, please choose this option.

By default all available node types are visible in the viewport. Uncheck an entry to hide a node type.

When a node or scene element is selected it is highlighted and displayed with a bright green colour to separate it from the other nodes. In some cases, this highlight effect is not desired and can be confusing. A very good example where “Selection Highlighting” will be switched off is most probably (interactive) meshing: when a mesh is not highlighted you will have a much better view of its polygon structure. It will also be easier to evaluate its quality and recognize subtle changes during the meshing process.

You can change the current viewport view to “Top View”, “Front view”, “Side View”, “Perspective View”, and "Camera View". If you want to use a camera (“look through it”), it is also possible to drag the camera node from the “Nodes” panel to the viewport. Then, the perspective will be changed to the camera's view.