3Delight For Maya 4.0: 3.11 The Coordinate System Node

Short Contents

3.11 The Coordinate System Node

3.11.1 Overview

Coordinate system nodes are used to position and orient an axis system. This defines a space that can then be passed as a parameter to shaders. For instance, a coordinate system node can be used to orient the environment map used by a shader. While the coordinate system is output to RIB, it is not a renderable object. The way it is drawn in the scene view can be changed to allow better positioning; this appearance will not be visible in the rendering.

3.11.2 Drawing

**Figure 3.52**: The Coordinate System Node Drawing Panel

This section presents the possible options that controls how the coordinate system node is drawn in the scene view.

` Draw Method'

This attribute controls the shape used to draw the coordinate system. Available draw methods are:

` Plane': The node is drawn as a vertical 1 x 1 plane.
` Sphere': The node is drawn as a sphere with a radius of 1.
` Cylinder': The node is drawn as a cylinder with a radius of 1 and a height of 1.
` Dome': The node is drawn as a sphere that encloses everything in the scene. The scene bounding sphere is computed every time the Draw Method attribute is set to `Dome'. If this draw method is selected, the following attributes become available: Texture Filename, Texture Opacity and Texture is HDRI.

` Texture Filename'

Specifies the file to be used as a texture for drawing the dome in the scene view. The texture should be a file processed with 3Delight's `tdlmake' utility and will be visible when the coordinate system node is drawn in `Smooth Shade'. This attribute is empty by default.

` Texture Opacity'

Sets the opacity of the dome's texture. If the texture has an alpha channel, the alpha values are multiplied by this value. This attribute is set to 0.75 by default.

` Texture is HDRI'

This attribute indicates to 3Delight For Maya that the selected dome texture should be treated as high dynamic range image. When this attribute is on, texture values are compressed in the visible range, which helps viewing high dynamic range images (HDRI). For low dynamic range (regular) textures, it is best to set this attribute to off, which is the default.

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