curved mode?

[jason1025]

In the tools tips

 

Curved mode by selecting an object and hitting c or shift c.

 

I cant find out what it does.

 

Cant find it in the tech ref.

[Rodney]

Jason,

Thanks for reminding us of this. It's been so long I'd forgotten.

 

This was used more back in the days when memory was an issue.

I tend to equate it with 'Proxy' mode.

 

There are three basic views you can have an Object display as in a Chor:

Bound (Only the Bounding Box around the Object will appear)

Vector (Curved Splines are straightened and not computed)

Curve (Default Mode - Displays the full curvature of an Object)

 

The shortcut keys work for each of these Object viewing modes as follows: B=Bound V=Vector C=Curve

Select an Object and toggle through them with B, V and C in the Chor and you'll see them at work.

Technically these are 'Draw Modes'. These are similar to but different than using the Page Up/Page Down buttons to adjust a Model's Resolution. (At a guess I'd say the later is more for graphics cards and the former for CPUs?)

 

One of the benefits is/was that you could have a whole bunch of Objects in Bounding Box or Vector mode while still having the primary Object you are working with remaining in Curve Mode.

 

You can see in the attached the effect of these three modes on the display of Keekat in the Chor:

[Rodney]

In the Tech Ref (page 236) there is a little write up on these as follows:

 

Draw Modes

With the mouse pointer over any window, right-click (Control-click on a Mac) and pick [View][Render Mode] and select one of the options to change the

interface Draw Mode. You want all of the work you do with the software to have a tactile and responsive feel. On a slow Machine, maybe only wireframes are possible for real-time operation. Your choices are "Default" which will use the option you have chosen on the model properties panel, “Wireframe”, “Shaded”, or

“Shaded/Wireframe”. In addition, each object can be “Bound” (shows a box only), “Vector” (straight lines), or “Curved”.

 

If drawing is still too slow, you can also use a feature called “Interrupt Drawing” which allows the speed of the interface to be set at a minimum

quality. This can be set on the “Global” tab of the Options panel by picking [Tools][Options].

 

You can also speed up drawing while in Shaded mode by lowering your “Polygons per patch” on the “Rendering” tab on the Options Panel.

Perspective Draw Mode allows you to view an object or scene in much the same way you would through a camera except turn and move

and zoom functions are not available. (See camera navigation for more details.) This option is available in addition to shaded or wireframe modes.

 

Note that these drawing modes are still quite useful especially if/when animating and real time response times seem to slow down. Also, some objects can still be easily animated via Bound mode. For instance, vehicles or aircraft that are constrained to a path.

 

As far as I know A:M will ignore this setting on final rendering and will render full curves regardless of what has been set as Draw mode in the Chor.

[robcat2075]

Note that "Bounding box" is broken in v16, but fixed in v17. It should draw a box for each bone of a model.

 

Th correct behavior for Curved, Vector and Bounding box is like this:

 

 

 

As Rodney noted, Bounding box is very fast to draw. I find it useful for previewing character motion at full frame rates.

[Gerry]

Hey, that's handy!

[jason1025]

Thanks folks.

[Rodney]

Thanks Robert. I was questioning my memory on whether the Bounding Box was always empty like that but thought I'd just forgotten how it worked!

 

Seeing your example and now knowing this will be fixed in v17 convinces me I should take full advantage of this feature and use it!