The Scene Tab

The Scene Tab allows customization of the currently active scene's drawing options. The Scene Tab will be blank until you open a scene from the Project Tab using the View command.

Each scene maintains a tree-style list of the objects it contains as well as the graphical settings for those objects. Upon first opening a scene and selecting the scene tab, the scene itself will be selected in the tree structure and the Lights properties of that scene will be visible. To modify the graphical properties of an object, select that object from the tree list and the properties panel will update to show the current properties for that item.

There are five types of graphical properties that an object can have:

1. Lights (which only the scene object has)
2. Vertex
3. Edge
4. Face
5. Text

If an object has more than one of these properties, then they will be arranged in a tabbed notebook style similar to how the Project Manager is organized. Aside from Lights properties, there exist two modes for each property type:

1. Static
2. Dynamic

These relate to the two different types of drawing modes that the Point Cloud Viewer operates in.

Light Properties

Lighting can be used to help enhance the visibility of changes in a surface that might be too minor to detect in certain color modes. Keep in mind that enabling lighting will sacrifice performance for this increased image clarity. There are two parts to the lighting functionality, the directional light and the ambient light.

Directional Light

Light Intensity	Controls the intensity of the directional light, which is a light, positioned to simulate the effect of a distant light source like the sun.
Azimuth Angle	Controls the angle of the directional light source with respect to the z axis.
Elevation Angle	Controls the angle of the directional light source with respect to the xy plane.

Ambient Light

Ambient Intensity

Controls the intensity of the ambient lighting, which is the base light level that affects everything regardless of the surface normal.

Vertex, Edge, and Face Properties

Vertex, Edge, and Face properties control how an object's vertex, edge, and face elements will be drawn. The visibility of these elements can be toggled with the Show checkbox, and their size can be modified in the Size text box. There is an additional Show Front and Show Back options for edges and faces that pertain specifically to drawing edges or faces that face towards the mesh's normal or away from the meshes normal (usually the positive z axis). The Single radio button allows you to give the edges/vertices of the currently selected object a solid color, instead of whatever coloring mode you might already have applied to the object. The new color can then be specified by clicking on the Color button. The Smooth option in the performance panel tells whether to enable antialiasing on the vertices or edges to make them look smoother at the cost of performance.

Text Properties

The Text properties page controls how the viewer will draw an object's text elements. It contains similar controls to the Vertex, Edge, and Face controls, but also has a couple options that pertain specifically to the text's alignment. Changing the alignment will not change the origin of the text, merely how the text is displayed in relation to that origin. Additionally, some objects can have several text elements, so you will have to specify which text attribute you want to modify in the Attribute drop down box.

Region Selection

The ability to hide regions of a scene can be performed by:

1. Choosing a selection in the Point Cloud Viewer (or by using the Selection Set commands under the Action tab),
   
2. Click on the Cloud in use under Current Scene and click on the button "New Region From Selection". This will create a region that can be temporarily hidden from this Scene or reselected at a later point in time.

Note: This option is only available when using the 3DTK Engine.

Point Size and Target Frames Per Second

Elevation Colorization Range