Assets

Relevant tutorials

• t_assets.mlx

The livescript contain many examples of reading and modifying the assets in a scene.

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ISET3d represents graphics assets (e.g., cars, buildings, bikes, lights) in a matlab tree structure. The asset tree is stored within the rendering recipe in the slot thisR.assets.

Certain tree nodes contain information about object shapes and materials (object nodes); other nodes contain information about the transformations that position, rotate, and scale these objects (branch nodes). The object nodes are leaves of the tree, the branch nodes are, well, branches.

Simple objects might be a single object node. Some more complex objects, say a car or a building, might be defined by several object nodes. The Parent node of these object nodes is a branch node. The tree organization can be as simple as a single object node and single branch. Or, a car may have multiple nodes that all share one branch node. Or, each car part may have its own branch node, and then another node will be the parent to each of those.

( Good place for a picture)

Asset management

Methods for managing the assets in the @tree class are integrated into the ISET3d software. In general, you will be able to manage the material properties and transformations of an object using @recipe.set commands. These commands adjust the parameters in the objet node itself or in the branch nodes above the object that control its position, orientation, and size.

Many objects can have the same material - think of the pieces in a chess set. The material representations are stored in a separate slot within the recipe (thisR.materials). We store the material name in the object node. To change the material properties of an object, we find the name of its material (stored in the object node) and adjust the material representation (stored in thisR.materials).

Visualizing the asset tree

You can see all of the asset data slots and asset methods by typing thisR.assets. There are many methods and properties. To visualize the tree, it is helpful to use these commands

thisR.show('objects');
thisR.show;
thisR.assets.print;

The first method prints out a list of the shapes, their positions, and properties. The second method opens up an interactive window that you can use to see the tree organization. Clicking on nodes in that window will print the node values into the command window. The third method prints a tree representation in the command window.

On to Asset trees.