Getting Started

The User Interface

Getting an overview of the user interface

We keep Tooll's user interface as simple and straight forward as possible. In most cases you'll only work with the following 5 views: Workspace & Timeline, Parameter-View, the Selection Views, Console and Library View.

Above is a screenshot of a Tooll with a normal layout, featuring the following interface-elements:

1. ''Operator Workspace'' with the timeline.
2. ''Parameter View'' with Operator-Name, Parameters, Documentation and Presets
3. ''Selection Views''
4. ''Library View''
5. ''Console View''
6. ''Color-Picker''

There are more utility-views for special use-cases like performance analysis. But you will them rarely use them, if at all. All these ''views'' are dockable panels that can be freely rearranged into layouts and saved to make them easily accessible with functions keys F1, F2, etc.

The Operator-Workspace

Everything you build with tooll.io will be structured as nested ''Operators''. Quarz Composer and VVVV call them ''patches''. Nuke calls them ''Nodes''. But the concept is virtually the same.

The workspace shows the ''Operator'' that you're current editing. It can either be made up of other Operators or made with c# code. The ''breadcrumb-path'' above of the workspace-view shows the name and path of the current Operator, starting with your personal ''Home''-Operator all the way down the one you're currently editing.

At the bottom of the workspace are the ''inputs'' (also known as parameters), top the ''outputs''.

There are several methods to add new Operators to the Operator shown in the workspace:

1. Dragging Operators from ''Library'' onto the ''Workspace''.
2. Pressing [Tab] to open the QuickCreate-Window
3. Copy and Pasting Operators

Let's add a Cube:

1. Click on the workspace background to set the focus.
2. Press the [Tab]-key to open the ''Quick Create Window''.
3. Type [C] [U] [B] to search for ''Operators'' related to cubes (Hint: typing "cbe" would also work).
4. Press the [Return]-key to create the cube.

Parameter View

The ''Parameter View'' shows to property of the selected ''Operator''. It has the following areas:

1. the Operator's-namespace
2. the original name of Operator-definition
3. name of the Operator instance, if it has been renamed
4. Parameters
5. Operator documentation
6. Parameter presets

Manipulating Parameters

The central element are the Parameters for which there are many ways to manipulate them. By default the values of parameters are grayed out to indicate that they are having their default values. To change the values you can:

1. Click and drag values horizontally. You can hold [ALT] or [CTRL] modifier keys to increase or decrease precisiong
2. Roll the mouse-wheel above a value
3. Click and drag a the name of a ''Parameter Group' to adjust all values of a parameter group
4. Click on color-thumbnail to manipulate the color in the color-picker
5. [CTRL+Click] a value or a parameter group to reset its values.

Important: All default values of all operator-instances are updated if the default-value is changed for Operator-Definition. This can come in very handy. But it can also lead to problems if you accidentally set the default values of frequently used Operator definitions.

You can also open a parameter-group to manipulate it's individual values, animate parameters which keyframes or connect them to the output of other Operators. See section Animating Parameters more details.

Operator Name and Namespace

Most of the time you will be dealing with ''Instance'' of ''Operator-Definitions''. If the definition changes, all instances are automatically updated. We already mentioned this when talking about default-values of parameters.

You find the ''Name'' and ''Namespace'' of an selected Operator at the top of the ''Parameter View''. They can be edited by clicking them.

Naming Operator-Instances

However, most of the time you want to rename the ''Operator-Definitions'' but the ''instances'' you added to the workspace. Just click the "click to rename" and enter a title. This can make your graphs much more readable.

We suggest to rename Groups and Transforms for which we suggest a "+" and ">>" prefix.

Operators from the core .lib

The Operators in lib. provide a pool of common building blocks that are shared by many projects. In the workspace, they are rendered with a thin font and you'll get a warning dialog, before modifying them.

Most of the lib.-Operators are tested through visual unit-tests that are likely to fail when Operators are broken. You can use the ''Library View'' to get an overview:

Library View and Namespace

Everything you create with tooll will be operators that include other operators. Internally, these Operators are stored in a database that isn't optimized for human readability.

To present the available Operators in consumable structure, we use the namespace to structure operators into folders and sub-folders, and eventually build up a library:

The main-folders are:

• lib. - collection of more or less stable operators that can be reused by projects

• lib.3d.

• lib.image.

• ...

• projects. - a list of all projects. See [Structuring your Projects]

• users.

• users.pixtur.

• users.cynic.

• users.<your-name>.

  • ...

Right now, we don't enforce this rigid structure, but this likely to change in the near future: Write access will be restricted to projects for which you belong to the team and your personal home-space and users.<your_name>..

Working with Selection Views

Locking Selections Views views to make them "sticky"

As the name suggests, the selection view render what is being selected in the Workspace View. The initial view-layout has two of them, because when working procedural content, you want to see the impact of your parameter-modifications on the final result.

To do this, you can "make views sticky":

1. Select a top Operator of a graph
2. In the top Selection View enable the "Lock" checkbox
3. Select an Operator further down the graph
4. Modify it's properties

-> You can observe the final result immediately in the locked Select View

Navigating inside 3D-views

The easiest way to navigate inside 3d-views is by pressing the left-mouse-key to look around while using the keys [W], [A], [S], [D] to move the camera position. You can also fly up and down with the keys [E] and [X].

If you connect Space-Navigator you can use this to adjust the camera-position very intuitively.

For very small or extremely large scenes, you can adjust speed of the camera-movement in config/ProjectSettings.json file.

Please note: Right now you can't select or manipulate objects in the Selection Views. This feature is very high on our todo-list and is likely to come with a future version of Tooll. To move objects you have to use [Transform] Operators and adjust their .Translate parameters.

Using 3d-Gizmos and Helpers

If you enable the [Grid] button in the top right corner of a selection view, the world space grid is shown. This is very helpful for navigating inside 3d-space. Additionally all Operators that support Gizmos render their helper Geometry: [PointLight] and [Scatter] are good examples for these.

The helper geometries will not show up in the final exported output, unless you explicitly enable them.