3D Scene

Method #

This node generates a self contained node tree from the meshes, lights, and cameras, within an external resource which has been imported from one of the valid scene file formats.

The supported formats are:

• LightWave (.LWO)
• Cinema4D (.C4D)
• FBX (.FBX)
• Alembic (.ABC)

When a valid scene resource is set, sub-nodes are created for each node imported from the original scene - such as objects, lights, cameras, bones or transform nodes - and linked together as they appear in the original scene’s hierarchy. This allows complex scenes with skins, skeletons and hierarchical animation to work properly. These sub-nodes may not be deleted, their linkages may not be changed and some of their parameters, such as transforms, can not be edited - they are representations of elements loaded from the imported scene file. However other nodes from outside of the imported scene may be connected to them.

In Notch, animation playback is framerate independent; there is no “frame rate”, and animations are interpolated accurately at any given time point. In some 3D packages, however, time is locked to a certain frame rate and there is no sub-frame interpolation of animations: the playback time is always quantised to a division based on the frame rate. This difference in behaviours can lead to errors in animation playback, when interpolations occur that were not intended - e.g. rotation going full circle when interpolating between values at two discrete frames. To resolve this issue the Lock to Frame Rate parameter may be used to force playback times to be quantised to divisions of a given frame rate as in the 3D package that authored the animation.

The outputs from this node are primarily transformation, but the internal nodes may be able to output their mesh data, lighting data, or camera data, if the object exists within the resource.

Parameters

Inputs