Informations about Imagine (Impulse)

Basics

The interface gives you access to 4 editors.

1- The detail editor
In this editor, you have all necessary tool to build your models.
Here, you will be able to set the visual attributes of your objects and create their animation key states.
Fig. 1 : The Detail Editor

2- The stage editor
Here you can set up your stage, your animations keys, place the virtual cameras and lights,.
The animation keys apply on object's position, size, rotation and state.
Special effects can be applyed to an objects (explode, jiggle, particle) or to the globals parameters (toon, solarize, lensflare). Objects, lights and camera can also follow a path.
You have access to the action dialog, where you have an overview of all the objects informations on a linear timeline.
Fig. 2 : The Stage Editor

3- The spline editor
The spline editor is a modelling editor and produces basic chapes, those must be used in the detail editor.
Here you can create flat shapes with splines or truetype font.
Once the shape is finished, you can apply an extrude function and add bevels to the edges.
5 types of bevels are availables, and you can also adjust their size. ( Fig.2, item 2)
Fig. 3 : The Spline Editor

4- The forms editor
The forms editor is a modelling editor and produces basic chapes, those must be refined in the detail editor.
This editor is very useful if you plan to create an abject from many slices.
It will gives you the ability to set key slices, to have symetry constraints and to set profiles in the 3 views.

General interface

In each editor, the main window gives you 1 or 4 view of your workspace.
You have the choice between Top, Front, Right and Pers(pective) view.
You can resize the views, but the sizes are 'linked', so the window is always used at its maximum ( Fig.4).

Fig.4 : the 3 first pictures shows you different way of arranging the 4 views. The last picture shows you the one view layout.

You can acces the tools from menus or toolbars. You can configure and create your own toolbars.
You have also a couple of pop-up menus at your service.
You can change the interface colors and some other features in the preference dialog window ( Fig.5, item 8).
Some tools have visual feedback (portals) ( Fig.5).

Fig 5 : some of the dialog boxes and windows of Imagine

The detail editor have also a object list panel, a texture, map, attribute panels with thumbnails.
Drag&drop the thumbnails to an object name to set its visual attributes.

Modelling

1- shape creation
You have here several type of objects to build your model or scene.
Objects made with triangular faces are used most often.
Each object has its own axis, it will define its position, size and alignment.
You have also real sphere ( that can be converted into a blob object) and infinite ground (plane).
Some special object can be used in animation or in the modelling process : open and closed path, deformation grid.
You can consider a kind of hierarchy for the objects : state/group/objects/faces/edges/points.

You have many ways of building an object : start from a primitive ( Fig.6), create a profile and extrude ( Fig. 5, item 6) or spin it.

Fig.6 : primitives

You can create a mesh from a blob object or simply add point/edges/face to an axis.
Tools are available to edit and deform the object.
Many deform tool have the choice between numeric values and interactive setting (mouse control).
You can move, scale and rotate ( Fig.5, item 4), of course, but also stretch, bend, twist, use a deform grid, or apply a special effect like "Explode" or "Balloon" ( Fig.5, item 5), and many more...

You may optimize your objects with the smoothing function and a "reduce point count" tool ( Fig.5, item 3).
Zmesh is a new function that will create smooth joints between objects ( Fig.7).

Fig.7 : Renders of objects with and without ZMesh.

2- Attributes
The visual aspect of an objects is set in the Attribute dialog.
You can also use drag&drop from the attribute/texture/maps panels to the object list.
You can specify color, specular, reflectifity and transparancy, apply procedurals textures (more than 100 textures available) and maps ( Fig.5, item 1).
Objects can also be lights or volumetric fog.
The textures and the maps have their own axis. They can be applied to the entire object or to a face subgroup. The maps can modify many aspects of the object, color, transparency, reflectivity, altitude(bumpmapping), specularity, brightness, stencil, IOR..... You can use spherical, cylindric or planar mapping.

3- States
States define different sets of data type for an objects : grouping, shape, attributes...
The grouping will remember the relative position of the individual objects in a group.
The shape will remember the points positon of your objects.
You can create an intermediate state, interpolated between 2 others.
In animation, you can easily create morphing sequences.

Staging

1- Lights
Lights have many properties : cast shadow, falloff, intensity, color, shape...
You can apply light textures and use maps.
Lights build in the detail editor can cast soft shadows.

2- Camera
The camera can be static, follow a path or have its own key-positions.
The camera alignment can be defined to follow another object or a path.
The focal length of the camera can be modified.
You can add a depth of field or if you want.
Of course, you can animate all those settings.

3- Objects
Objects made in detail editor are loaded and arranged to build the scene.
Up to 4 special effects can be added to each object : jiggle, balloon, spike, explode, shredder, particle... You can associate several objects to move together, set key frames for position, size, alignment and state.

4- Other
There is a "global" virtual actor which defines the colors of the sky, the stars, ambient light, fog density and color, backdrop.
The global actor has its own effects : toon, lensflare, contrast, melt ...
You can also add axis to be used as pivot, camera target or reference point.

5- Actor Dialog
In this window, you have a timeline with all the keyframes displayed.
You see each object with its name, layer number and keyframe as colored bars.
The special effects are added here.

Generated pictures

The render modes are : Black/white Wire; Black/white Shade; Color Wire; Color Shade; Scanline; Trace. Scanline and trace gives the best results, other modes are fast and useful to fine tune animation sequences.
The frames are saved as single pictures or as AVI animation file.
The most important picture file formats available are : BMP, TGA, TIFF, JPEG, PNG, PCX, PSD.
You can also render pictures with an alpha channel, in 32 bits.