Display Style

Surfaces, Point Clouds, Triangulated Meshes, Cylinders, Shapes and Imported Surfaces can display in different styles.  That is controlled by the associated Display Style drop down controls for the various items.

For Surfaces, Meshes, Shapes and Cylinders, the options are:

Single Color - Displays the Surface using solid faces in the diffuse color of their assigned Material.

Wire Frame - Displays the edges of the triangles defining the Surface in the diffuse color of the Surfaces material.

Dots - Displays the corner points of the triangles defining the Surface in the diffuse color of the Surfaces material.

Fast Textures - Displays the surfaces as solid faces in the diffuse color of the Surfaces Material.  If the Material is photo-textured the corresponding area of a photograph(s) assigned to the Material will be mapped to the surface.

Quality Textures - As with fast textures, displays the Surfaces as solid textured faces.  With this setting the texture quality will be improved by accounting for perspective correction and object occlusion.  These textures will take longer to calculate and will only update when the 'Update' button is pressed.

Color from Height - Colorizes the pixels in the surface texture based on its Z axis offset height.

Color from Photo Overlap - Colorizes the pixels based on the number of photos that each pixel projects onto and faces.

Note: By default, the backsides of surfaces will display in a darker/unlit material.  To increase the speed of 3D rotation when lots of surfaces are displayed this can be turned off on the preferences dialog.

Pressing “Update Textures” will cause the quality textures to be recomputed.  See also 3D View Options - Notes.

The Special Surface Render Mode setting controls whether a wireframe overlay is shown over the shaded surfaces, or whether a hidden line wireframe rendering is displayed.

For Point Clouds (only shown for PhotoModeler Premium), the options are:

Single Color - Displays the Surface using solid faces in the diffuse color of their assigned Material.

Color from Photo – Displays the point cloud points photo textured (note that the material assigned to the Cloud/Mesh must be a photo texture material).

Color from Height – When “Colorize from height” option is selected, point clouds will be colored based on the Z offset of each point.  A ‘key’ is also shown at the edge of the 3D Viewer display showing the height values in the color range.  To set up your coordinate system and establish your Z axis, see Setting Rotation.

For Points, the options are:

Single Color - Displays the Surface using solid faces in the diffuse color of their assigned Material.

Color from Photo – Displays the point clouds points photo textured (note that the material assigned to the points must be a photo texture material.).

Texture Size

These control the size of the texture map created for ‘Fast’ and ‘Quality’ texture display.  The higher the texture size, the better the display quality, though higher processing times and slower navigation could result.   See also Preferences - 3D Viewer.

Set Special Render mode

Select whether to overlay the wireframe display over the sold or textured display. Using the ‘Wireframe, hide obscured lines’ setting will display the wireframe model without transparency.

Color by height range

Set the range to use for the false coloring of the surface. Press Calc to automatically calculate the vertical extents of the model and set the min/max accordingly.