Importing Image Planes

Purpose

Adds a new two-dimensional pix image to a modeling window and its camera.

Overview

An image plane belongs to a camera. You use image planes for:

• Rotoscoping - using live action footage in the background to which you can match your Alias models.

• Model Guides-you can set up three orthographic drawings as image planes to use for model building guides. For example, in scenes with particularly heavy objects, you can pre-render the objects you are not working on and use these renders as image planes.

• Sprite Animation-you can animate image planes like 3D models, to give a more detailed look to your wire model.

How to Use

1

Select File > Import > Image plane. The File Requestor is displayed.

2

Click the Show List button to display the list of images you can use.

You can also load a pix file by double-clicking on its icon in the File Lister.

3

Click the filename of the PIX or TIFF image file you want to use as an image plane. If you prefer, you can type the filename and/or the path in full, without selecting anything in the File Lister.

The filename and its UNIX path appear in the Alias File Requestor.

4

Click the Load Image button.

The image plane is displayed in a default position and attached to the camera in the current window.

Image Plane Options

To view or change the Image plane options, select File > Import > Image plane- to display the New Image Plane Options window.

You can set four of the more common image plane parameters in this option window.

For information, see the section on the Camera Editor in the Rendering in Alias manual.

When you have read a pix image into a window, you can refine these and other image plane parameters in the Camera Editor.

For information on display mode, see the Rendering in Alias manual.

Display Mode

Defines how you want the image to appear in the modeling windows.

• RGB is for RGB mode

• Box is for Outline mode

Depth Type

Determines which image planes appear in front of each other and/or the wireframe model.

This setting is Off or Priority.

When set to Priority, a slider is also displayed, which determines which image planes appear in front of each other and/or the wireframe model.

The order in which image planes get drawn is:

1. Image planes with Depth Type set to Off.

2. Image planes with Depth Type set to Priority and Depth values less than or equal to 0.0, from lowest to highest depth.

3. The wireframe model.

4. Image planes with Depth Type set to Priority and Depth values greater than 0.0, from lowest to highest depth.

Crop to Window

If toggled ON (indicated by a check mark), the image is cropped to fit in the selected window. By default, this toggle is turned OFF .

Notes

For information on the camera editor, see Rendering in Alias manual.

• All of the above options can be changed or refined using the camera editor once the image plane has been loaded.

See Displaying and Hiding Image Planes on page 305.

• To remove an image plane, use Delete > Del image planes.