SDL File Roadmap

This is a roadmap of an SDL file. Every item that can be included is shown here, but if your model does not use any of these features they should not appear in the SDL file.

An SDL file is divided into three sections: DEFINITION, ENVIRONMENT, andMODEL. The sections are preceded by section titles, which are entered on a line in all caps with no punctuation.

The camera is listed last in this example layout, but it may appear anywhere in the MODEL section, and there can be more than one camera. Note that the camera object contains the mask, depth_file, and pix file name specifications.

DEFINITION Section

• system variables (for example, aalevel, frame range, ray tracing levels)
• animation curves (motion paths and timing curves)
• camera view variable(s)
• light definitions
• shader and texture definitions
• trim curve definitions
• patch and face definitions (note: text is now represented as faces)

ENVIRONMENT Section

• background type (file, ramp, color, procedural, none)
• fog specification

MODEL Section

• instances and transformations (the building blocks of a model)
• camera(s) (contains output image file name)