Picture (1) shows what the MagicLight user interface looks like. At the top is a menu and a toolbar with buttons
and some other widgets. On the right side is a shutter box, a shutter box is and easy way to swith between different
widget sets. MagicLight has three different shutters, hierarchy, modifiers and properties. At the bottom
of the windows is the status bar.
In the 3D window there is a View locator and an Object locator. these two objects are the simplest way
of changing the camera position and moving around objects.
(1) The MagicLight user interface
(2) The toolbar components
All buttons have tooltips, place the mouse cursor over a button for a short while and a small window
will popup with a description of the buttons function. Most objects in the model view also has
tooltips, for example when you place the mouse cursor over one of the arrows of a locator, a tooltip
will popup telling you what happens when you drag.
The upper toolbar components are:
1 - Select camera mode, the scene is viewed from the camera position
2 - Select left mode, the scene is viewed from left, along the X axis
3 - Select top mode, the scene is viewed from the top, along the Y axis
4 - Select front mode, the scene is viewed from the front, along the Z axis
5 - Select right mode, the scene is viewed from right, along the X axis
6 - Select bottom mode, the scene is viewed from the bottom, along the Y axis
7 - Select back mode, the scene is viewed from the back, along the Z axis
8 - Select prarallel mode, no perspective perspective correction is done
9 - Select perspective mode
10 - Hide all grids
11 - Show grid on X axis
12 - Show grid on Y axis
13 - Show grid on Z axis
14 - Show all objects in scene
15 - Hide all object in scene
16 - Hide all unselected objects in scene
17 - Show the view and object locators
18 - Hide the view and object locator
19 - Material
20 - Clear selection, no objects will be selected after a click here
21 - Select object mode, you transform the object
22 - Select control point mode, you transform the object control points, if any
23 - Wire frame mode
24 - Flat shade mode
25 - Smooth shade mode
And the lower toolbar components are:
1 - This is the 3d cursor position
2 - Enable/disable X movement (not in camera mode)
3 - Enable/disable Y movement (not in camera mode)
4 - Enable/disable Z movement (not in camera mode)
5 - Select X movement in camera mode
6 - Select Y movement in camera mode
7 - Select Z movement in camera mode
8 - Disable snap mode
9 - Enable snap mode
10 - Edit cursor position
These three buttons enabled/disables movent in X,Y or Z direction when the camera mode is orthographic,
a click toggles the button to enabled or disabled.
These three buttons select the axis to move along when the camera mode in perspective mode, a click selects
that axis and disables the others.
Tese two buttons enables/disable the snap function, when snap is on the movement is aligned on a set
interval (change from the settings menu). When snap is off you can move to any position.
These three buttons select the current OpenGL render mode, wireframe, flat shade or smooth shade, please
notice that when using flat shade mode all objects will be flat, even if the smooth flag is set.
These four buttons disables or enables the grid, the first button hides the grid, the other three buttons
select which axis to put the grid on, the size on position of the grid can be changed from the
settings menu.
The shutter box
Click on one of the three titles to active that shutter. They have the following functions:
The hierarchy windows displays a tree structure of the scene, you can insert, delete and modify
objects here. Right click with the mouse to activate the popup menus. Left click on an object
to select it.
The modifier window displays the modifier stack for the current selected object, Right click to
activate the popup menu and left click to select the current modifier.
The properties window displays the properties for the current selected object(s), it also depends
on the current selected modifier. Depending on the property type you can double click or right click
to change it.
The View locator
The view locator is used to modify the camera and view properties. Right click on the locator to
activate the popup menu, from there you can select the mode for the locator. The red arrow represents
the X axis, the green represents the Y axis and the blue represents the Z axis. By default the view
locator is in translate mode, so if you place the mouse cursor over the red (X) axis arrow and drag the
mouse left or right the camera position will change in the X direction. Hold down shift to move four
times faster or hold down ctrl do move four times slower.
The Object locator
The object locator works a lot like the View locator, but it handles the current selection. So if you
place the mouse cursor over the red arrow and drag left or right, then the selected object(s) will move
along the X axis.
If the locators makes it difficult to see the objects then you can turn them off with button (18) and turn
them back on with button (17).
The object locator is always placed in front of the selection, closest to the camera position to make
sure it is always visible.
Selecting objects
You click on an object to select it, any other selected objects will be unselected, to select more then
one object, click on the first object, hold down shift and click on the second object and so on.
You can also select an object or group by clicking on the object in the hierarchy tree view window.
All selected object will have cyan color and all other objects become dark gray, a green bounding box
is placed around the selection and the object locator is attached to one corner of the bounding box.
MagicLight is Copyright (C) 1998 Mikael Aronsson - mikael_aronsson@mail.bip.net or mikael_aronsson@hotmail.com
MagicLight is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License
