scene

Scene Files

G3D scene files are specified using the .Any format. This readme doesn't fully document the scene.Any file, but does provide some useful tips for experiment developers interested in editing the scene.

Scene files specify the following aspects of the in-game experience:

• Scene geometry (including player geometry), skybox, and lighting
• Initial player postion and heading
• Simple world-space physics (gravity and minHeight for respawn)
• Camera settings and rendering parameters

Player Position and Heading

One set of parameters controlled from within the scene.Any file is the initial spawn location and heading of the player. These are specified using the frame and heading fields of the PlayerEntity.

• frame can be specified either as a full CFrame or as a position using a Point3 type. If the frame is specified as a CFrame the rotation will be ignored in favor of heading as specified below
• heading is a float specifying the distance to rotate from the "initial" position (in radians, counter clockwise, specified in the range 0-2π)
• model is a pointer to a 3D model type for the player specified elsewhere in the scene.Any file
• collisionSphere is a Sphere specified as a radius (in meters) for the geometry to use to detect collisions

In addition the size of the sphere used for collision detection can also be set using the collisionSphere parameter.

An example player declaration (from the top-level of a scene.Any file) is included below for reference:

player = PlayerEntity { 
            frame = Point3(47.523, -2.3398, -0.35916); 
            heading = 86.4005; 
            model = "playerModel";
            collisionSphere = Sphere(1.5); 
        }; 

Scene Physics

There are currently only 2 "physics" parameters available for control in the scene file. These are specified under a Physics parameter at the top-level of the file.

• minHeight specifies the height (in meters) below which the player is respawned at the initial position
• gravity specifies the acceleration (in meters/second^2) experienced by the player in the scene

An example specification is provided below:

Physics = {
    minHeight = -10,
    gravity = 9.8
}

Naming Conventions

The default scene filenaming convention is [scene name].scene.Any.

A scene's name in G3D is not (necessarily) it's filename. Instead the name field from the top-level of the scene specifies what it will be referred to as in G3D.

Scene files are heirachically organized based upon matches in the start of their name strings. For example a scene where name = "Test Scene #1" and a scene where name = "Test Scene #2" will (in G3D supported menus) be automatically grouped together under the title Test Scene as sub-items #1 and #2.

File Organization

Our project adopts the G3D convention of a scene directory. Convention is to store only the [filename].scene.Any file(s) in the scene directory while storing any affiliated models in the nearby model directory.

The scene.Any file typical refers to its models using a path of model/[modelname]/ from the data directory.