Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
114 lines (82 loc) · 5.09 KB

visual_effects.md

File metadata and controls

114 lines (82 loc) · 5.09 KB
Raw
Non-physics objects

Visual Effects

A visual effect in TDW is a specialized object that can be visually rendered but is not physically embodied. Visual effects don't have colliders and won't respond to physics events. Visual effects are "objects" in that they have a position, rotation, and scale, but they aren't standard physically embodied TDW objects, which means that commands such as add_object or teleport_object won't work for a visual effect.

Visual effects include fire, smoke and debris piles representing the burned remains of objects. We will be adding other types of visual effect in the near future.

How to add a visual effect to a scene

Visual effects are stored as asset bundles, just like standard TDW objects.

You can add a visual effect via the add_visual_effect command, or via the wrapper function Controller.get_add_visual_effect(name, effect_id, position, rotation, library):

from tdw.controller import Controller
from tdw.tdw_utils import TDWUtils
from tdw.add_ons.third_person_camera import ThirdPersonCamera
from tdw.add_ons.audio_initializer import AudioInitializer
from tdw.add_ons.image_capture import ImageCapture
from tdw.backend.paths import EXAMPLE_CONTROLLER_OUTPUT_PATH

c = Controller()
camera = ThirdPersonCamera(position={"x": 0.5, "y": 1.6, "z": -4.6},
                           look_at={"x": 0, "y": 0, "z": 0},
                           avatar_id="a")
path = EXAMPLE_CONTROLLER_OUTPUT_PATH.joinpath("visual_effects")
print(f"Images will be saved to: {path}")
capture = ImageCapture(avatar_ids=["a"], path=path)
audio = AudioInitializer()
c.add_ons.extend([camera, capture, audio])
c.communicate([TDWUtils.create_empty_room(12, 12),
               {"$type": "set_screen_size",
                "width": 512,
                "height": 512},
               c.get_add_visual_effect(name="fire",
                                       position={"x": 0, "y": 0, "z": 0},
                                       effect_id=Controller.get_unique_id()),
               c.get_add_visual_effect(name="smoke",
                                       position={"x": 0, "y": 0, "z": 0},
                                       effect_id=Controller.get_unique_id())])
for i in range(200):
    c.communicate([])
c.communicate({"$type": "terminate"})

Result:

Note: The fire and smoke effects don't work on pre-M1 Apple computers.

Audio and the VisualEffectLibrarian

Metadata for visual effects is stored in a VisualEffectLibrarian. Each VisualEffectRecord stores the effect's name, the asset bundle URLs, and whether it includes audio.

To print the names of all visual effects:

from tdw.librarian import VisualEffectLibrarian

lib = VisualEffectLibrarian()
for record in lib.records:
    print(record.name)

In the previous example, the fire visual effect has optional audio, so the controller initializes audio. You can determine whether a visual effect has audio by checking the metadata:

from tdw.librarian import VisualEffectLibrarian

lib = VisualEffectLibrarian()
record = lib.get_record("fire")
print(record.audio)  # True

How to adjust a visual effect

In TDW's backend C# code, visual effects share some common code with line renderers, position markers, and textured quads. However, you can only use visual effect commands:

Next: The FloorplanFlood add-on

Return to the README

Example controllers:

Python API:

Command API: