Working in Artlantis R

Working in Artlantis R is a real pleasure. The application's interface is so well designed that you can't get lost. The essential features are revealed in a primary controls palette which contains five distinct areas: Shaders, Lights, Heliodons, Objects and Perspectives. (see image 03).

03 - Primary Control Palettes - click for larger view

Most of these palettes contain an Advanced section which is not flipped open by default. This makes the application even friendlier to use and less daunting and helps you immediately get down to the essential task at hand.

Once you have your model in Artlantis R and begin navigating the 3D space, you will likely want to test out applying shader textures to it. This is where Artlantis R really shines. From the Catalog palette below, you navigate directories of folders which contain shaders and objects. Drag a shader into the 3D window and directly drop them on surfaces. The surface then automatically updates itself in real-time and applies the attributes of the shader. (see image 04).

04 - Applying shader to wall

Once you have applied your shaders to objects you can further explore these details in the Shader palette. (see image 05 below). Here you can view that particular shaders are assigned to Artlantis Materials, which were defined by your modeling application. In this case, VectorWorks classes organized the 3d model into items such as wall, glass-door, frame, et cetera.

You can do fairly advanced editing to particular shaders in both the Advanced drop-down window and the Edit palette (see Edit button).

05 - Shader Palette in Detail

Navigation in Artlantis R takes place in a very well designed 2D View window. What works exceptionally well about it is that it presents your model in clear graphic terms and provides the user with easy to recognize and control "view cones" and light diagrammatic controls. It is possible to adjust the line spot light controls by dragging on the conical graphic's control points in addition to numerical input. Changes reveal themselves in real-time in the interactive renderer window. (see image 06).

06 - Navigation via 2D View Window

What doesn't work as well as it could are the tools above this window. There is no Cursor tool. Instead the cursor tool is the default and when you select a tool and use it once it goes back to the cursor tool. This should be corrected because often you need to use the Zoom tool several different times in a row to zoom into the area you are looking at. The change view changes the orientation from plan and side views, enabling you to accurately position items by clicking and dragging.

Next: Rendering in Artlantis R

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