Release Notes MicroImages, Inc. TNT-Products V. 6.8

Sun Position and Shading.
RELEASE OF RV6.8 TNT PRODUCTS
During the operation of your geosim you can choose the shading of the faces of solid
shapes. This is controlled by setting the elevation and azimuth of the sun in the Options/Effects
tabbed panel. Your extruded solid shapes will not cast shadows onto the
surface. Thus, if
your texture layer is an image with conspicuous shading effects and
shadows, you may want to position the sun so the shading of your solid polygons (for
example, buildings) matches the illumination direction in the texture layer. This is illustrated
in the attached color plate entitled Extrude Polygons as Solid Shapes in
TNTsim3D.
To p and Side Styles.
Just as in static 3D Views in TNTmips, styles can be defined separately for the polygon
fill (top and bottom of the solid polygon) and for the extruded sides of the solid. The
color styles used for the fill and extruded sides of the polygon are those established for
polygons in the normal fashion in TNTmips. Unlike a 3D View, you cannot use bitmap
pattern or hatch pattern fills. These fills do not scale up or down as you interactively
move closer or farther from that solid in your geosim, so TNTsim3D does not render
them. Although the same fill style is used for the top and bottom of your extruded polygons,
their rendered colors will usually differ because of the illumination and shading effects
in TNTsim3D.
Multilayered
Solids.
The side styles for solid polygons can be set up in TNTmips to display a stack of differently-colored
vertical segments with each segment having a different color. The attribute
used to extrude the polygons must have multiple records defining the height or
elevation of the top and bottom of the stack and of the boundaries between the segments.
This is also illustrated in the attached color plate entitled Extrude Polygons as
Solid Shapes in TNTsim3D. In this illustration the boundaries between rock units of dif-
ferent ages are used to define the segment boundaries within each solid polygon.
You could also extrude vertically stacked polygons to represent geochemical, soil, water
pollution, or other multiple property assays taken at GPS points. The color of the sides
of the slice could represent each individual constituent’s identity while virtual fields
(computed fields) could be used to determine its assayed amount and, thus, its thickness
in the stack. You can set up virtual fields to compute each layer’s beginning and
ending position in the stack and reuse
this approach each time you collect new samples.
Vertical
Exaggeration.
When you choose to exaggerate the vertical relief of terrains during the operation of
your geosim, the Options/Terrain tabbed panel also provides a toggle to let you exaggerate
the vertical dimension of the solid polygons by the same amount. If your solid
polygons represent buildings, you may want to exaggerate the terrain but not the building
heights. On the other hand, if your solid polygons simply represent map areas with
differing numeric attributes, you may wish to let their relative heights be exaggerated
along with the terrain.
MICROIMAGES MEMO 34
5 MAY 2003