3D Canvas Options
The 3D Canvas Options window provides a number options for configuring how 3D Canvas works and looks. There are five tabs, the Editing Tab, Operations Tab, Plug-Ins Tab, Scripts Tab, and the Miscellaneous Tab.
Editing
General
Object Snap to Interval
When working with objects, their position and size are modified to align with this Snap to Interval. You may disable Snap To by de-selecting the
on the Primary Toolbar.
Point Snap to Interval
When working with points, their position and size are modified to align with this Snap to Interval. You may disable Snap To by de-selecting the
Invert Texture Translucency Layers
Enable this option to invert the texture translucency layers of a texture. You should enable this option if you find that translucent maps are rendering Opaque for Transparent and Transparent as Opaque.
Grid
You may disable the grids from being showed by de-selecting
on the Primary Toolbar.
Origin X
The X position in 3D Space where the grid should originate.
Origin Y
The Y position in 3D Space where the grid should originate.
Origin Z
The Z position in 3D Space where the grid should originate.
Size
The size of the grid.
Interval
The number of world units represented by a single grid interval.
Units
You may select between Meters, Feet and Centimeters as your working unit.
Show Vertical Grids
Should vertical grids be shown? This may be overridden by de-selecting
Show Horizontal Grid
Should the horizontal grid be shown? This may be overridden by de-selecting
Operations
You may disable operations so that they no longer appear on the list of available operations. To disable an operation, click on the check box associated with an operation to clear it. You can re-enable the operation at a later time by re-checking the check box associated with the operation.
Note that some operations provided with 3D Canvas are not commonly used so may not be enabled by default.
Plug-Ins
You may disable plug-ins so that they no longer appear on the list of available plug-ins. To disable a plug-in, click on the check box associated with the plug-in to clear it. You can re-enable the plug-in at a later time by re-checking the check box associated with the plug-in.
Scripts
You may disable scripts so that they no longer appear on the list of available scripts. To disable a script, click on the check box associated with the script to clear it. You can re-enable the script at a later time by re-checking the check box associated with the script.
Miscellaneous
Documents
3D Canvas is provided with a number of objects, textures, and libraries (media) which by default are stored in a folder called "3D Canvas" which is located in your "My Documents" folder. Click the button next to "Documents Folder" to change this default folder. Note that 3D Canvas will copy default versions of the 3D Canvas media to this folder and these newly copied default libraries will become the active libraries. 3D Canvas will not however remove the old folder to ensure that changes that you may have made to the default media will not be lost.
Rendering
You may select between Hardware Rendering or Software Rendering. Hardware acceleration is much faster, and should be chosen. Note that simply because you choose Direct3D HAL, doesn't mean that 3D Canvas will run with 3D Acceleration. If you choose a screen resolution or color depth that is not accelerated, Software Rendering will result. Most older, and some newer, 3D graphics cards do not support 32 bit color depths, so if your desktop is set to 32 bit color (true color), you may not receive any hardware acceleration.
Render Two-Sided Faces
By default 3D Canvas renders only the exterior sides of faces. This is done to improve performance. If you are rendering using a ray tracer you may to enable this two-sided rendering since most ray tracers use two-sided rendering by default.
If you are creating a model for a game you may want to deselect this option to render faces solid on one side and transparent on the other as most games only render single sided faces.Cartoon Rendering Silhouette Width
The width of the cartoon silhouette can be changed with this slider.
Cartoon Rendering Shading Type
You can choose to the shading type for the interior colors of your model. Narrow and Wide have bands of shading whereas None has a single color with no shading.
Clone Translucency
Clones of objects are shown with translucency to differentiate them from the cloned object. This option is used to adjust the amount of clone translucency.