illuminated_lines
Display of Illuminated Lines using texture mapped illumination model on polylines with line halo and animation effects.
Prerequisites
This module requires OpenGL rendering to be selected. This module utilizes special OpenGL calls to implement the illuminated line technique. If this module is used with another renderer, such as the software renderer or the output_images module (not set to Automatic), lines will be drawn in the default mode with illuminated line features disabled.
This module requires the input mesh to contain one Polyline cell set. Any other type of cell set will be rejected, and any additional cell sets will be ignored. Any scalar node data may be present, or none for purely geometric display.
Animation Effects
Ramped/Stepped This choice selects the style of effect variation. Stair creates a linearly increasing or decreasing value, while step makes a binary chop effect. In Ramped mode, the blending can be selected to start small then get big, or the reverse or both. The values are down, up, up&down respectively. Stepped causes abrupt changes in effect.
AnimatedLength This slider sets the length of the effect along the polyline.
AnimationSpacing This slider sets the spacing between effects along the line.
ModulateOpacity In this mode the line segment varies in transparency from completely transparent to opaque.
ModulateWidth In this mode the line width is varied between 1 (very thin) to fat, based on the effect modes and shape controls.
Reverse Effect As the animation effect is applied between two zones, such as the dash and the space between the dash, this toggle reverses the area where the effect is applied.
Halo Parameters
Halo Width The width control for the halo effect defines the size of the transparent mask region added to the edge of each line. A value of zero turns off the halo effect.
Illuminated Lines Shading Model
AmbientLighting This value provides a base shadow value, a constant added to all shading values.
DiffuseLighting Pure diffuse reflection term, amount of shading dependent on light angle
SpecularHighlights Amount of specular reflection hi-lights based on light and viewer angle
Specular Focus Tightness of specular reflection, low values are dull, wide reflections, high values are small spot reflections.
Line Width Controls line width. Normal 1-pixel lines are 1, can be increased in whole increments. Wide lines are drawn in 2D screen space, not full 3D ribbons. If you want full ribbons, use streamline module ribbon mode.
Line Opacity Variable transparency of all lines. A value of 1.0 is fully opaque, while a value of zero makes lines invisible.
DataColor Blending If node data is present, this controls the relative mix of data color and shading color. A value of zero sets full contribution of data color, while at 1.0 no data color is used and the line shade is dominated by illumination effects.
Smooth Shading This enables an additional interpolation mode for blended node data colors. In the off state, data is sampled once per line segment. When enabled, linear interpolation is used between end points of each segment. This can be helpful if large gradients are present on low resolution polylines.
Antialias This effect, sometimes called “smooth lines” blends the drawing of lines to create a smooth effect, reducing the effects of “jaggies” at pixel resolution.
Sort Trans This mode assists visual quality when transparency or antialiasing modes are used, helping to reduce artifacts caused by non-depth sorted line crossings.
