Important: The VRML editing capabilities of VRweb have not been thoroughly tested and are not fully stable yet. Do not make us responsible for lost work after a program crash. Save/backup your scenes frequently.
These two help files should give you a short outline of VRweb's edit features. A detailed user guide shall be available as part of Alexander Nußbaumer's master thesis.
On viewing a scene, switch to edit mode by selecting the edit item in the File menu or with the accelerator key ctrl-e. This prepares the scene for editing and changes a few browser behaviours (noted where appropriate). Hit ctrl-e again to switch back to the "normal" viewing behaviour of VRweb.
... Or select item new in the File menu to start editing a scene from scratch.
Being in edit mode the menubar shows an additional Edit menu. It contains toggles for object manipulation, display of the edit toolbar, and the constraint mode. It also lets you undo manipulations and manipulate the scene with cut/copy/paste/delete operations. Finally it contains items to launch the individual edit dialogs, which is also possible via the buttons of the edit toolbar (no icons yet, sorry).
Save the edited scene with the Save (accelerator key F2, using the filename specified last time) or the Save As item (accelerator key ctrl-F2 or meta-F2, specifying a new file name) of the File menu. (If you save a scene loaded without editing or when saving a scene the first time, you will always be prompted for a file name.) A "*" appended to VRML in the status line indicates that your scene currently has unsaved changes.
Before switching to edit mode, save (and save as) write a copy of the original input file. Save operations during editing write the internal data structure, which is re-formatted and has any comments stripped. No backup copies of older file versions are made.
Select an object for manipulation with a single click (any mouse button; you have to use shift-click with the left mouse button when you are not in editing mode). Deselect by clicking outside any object or using the Deselect Object/Group item in the View menu.
For selecting related objects of the scene (see also Structure Viewer) use the items Select Parent, Child, Previous, Next in Menu View or the corresponding accelerator keys -, +, space, backspace (you must already have selected any object).
You may bring the selected object in view by using View Selection or view the whole scene with the View World function (menu View). The accelerator keys are s and w respectively. See also viewpoint control.
In the toolbar an additional toggle button shows up during edit mode, which lets you toggle between object manipulation and camera navigation for viewing. You can also use the according item in the Edit menu or the accelerator key ctrl-o.
When object manipultation is on, you can translate, rotate, and scale the selected object by dragging with one of the mouse buttons:
| translation | |
|---|---|
| drag left | translate object (two axis) |
| ctrl+left | translate along single axis |
| shift+ctrl+left | translate along orthogonal axis |
| rotation | |
| drag middle | rotate object (two axis) |
| ctrl+middle | rotate around single axis |
| shift+ctrl+middle | rotate around orthogonal axis |
| scaling | |
| drag right | scale object uniformly |
| ctrl+right | scale object in a single direction |
| shift+ctrl+right | scale object in orthogonal direction |
You get a feedback about active axis (drawn in red). Scaling and orthogonal transformations are not related to the object alignment on screen (move the mouse along the red line(s)). Axis selection may be more intuitive when the object's coordinate system is roughly aligned with your current view. Toggle object manipulation (ctrl-o) for adjusting the camera view for easier manipulation.
Accurate setting of transformation values is possible with the Transform Editor. Known bug: changes made inside WWWInline nodes can not be saved.
A number of object manipulation steps is undo-able; accelerator key ^z or F12. The undo facility also keeps track of the selected object (you can still undo object manipulations after selecting a different object). Warning: currently no other editing operations are undo-able; moreover, each operation that modifies the scene graph (see copy and paste below) will clear the undo-stack.
By default, VRweb constraints translation and scaling operations, such that the object does not penetrate other objects. Thus you may e.g. place a glass on a table or a poster on a wall.
For free object manipulation deactivate this feature in the Edit menu.
You can logically regroup the objects of your scene using the copy and paste operations, which are accessible via the Edit menu or in the Structure Viewer. First select a geometric object to be manipulated by clicking it in the scene or in the Structure Viewer.
Selecting Delete deletes the object. With Cut and Copy you move or copy the object into the paste buffer, from where it is copied back into the scene using Paste. The copies are made via references (DEF/USE in VRML terms), not physically.
Warning: The copy and paste operations are not undo-able and contain not yet located bugs, which may crash the editor. Use them with care.
See part 2.
The VRweb editor functions have been programmed by Alexander Nußbaumer. This documentation was written by Michael Pichler.
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