The cube geometry, as left from the Modelling tutorial, is not suitable for display in Quel Solaar just yet. This is for several reasons:
 | No object node. Geometry created from Loq Airou is in the form of "unparented" geometry nodes; we need to create an object node and link it to the geometry in order to create a true object in the scene. |
| No material. Objects should have proper materials. |
| No light source. Quel Solaar does real-time shadowing; it needs at least one light source to properly compute the shadows. |
| No ground plane. It is useful if there is a surface on which the shadow can be cast. |
Below, we will use Connector to address these issues, and finally run Quel Solaar on the finished scene.
Creating the Object Node
Start the Connector application. A new window will open, showing Connector's intro sequence. Click the mouse button to skip the intro, which leaves you with the Connection interface shown here. Enter the IP address (or DNS name, if applicable) of the Verse server computer, and click OK.
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Once connected, you will end up with a mostly white screen. Click it once, to toggle Connector into showing the node list. This screen has a row of node type icons across the screen from left to right, close to the top. The actual instances of each type of node form columns under each.
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Now, since our goal is to create a new object node, click once with the left mouse button on the top circle below the "Object" text, the circle that has the word "NEW" written in it. This creates a new object node, and immediately switches the view to the desktop, where you can see all selected nodes and work with them.
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To prepare for linking the newly created object node to the geometry node holding the cube from the previous tutorial, click once on the background (not on the new object node). This switches Connector back to the node list view. Click once on the geometry node that has a wireframe cube spinning within it. This adds that node to the desktop. It also switches to the desktop view, so you end up with something resembling this screenshot. Now we have all we need to create the link.
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Create the link by pressing and holding the left mouse button on the small circle with arrow head in it, above the new object node on the right side. Keep the mouse button held down, move the mouse pointer to somewhere inside the geometry node, and release the button. Connector will create a new link from the object node.
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The link label must now be corrected. Click the object node, to enter the object node editor. Scroll the view down by clicking and dragging vertically in the rightmost few pixels of the screen (on the bar). Once you see the "Links" part of the user interface, click on the "Link name" for the link, and use backspace and delete to clear the label. Type "geometry" and press enter.
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At this point, the cube object is fairly well-defined, as Verse objects go. It does not yet have a material, but that usually causes rendering clients to assign it some kind of "default" material. Still, we will go ahead and create a simple material for the cube.
Creating the Material Node
Return the the main node list view. You can see the cube being rendered as a wireframe preview in the background, this indicates that the object is valid. Click once on the "NEW" under "Material", to create a new material node. This creates the node, selects it for use, and switches to the desktop view:
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Click the material node, to begin editing it.
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Materials consist of fragments, that work together to produce a color. To create a new fragment in the material node, click and hold the left mouse button on the "Create a new fragment" text. This pops up a menu, listing all fragment types supported by Verse. Move the mouse, still with the left button held down, to the name of the desired fragment, and release the button. A new fragment is created and made visible in the node editor.
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Create, in any order you like: an output fragment, a blender fragment, a color fragment and a light fragment. Click the round part of a fragment to toggle it between "open" (big, editable display) and "closed" (small, non-editable display). If you create a fragment you don't want to keep, destroy it by opening it and then clicking in the "X" button in the top right corner. Click and drag on the preview area to move a fragment around (both when open and closed). Arrange the fragments in an "inverted T", with the output in the top center, the blender below it, and the color and light fragments on either side of the blender.
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To connect the input of a fragment to another fragment, click and drag from one of the small circles on the bottom border, move the mouse pointer to the "title bar" of a the desired source fragment, and release the button. Connector will draw curved lines indicating the connection. Connect the leftmost two inputs of the blender fragment to the color and light fragments, respectively. Then connect the output fragment's input to the blender.
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At this point, with the connections done as described above, the material is valid and Connector renders a preview of what it would look like. There are a few things still to adjust before we get the desired behaviour, though: the blending mode, and the color.
To set the blending mode, click and hold the left mouse button over the word "ADD" in the (opened) blender fragment. This pops up a menu to the right. Move the mouse pointer to the word "MULTIPLY", and release the button. This changes the blender mode to multiply rather than add its inputs, and Connector refreshes the previews accordingly.
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Finally, let's set the color. Make sure the color fragment is open, and just click and drag either of the three sliders for red, green and blue until you find a color you like. Here, the color is set to a pleasant shade of purple.
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At this point, exit the material node editor, and link the object node to the material. Then enter the object, and make sure the label text for the material link is "material".
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At this point, exit the material node editor, and link the object node to the material. Then enter the object, and make sure the label text for the material link is "material".
Creating a Light Source
Light sources are simply object nodes, currently without geometry. So, create a new object, and then click the new node to edit it. Set the name to something descriptive, such as "light". Set the color and intensity of the light emitted by the light source by using the three sliders under the "Light" heading. Here, we set the light to approximately 2.8 in each of red, green and blue color components.
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To move the light source to above the cube (which is close to the origin), use the Position sliders. Here, we move the light source to about (0, 1.5, -0.5).
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Creating a Ground Plane
To create the ground plane, create yet another new object node. Link the object node to the cube geometry. Then open the node for editing, rename it "ground", and rescale it. A suitable scale might be something around (5,0.05,5), which stretches the cube in the X and Z dimensions, while making it very short in the Y direction. Also edit the position so it resides just below the cube, use the wireframe view in the background as a guide here.
Create a second material node, and follow the procedure outlined above to make it a lit color. Pick any color you feel like; I went with a shade of gray. Then link the ground object node to the new material (taking care to edit the link label afterwards). The setup should now look something like this:
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Visualizing in Quel Solaar
Start Quel Solaar. How you do this depends on your computing platform. Quel Solaar will display a short intro, click any mouse button to skip it. After the intro, you will be looking at a connect-screen very similiar to the one presented by Loq Airou and described in the above tutorials. Enter the proper IP address for the server holding the cube, and click the OK in the lower left corner.
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After connecting, Quel Solaar will download and process the data on the Verse server. Eventually you will see something like this:
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Using the WASD keys on the keyboard you can move the camera. Click and drag with the left mouse button to change the viewing direction (pressing W always moves forwards). This is what the final scene should look like:
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