Release 4.0

Attractor - View Parameters

This tab lets you change all parameters of the observer, i.e. you can change the position, the orientation, etc.

There are two (actually three) possibilities how to modify the position of the eye (i.e. observer): You may either enter the position directly or you may change it using the sliders. Using the sliders is much more intuitive unless you have a perfect spatial sense

But the most intuitive way of changing the position is by simply using the mouse while in the window:

• Using the mouse wheel you can increase and decrease the distance of the eye point and the view point.
• Using drag (holding down left mouse button while moving the mouse) you can rotate around the object (same as modifying the corresponding sliders)
• Using Shift-Drag (holding down left mouse button and the shift key) you can change the view point.

In case you need more control than that you can use the controls present on this tab. Geometrically there are:

	View point	This is the null point of the system: The point at which the observer looks at, the point around which the observer "rotates", the point to which the observer zooms in or zoomes out (if the distance should change).
	Observer	This is the position at which YOU are supposed to be, i.e. the observer of the scene, your eye or whatever you may call it.
	Top	Specifies the top vector, i.e. the direction which is up. If you live on the earth, then "up" normally points to the sky. But if you look at a :-) it's sometimes helpful to bend your head to the left, thus Top points to the left...

Using the corresponding controls you may enter the information directly. The only exception is Top: It contains a normalized vector, i.e. its length is always 1. And it is always perpendicular to the vector from observer to view point. If you change any of the three coordinates there, it is readjusted so it is perpendicular and normalized. So your values won't be accepted directly, only their "meaning": So if you want to set the "top" vector as much a possible to "above", then enter as "y" value e.g. "99999". So ChaosPro will assume top is (0.1,99999,0.8), make it perpendicular to observer-viewpoint and normalize it.

The remaining sliders are:

• Horizontal: Lets you rotate the observer in horizontal direction. The control will snap back to zero when released. So it does not display the current horizontal position, instead it allows you to move around by +- x degrees.
• Vertical: Lets you rotate the observer in vertical direction. The control will also snap back to zero when released. So it does not display the current vertical position, instead it allows you to move up/down by +- y degrees.
• Distance: Lets you modify the distance from observer to view point. The control will snap back to 100% when released. It allows you to increase or decrease the distance in a range from 50% to 150%.
• Rotation: This control lets you rotate the Top vector. If you use this slider you can see easily what the Top vector actually is for in case you did not understand the explanation before.

Now there are only two controls left to be described:

• Field of View: Contains the angle of the perspective projection in degrees, or in other words: The view angle which your eye has. Normal values are 30 or 45 degrees. If you change this value it may seem as if the object just gets smaller or larger. But beware! When animating an object you will see the difference: If set to an "unnormal" value (too low or too high) the angles of the objects seem to be unnatural. This may not be relevant for fractal objects, as the visual appearance is not natural anyway, but if you e.g. animate a cube you will see that it looks not as expected, as the 90 degrees of each side seem to be somewhat "strange" and "distorted".
• Follow Object: Dangerous setting! Beware! When checked ChaosPro will set the view point automatically to the middle of the rendered preview object. This is very nice if you use the random search feature or if you are experimenting with parameters, as the view point automatically "follows" the object. But if you manually adjusted the view point and did not uncheck this option, you will notice that ChaosPro continues to adjust the view point which makes your manual adjustments worthless.