Tools and Other Software > Warper > Warping Guide

See here an example for a workflow if you have to project on a screen setup as shown in the image below.

The task is to project on this screen setup in this way:

The screen in the middle should show the whole content. Each of the two side screens should show only the a half of the content.

Important:
If your setup will contain overlapping meshes, please read the information about the Z-Order as well!

Start with a new warping file. As three meshes are needed, you could create additional meshes with the "Add" button in the mesh selection from the Menu bar.

Alternatively, choose File Menu > New… > Triple.

The project contains three side by side meshes as seen in the left image. One texture is applied to all three meshes at the same time.

For an easier recognition of an individual mesh, you may alter the texture mode. Open the Texture tab and click "Wireframe". Or, lower the opacity to a value of 120. If you would like to use another texture, click the button "Load Texture", but in this example we will keep the Pandoras Box test pattern.

Now, the FFD and mesh lines of the selected mesh are better visible. To change the selection, use the according drop-down menu in the Menu bar (the so called mesh selection). For the next step, select the leftmost mesh, Mesh1.

Mesh 1 is now modified in order to cover the first screen in our setup. You can either work with FFD points by moving or scaling a multi-selection of them, or you can scale the entire mesh whilst being in the object mode. The previous tutorial shows different ways how to do this.
First, adjust the outer FFD points so that the borders of your projected mesh exactly fit to the borders of the left screen. The mesh segments should all have the same size as well. This can be adjusted by moving the inner FFD points.

The size of the mesh is Ok, but as seen when switching back to the Textured View, it depicts only third of the content. The task was to show the left half of the content. This is done by influencing the so called texture map. Please have a look at the current settings in the Texture tab.

Up until now, the mesh's width is covered with a third of the texture. That means, the entire texture is zoomed with a factor of 3.

At the same time the height is not covered with only a third of the texture, but the entire texture height. Setting the aspect ratio to 3 as well, zooms the height back in.

The last setting is the X Offset. For now, it is set to 0.3333 in order to shift the image 1/3 (of the image width) to the right side.

If you would like to, you can reset the settings and try to find the solution for the task by yourself...

All three settings need to be adjusted to accomplish our task. We would like to:

- see half of the content's width => set the Zoom to 2
- see the whole height => set the aspect ratio to the same zoom factor of 2
- see the leftmost pixel row at the left object edge => set the X offset to 0.25

Why 0.25? We see half of the content on the mesh, in other words, one quarter is "behind" the left edge and the other quarter behind the right edge. So, to see the leftmost pixel we must shift the texture by 1/4 of the texture to the right side. One quarter is 0.25 and "to the right" requires a positive value.

Now the texture sits perfectly on the first mesh.

Repeat these steps for the right mesh covering the ride side screen. The result is seen left. If your result is different, check the texture mapping. As the texture needs to be shifted to the left, the X Offset should be negative: -0.25

Again, repeat the steps for the center mesh. First, transform the mesh according to the screen it is projected on. Then, adjust the texture mapping for the correct content. This time we would like to:

- see all of the content's width => set the Zoom to 1
- see the whole height => set the aspect ratio to the same zoom factor of 1
- see the leftmost pixel row at the left object edge => leave the X offset to 0

The last thing to do now, is to export the whole scene.
Go to File > Export All and choose the file location. All three meshes will be combined in the newly created X file. Use this object on the Output in Pandoras Box.

Warping with Several Meshes

Warping with Several Meshes

Warping with Several Meshes