Dynamite VSP Object Placement
Dynamite VSP simplifies both the initial placement and subsequent management of objects placed along
the path of a road or railway. Objects are physically and permanently linked to an associated
parent shape object.
This is particularly important when imported engineering design data is updated, as the position of all dependent objects is also modified instantly. Objects can be dynamically dragged or even animated along imported design strings whilst always retaining a specified local rotation and offset.
In addition to tracking the path of parent shapes or strings, objects are also capable of automatically tracking the terrain of an underlying ground surface. This feature significantly simplifies the process of animating a moving vehicle, ensuring that it always takes account of the crossfall and longitudinal profile of the road surface.
Object Placement Styles
Once a series of object placement instructions has been defined, the associated creation parameters may be saved to a text based Object Placement Style to provide an easy means of re-using the placement instructions at a later date. The syntax for object placement styles forms part of the command language for Dynamite VSP which allows commonly used settings to be stored in text based styles for later re-use.
Object Placement Styles may be defined interactively in the dedicated Object Placement Style Editor panel, or in any text editor or spreadsheet application.
Localised Object Libraries
Every copy of Dynamite VSP ships with a localised library of object placement styles, materials, and libraries of parametric and static objects.
The Dynamite VSP object libraries are divided into six basic categories, and these libraries are referenced directly by the Object Placement Style Editor. Any of these objects may be placed as animated or static objects, and either individually or in regularly or randomly spaced groups. However, there are a few specific ways which are more applicable in each case, depending on the type of object concerned.
- Vehicles - Place a random selection of vehicles, with automatically assigned random body colours, at a constant horizontal offset and at a constant speed to instantly fill a highway lane with animated vehicles. Vehicles are randomly spaced between the selected start and end chainage and optional looping can be applied to cause vehicles to repeatedly loop back to the start of the parent shape. Optional surface tracking may be used to ensure that vehicles always react to varying crossfall or superelevation on an underlying surface object, whilst the position of the object is still defined by the selected parent shape or alignment string.
- Furniture - Place furniture such as lighting columns, gantries, posts, as single static objects or multiple object placed at a regular chainage between a specified start and end chainage. Many standard furniture items in the Dynamite VSP object libraries have permanently editable parameters which can be used to adjust common geometric properties of object such as lighting columns and signing gantries.
- Trees - Place trees at random or regular offsets along the side of a road or railway. Trees can be the same type or randomly selected from the library. Each tree can be assigned a height which automatically varies slightly between each tree, and random rotation may also be applied per tree creating the illusion of randomly varying trees of the same type.
- Signs - Localised sign definitions are stored in the object libraries complete with dedicated sign face dimensions and supporting post configurations. Signs may even be attached to gantries and lamp columns, so that when the parent object is moved, the signs also move accordingly.
- Cameras - Place animated cameras to generate drive through and fly through animations. Adjust vertical offset, and horizontal offset, and rotation to vary the camera position as it moves along the parent shape. Cameras are selected from the library by lens size.
- Primitives - Primitive geometric objects such as cylinders, pyramids, spheres can be placed along the path of a parent string in order to represent structural elements such as bridge piers.
Placed Object Manager Panel
The dedicated Placed Object Manager panel provides an instant overview of all objects in the active scene which were generated from the Object Placement Style Editor panel. In a single operation it is possible to update the position of a series of placed objects, and to monitor the general status of all placed objects in tabular form.
Placed Object Animation Editor Panel
The Placed Object Animation Editor provides fine control over the animated placement parameters
for objects created from the Object Placement Style Editor. From this panel it is possible to
easily implement acceleration/deceleration and lane changing of animated vehicles.