Simple Parametric Modelling Experiment

Description

This applet is actually the first part of an article on Manipulation or Iteration (coming soon) that I am working on. It was also inspired by some of the examples in the newly added anar+ library for Processing. It is a fusion of object-oriented geometry and a parametric modelling engine which builds slider interfaces on the fly. I still can’t seem to get external libraries to work with my web applets and there is no source code to look at, so I wrote my own. My main aim in doing this was to experiment with dynamic slider generation and a parameter management system. Lots of work still to do though, but no more time left this weekend.

User Interface Improvements

This is the first version of my applets where I think the overall user interface is really coming together. This one finally handles keyboard focus pretty well, managing control groups within panels and reacting to a range of keyboard shortcuts (including the arrow and +/- keys to manipulate the view and to activate controls). Tooltips were included in most of my earlier applets, but here they work much better. I tweaked the look and feel a bit and have now got that looking a lot more consistent.

I have also worked a bit on panel transparency in order to better overlay 2D information on a 3D model. The obvious bit is the fading in and out as the mouse moves over it, but you may also notice that the panels are not just transparent. Using a little dynamic image manipulation, the non-hover transparency actually varies with the relatively brightness level of the model view beneath each panel. Thus, they are more defined where they do not obscure model detail and less so when they do. This isn’t too clear here, but can be seen much better in my Earth-Sun Relationship example.

Popup Menu Improvements

On another note, I have always disliked how menus disappear when you select an item using the Arrow and Enter keys. With the mouse that’s fine, but a menu typically provides a lot of information about what options and keyboard shortcuts are available. Thus, you will notice in my recent applets that, when using the keyboard to navigate and invoke actions, the menu will stay up. With the mouse it will react as normal. Also, if the menu is active and you use one of the keyboards shortcuts, this will highlight the appropriate item to show you what just happened. This probably goes against a lot of style guides, but this approach works for me so I’m interested in any comments or feedback.

Display Options

You can use the OPTIONS button menu (F4) to change the main display settings. This menu lets you toggle overlay panels, manipulate model parameters and display simple instructions. You can also use it to generate random parameter values or select different views of the model.

When the Model Parameters panel is displayed, you can drag the sliders to update individual parameters and see the model update dynamically. The FACADE and TAPER tabs allow you to edit different groups of parameters and achieve different effects. You can also use the Random and Reset buttons located on the right of this panel to generate random parameter values or reset them to their original states.

The only real way to understand the an applet such as this and what each parameter does is to experiment, so please feel free to simply play about with it.

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