Interface

Interface

Neutrino’s user friendly interface enables easy setup of models for simulation. Parameters and operators can be added easily to perform the various operations. Interface items are depicted below.

Toolbars

Scene Inspector

Description of Various Tools in Neutrino.

Scene Inspector

Scene Inspector

The Scene Inspector contains all the items in the scene which can be selected. The selected item’s properties are displayed in the property editor. Context menu items appear as the right mouse button is pressed with the object being selected.

Property Editor

Property Editor

Property Editor is an user editable list of properties for the selected scene item. The properties of the rigid vary according to the type of item selected.

Scene Builder

Scene Builder

Scene Builder is a panel where entries in the scene can be constructed easily without navigating through the menu items.

The various categories of neutrino nodes are on the side shelf panel and upon selection they reveal the nodes. Nodes are created and placed in the scene upon click on that button.

System Inspector

System Inspector

System Inspector is a list of global system entries whose properties can be edited as well.

By default there are four(4) entries in the System Inspector. Selecting each of these entries in the Object Browser will reveal the properties of them. System Inspector are global entities during each session.

Base

Parameter	Description
OpenMP Threads	Number of Threads Neutrino will use for Simulation (8)
Server Port	If Neutrino is controlled by external communication protocol the socket number (20200)
Scene Path	Specify the information needed to be exported.
Data Read Directory	Specifies the directory where all the caches for entries in the scene reside
Data Write Directory	Specifies where the cache data will be written onto
Optimize Net Caches	In certain cases setting this will optimize block writes onto network drives
Compress Fluid Caches	This will create fluid caches with compression but for large particle counts this might result in performance loss

GUI

Parameter	Description
Timeline Units	Number of Threads Neutrino will use for Simulation (8)
Save OpenGL Frames	If Neutrino is controlled by external communication protocol the socket number (20200)

GL Properties

A Neutrino session can have several interactive views for visualization and model setup and the main engine to render them is OpenGL. Its properties are as follows:

Rendering Properties

Many of the global rendering parameters can be controlled using these. These include Ambient occlusion, transparency etc.

OpenGL

There can be many OpenGL objects depending on how many views are present in the scene. By default this is 1. The views can be split according to user specification and the View menu described later controls the splits and usage of multiple visualization/model setup views.

The main properties control the render of each of these views.

Parameter	Description
Camera	The Camera used for rendering this view
On Screen Display	Whether or not to display statistics
Manipulator Space	Local Space operates with respect to the center of the object.
World Axes	The axes ON/OFF in the visualization window
World Grid	Whether a flat grid is drawn in the visualization or not
Clipping	Uses a normal for clipping objects - Deprecated in favor of a Clipping Object
Silhouette	Unused and deprecated
Ambient Occlusion	Turning this on produces self shadows and better looking renders (HBAO)
Antialiasing	The method used for improving quality of lines etc in the gl/visualization window
Transparency	The transparency method used - different modes are a trade-off between quality/time
Environment Type	The background image used in visualization (either cube 6 sides or sphere
Quality Profile	The render quality used for preview/visualization. Some features are turned off/on for
Draw Render Area	Not used
Save Frames	Save the frames displayed in this specific visualization window/GL to file (png)
Save Motion Maps	DEPRECATED

Timeline

Timeline

TimeLine, used to record and playback the simulation.

The two modes are Simulate and Playback. Simulate mode is activated by the button. The play button is then used to either simulate (Simulate Mode) or Play (Playback Mode).

Turns Green when armed and ready to simulate

Simulation is Armed to proceed. Next Play would actually Simulate the scene.

Run simulation if Armed or just playback the recorded simulation from caches if not armed.

Connection Inspector

Connections

View and Modify input/output connection to/from nodes.

Connection Inspector is used to connect various inputs and outputs from nodes to process during simulate/playback mode. The emitter’s creates Particles (kIOParticles) which is connected to the solver’s input. Solver’s output (kIOParticles) can be connected to the Measurement Field’s input (kIOParticles).

In Neutrino you can consider all the objects displayed in the Scene Inspector to have inputs and outputs and they are evaluated during a simulation. For example the output of a particle emitter would be particles (kIOParticles) and that is automatically connected to the input of a solver (kIOParticles). Some connections are automatically made for example in this case. But for some other cases the user has to make the connections manually depending on what the scenario is. If the particle emitter’s kIOParticles to the solver connection is deleted then there would be no particles input to the solver and hence no solve. Neutrino node’s most common inputs/outputs are the following: kIOParticles, kIOTriangleMesh, kIOVolumes

Script Editor

Script Editor

Python based command window.

Script Editor Commands

Script Editor could be used for performing any action in Neutrino but through the python interface. The python interface to Neutrino’s system is explained in a separate section.

Node Graph Editor

Node Graph Editor, used to visualize various connections. It can be seen clearly that all fluid objects go to NIISPHSolver and measurement field takes data from IISPHSolver to determine the parameter we are interested in.

Currently its still under works and mainly used for volume connections.

Interactive View Window

Objects can be selected, transformed in the world space visible through the selected camera in the GL Widget View. There can be many such views which can be created and deleted in the scene and they are synchronized with each other.

Each view can be split into 2 duplicated and assigned different cameras on the View Menu on top of this window

If you select an object and select the translate (toolbar) on the left side a translate handle appears in the gl preview window. you can select each of the arrows in the axes and move them around and that moves the object. Same goes for scale and rotate, their tools are in the left toolbar.

The camera for the view is selected from the Camera Menu item at the top of the View Window

Camera

Alt and mouse will turn the camera around

Alt + middle will pan the camera

Alt + Right will zoom in/out

If a camera gets stuck somewhere you can reset it by selecting the camera in the scene builder and third mouse button and reset camera.