Connecting to a Space
For this lesson you’re going to work with a Scene that was originally designed for Space that is 16 meters wide, by 16 meters long and 8 meters high. When a Scene is opened, it will automatically be loaded into the Space that is currently referenced in the Space & Deployment window. If that Space is of a different size than the Space that the Scene was originally composed for, then adjustments will be made to compensate for differences in the Space dimensions. What kind of compensations occur depends on various Object settings that you’ll discover later in this lesson, but for now you’ll need to load both the Space and the Scene designed for this lesson.
- Open Spatial Studio.
Spatial Studio opens and displays an empty project. The Space that is loaded when Spatial Studio opens will be whichever Space that is currently selected in the Space & Deployment Preferences area. Since the Scene you're going to be working with was originally designed for a 16x16x8 meter Space, you’re going to switch to a Space that has those dimensions. You can shortcut to the Space & Deployment preference window using the Deployment Connection Status button. - Click the Deployment Connection Status button.
The Space & Deployment preference window opens.
The Space you're going to work with is called 16x16 Space. - In the Space pulldown menu, choose 16x16 Space.
This Space loads and you can confirm the width and length of the Space are at 16 meters and a height of 8 meters. - Close the Space & Deployment window.
Note that the room boundary changes as it relates to the grid changes to reflect the dimensions of this Space. Each of the smaller grid squares represents 1 meter, while the more bold lines represent a 10 meter square block. In Spatial, this grid scale always remains the same, regardless of the size of your Space.
You’re going to work with a Scene that’s purpose-built to easily demonstrate Spatial’s scaling features. - Choose File > Open, choose Scaling Demo and click Open.
A Scene opens, showing a green and a purple Object, both of which represent separate streams of flowing water that span the entire width of the Space.
Scaling Object Size
The green Object is Stream Near, while the purple is Stream Far. They are both identical in size.
- Select the Stream Far and then Stream Near, taking note of the Object size.
You see that they have an identical width of 16 meters, length of 1.6 meters and a height of 0.32 meter.
The 3D perspective from the back of the room can make it difficult to do a quick visual comparison, so you’ll adjust your view. - Click Top Camera.
Now it's easier to compare the size of the two stream Objects. To make it even more accurate when comparing width and length, set the view to be two dimensions. - Click Canvas Display Options and click Orthographic.
Now it’s crystal clear that the width and length are identical.
Now let’s see what happens to these Objects when the same Scene is applied to a space that is double the size in each dimension. - Click the Deployment Connection Status and choose the 32x32 Space.
The new space doubles each dimension to 32x32x16.
You see that each grid cell becomes smaller to represent the new scale. If you look at the two stream Objects, this means that they are now twice as wide and twice as long. They’re also twice as deep, although you can’t see that visually in this view. To verify the new size, click on each Object in the Inspector. - Select the Stream Far and Stream Near Objects and verify the new Object size values.
You can see the stream Objects are now 32, 3.2, 0.64 meters.
You may also notice that they are both twice the distance from the Scene’s origin point. In essence, everything necessary to maintain the relational size and distance perspectives from the original Medium Layout have automatically been taken care of.
At first this may feel like this is what you’d always want to happen when moving a Scene between Spaces of different sizes, however that’s not always the case. It might be reasonable to want the streams to still span the width of the Scene, but do you want the stream to be twice the distance across and twice as deep? That’s starting to feel more like a river!
To see what options there are for controlling Object scaling, move back to the 16x16 Space. - Go back to the Space and Deployment preference and change the Space back to 16x16 Space.
You see that the Space and the stream Objects revert to what you originally saw.
You’re going to make some adjustments to the Object size scaling properties on the Stream Near Object, while leaving those same properties alone for the Stream Far Object. This will allow you to easily compare the impact of these settings. - Select the Stream Near.
In the Acoustic Size and Shape area, you see some diagonal arrows to the right of each dimension value. The blue diagonal lines indicate that that particular dimension will automatically scale for this Object when the Scene is loaded into a Space with different dimensions than it wascreated in. The small white arrow to the upper left of the diagonal arrows indicates that this option for scaling has been inherited from the parent Object the Stream is within, in this case the Scene Root.
Clicking the diagonal arrow for each individual dimension lets explicitly select the option to scale or not scale, or inherit the scaling option based on the parent option. - On the Stream Near Object, Click the Width, Length and Height, Scaling indicator until it turns white and appears crossed out.
Now the green Stream Near Object won’t scale when the Space dimension changes, but the purple Stream Far Object will scale when you switch back to the Space you looked at earlier. - Switch back to the 32x32 Space.
Notice that the Stream Near doesn’t extend through the Scene. It’s almost like it’s turned into a pond and the size difference between the two streams is easily visible. To make it even moreevident, switch to a smaller space. - Switch to 4x4 Space and zoom out.
This mini Space divides each dimension to 4x4x2 meters. The green Stream Near seems very large now, but if you look at how the grid scale has changed, it’s actually the same size as it was before. The purple Stream Far has shrunk and is now 4 meters across!
Assume you wanted the green Stream Near to span the width of a Scene regardless of how wide the Spacemap is, but you want the length and height to remain the same. It’s for this type of scenario that you have the ability to individually select scaling for each of the three dimensions. - Switch back to the 16x16 Space.
You now see both of the streams are matched in size.
To create the desired effect, you only want the width of the Stream Near Object to scale. - For the Stream Near, turn scaling back on for Width.
Now you’re ready to see how this change impacts the Object in the larger Spacemaps. - Switch to the 32x32 Space.
You can see that the stream is the same distance across but is more narrow. It’s not so easy to see if the height of the Stream Near Object has remained at 0.32m. - Select the Stream Near.
You can see in the Acoustic Size & Shape area, the Stream Near Object has retained a 1.6m length and a 0.32m height. - Switch to the 4x4 Space.
Even in this significantly smaller Scene, you see how the width has scaled perfectly, but the Stream Near retains the desired length and height.
Scaling Position
You may have noticed that as you have switched the size of the Space, the stream Objects not only changed size, but they also changed position relative to the center of the Scene. You can see that currently in this small Space, the distance from the Scene origin to the edge of the purple Stream Far is 1 meter, but this is much closer to the origin point than what was originally created in the 16x16 Space. The change in distance is due to positional scaling. Scaling of position allows for the relative distance between Objects to be scaled, regardless of the Object’s size.
- Switch back to the 16x16 Space.
You now see that the distance from the origin point to the closest edge of either stream is around 4 meters.
Similar to scaling size, scaling position can be done individually for each Object and scaling settings can be inherited from the parent Object. The main difference with positional scaling is that instead of setting scaling for width, length and height, it is instead scaling X, Y or Z positional coordinates.
To see the impact of positional scaling, you’ll leave the Stream Far Object with the default scaling settings turned on for X, Y and Z. However, to ensure that the Stream Near remains 4 meters from the origin point, regardless of the Space’s size, you’ll disable scaling for its X, Y and Z positions. - For the Stream Near Object, click the scaling icon for the Objects X, Y and Z positions until they turn white.
Now switch to other Spaces to see the effect. - Switch to the 8x8 Space and then the 32x32 Scene.
Notice how the green Stream Near’s bank remains 4 meters from the origin point, instead of scaling to a greater distance like the purple Stream Far Object.