Twinn Witness
Visionary Render can interface with Royal HaskoningDHV's Twinn Witness using the Visionary Render for Witness (VR4W) component. This provides a 3D view of a Witness model like in Quick3D, but with the full feature set of Visionary Render at your disposal. So, for example, a Witness model could be edited via the Visionary Render GUI once loaded, then reviewed on a HMD with tracking whilst it is running.
Additionally, it provides the ability to record model runs into Visionary Render’s animation format for later review, possibly on a machine that doesn’t have Witness installed.
Visionary Render for Witness requires a feature license so please get in touch with us if interested. You will also need the COLLADA importer to load the objects in some models.
Basic Usage
| Step | Image | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | When installing Visionary Render, you should have enabled the VR4W component. This will create shortcuts for Visionary Render with VR4W enabled and link to this manual from the Start Menu. If not, then you may want to re-run the installer, but note that it’s not compulsory. The COLLADA importer should also be installed and licensed on your machine. |  |
| 2 | Start Witness and open a model (such as Quick3D.mod or one of the other sample models). |  |
| 3 | Start Visionary Render (Witness) from the Start Menu (or run Visionary Render with -witness on the command-line). Note that VR4W is a separately-licensed feature of Visionary Render, so please request a new Visionary Render license if you don’t already have it. |  |
| 4 | In Witness, select Model > Customize Quick 3D... from the file menu. Select the Visionary Render tab as in the dialog above and click Enable then close the dialog with the OK button. This dialog permits Witness to switch between using Quick 3D and Visionary Render, so you’ll need to disable VR4W if you want to switch back to using Quick 3D. |  |
| 5 | Select Model > Quick 3D. The model should start loading in Visionary Render (instead of the Quick 3D window). A progress bar in Witness will document progress but note that models with complex geometry may continue to load in Visionary Render after the progress bar has completed. Visionary Render will fly to the model once it is fully loaded. |  |
| 6 | Run the model in Witness and observe the result in the Visionary Render window. From here, the model can be re-run, stopped, stepped through, etc. as desired in Witness. New models can be loaded without having to reset the connection – just open the new model in Witness and select Model > Quick 3D again to update the scene. |  |
Live Link
The live link to Witness is managed by a Witness Link node, which is automatically added as a child of Scenes when Visionary Render is executed with -witness on the command-line.
Properties
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| Enabled | When enabled, a socket will be created to permit a live link to Witness. |
| Port | The port number to connect to Witness on. This should match the port number in the Customize Quick 3D dialog in Witness. |
| Record | When enabled, Witness model runs will be recorded into sequences. |
Recording
Recording can be started and stopped with the Record property of the Witness Link node. A sequence is created for each run of the model in Witness. These will be called “Run 1”, “Run 2”, etc. and are children of the Witness scene node (i.e. the node attached to Scenes named after the current Witness model). When recording has begun, the sequencer will show the current sequence being written into.
