geopanel - interactive 2D panels in 3D renders

This workflow lets you put any 2D panels into a lit 3D scene and operate them as you would in 2D.

You create a bunch of Panel Components as you would in 2D normally, and instead of displaying them in a container, they are used in a 3D render by connecting each panel to a ‘geopanel’ component (a customized Geometry component with custom parameters). The Render Pick DAT and the Render TOP are set up to operate the panels virtually.

You can use a mouse with this, and currently single-finger multitouch is working as well.

UPDATE: Oct 20, 2015 - THIS IS IN THE PALETTE OF Official 56020 and later.

GeoPanel.1.jpg
In this example, some, not all gadgets do something on other objects.

Aside from working with mouse and Windows-supported touch screens (both via Multi Touch In DAT), you can remotely driving the main container with panel.interactTouch() and panel.interactMouse().

flow – how it works:
• You mouse click on the /project1 container which only contains a 3D rendered image as the background. The click/drag/release events drives a Multi Touch In DAT that is pointing to /project1.
• The Multi Touch In DAT is passed to the Render Pick DAT that is also connected to the 3D render. Render Pick gets back an event list in its callback that identifies which 3D objects were hit and where.
• The Render Pick DAT sends interactMouse() events to individual gadgets (panels) to operate them virtually.

This will be in the palette under Techniques in the next build after 55460.

Killer example Greg! Thank you!!

mind = blown :stuck_out_tongue:

Greg, your rock. Thanks for sharing!

Pretty cool, thx greg

very nice example - thanks greg

geoPanel is now in the palette of Official 56020 and later.

Pulldown menus now render in the 3D scene.

The component is now a set of adapted Geometry components that you can copy-paste into the scene. There is a clone master for about 10 types of gadgets plus one, “geopanel” you can use with any panel you give it.

There’s a wiki page for it where all future updates will be documented:

derivative.ca/wiki088/index … e=GeoPanel

I’m sure this is a beginner question, but when I try to use the gadgets from the “geoGadget” container, they work great, but when I try to customize the contents of each gadget, I lose the changes when I close the file and resave. If I try to copy the contents into a new geometry COMP, the expressions all break. Is there a way to copy the gadgets into a scene, edit them and allow them to stay persistent in the file? Thanks.

Ah, I think I have the answer. Either turn off “Enable Cloning” and or turn on the Clone Immune. I did both, and it worked. Whew, that was a show stopper there for a while. Otherwise, great tool.