Spoken text

Up to now, we’ve learned primarily things about the single elements of the user surface and how to use and to set them up. Now, in the next 5 units, we’re going to see important functions provided by GroIMP for the direct access and manipulation of the 3D Model without an alteration of the growth grammar.
The model, which is displayed in the 3D View, consists of single objects which are generated by the execution of the growth grammar. You can see this better by using the Run Button. New objects are being created at each step. Their creation depends on the rules in the model code.
But it’s possible to select these displayed objects – in this model these are the branches and buds – independently from each other and to manipulate them in many different ways. The 3D structure will change but the model will stay unchanged.

We’re going to do this by selecting a branch by a mouse click. We see on the one hand that the coordinate axes in the colours blue, green and red are being displayed. Red is X, blue is Y and green is the Z axis. And we see on the other hand that the Attribute Editor is opening on the right-hand side of the screen.
It was mentioned before that the objects of a model have specific attributes which are shown in the Attribute Editor. They can also be changed there.
These attributes partially determine the look and the shape of the objects. Model attributes, which can be used for many different things, will be shown in more detail in the XL learning module. Here, we’re just going to show exemplarily how to look at some attributes and how to change them directly.
At first, you can see the object type and the current name of the object in the square bracket which follows the name directly. The name can be changed in the edit field “Name”. Below this field, an object can be assigned to another layer. If an object should become invisible or visible independently from the other objects, this is an important option (see also unit 6).
The next attributes mainly define the geometry of the object: The length – in meters – and some options for a transformation, which won’t be described now, are displayed at this position. The “Shader” attribute is supposed to give the object a specific texture or colour. The attributes from “Other Attributes” like diameter and colour define the shape and look of the object again.
The types and numbers of attributes depend on the object type and on individually defined attributes which were introduced by the programmer.

If you want to change an attribute, you can directly change the value in the edit field and confirm the alteration with the return key or you can just leave the Attribute Editor by using the tab to the editor. A simple switch to another attribute also works.
The attribute will be changed and the object – if it’s an attribute that defines the shape and look of the object – will be redrawn in the 3D View. We’ve showed this with the length.