How to Use the Multiscreen View Generator

Section 7. How to Use the Multiscreen View Generator

Using the View Generator is simple once you know the trick to it. The best way to understand the trick is to visualize what you’d do if you had the screen physically before you.

Section 7.1 Walking Along the Screen

The example screen we will be using.

Imagine you have a screen like the one above. It’s a 7-meter wide, 3.5-meter tall screen made up of 3-segment columns with 35° wing-like folds at its ends. When inputting your values, you have to imagine standing next to the leftmost corner of your screen and then walking forward until you hit a bend.

From the left-most edge, walk forward until you hit a bend.

When you hit a bend, you stop and take note of the distance you have travelled. In this case, we walked and moved a total of 100 centimeters. But now we must turn to follow the next screen. In this case, we turn 35°.

We stopped and had to turn 35° to line up for the next segment.

Next, we move forward again until we hit another bend in the screen, this time traversing 500 cm. Once again, we must turn 35° to align ourselves with the next screen.

We covered a distance of 500 centimeters to arrive at a 35° bend.

Finally, we move forward once more, reaching the end of the screen with an additional 100 centimeters of travel. Because there is no further bend, we can report 0°.

The final distance covered, and we reached the end of our walk.

Section 7.2 Input the values

A preview of what we just did in the above example.

Expanding the View Generation setting for the first time will reveal that everything is 0 and empty.

1. Input the height of 350cm

2. Press the + button within segments to add your first segment.

3. As we did in our example above, we input the distance first traversed (100 cm)

4. Then we input the angle of the bend we encountered (35°)

5. Press the + button again to add your second segment

6. Input the distance traveled for the second segment and the angle of the bend (500cm and 35°)

7. Press the + button a final time for your third segment

8. Input the distance traveled to reach the edge of the screen and leave the angle alone (100cm and 0°)

9. Return to the top of View Generation and update your *Origin Index* to the index number associated with the center of your screen (in our case, 1)

10. Finally, click on the Generate button to create your virtual display!

When generated, the above inputs create this screen on our camera!

Section 7.3  A few notes and a word of caution

• You can create as many segments as you wish, but due to the limitations of both software and hardware, please try to limit them to around 5-6 at most. (For more information on this, please visit Multi_Views to learn more about its possible theoretical limits).

• You can technically create a ceiling and floor design with this generator, but unfortunately, it has not yet been fully realized. An update in the future may one day add this feature.          

• Only uniform heights are accepted with this method. However, you are free to try modifying the vertices manually to get the heights you wish (the points are in centimeters).

• Be sure to clear your Views list before hitting Generate. The Generate button does not do this for you and instead will add to the list that is already there.