Welcome

Welcome to the Canoma Tutorial. These lessons are designed to introduce you to the major features and unctions of Canoma. The main goal of the tutorial is to teach you all the basic techniques you’ll need to use Canoma to create 3D models from 2D images.

Each lesson builds upon skills learned in the previous lessons. At the beginning of each section is a list of what you have learned up to that point.

To create your first 3D model:
 

1. Start Canoma.		2. Download picture: tutorial1.jpg
3. Click the Creation tab.		4. Click the Box object. A red wireframe of a Box is displayed. (Do not click any Selection Based Options.)

• Drag the box wireframe close to the Ray Dream Studio 5 box.
• Click the Zoom button on the Toolbar and click the Ray Dream Studio 5 in the picture. Zooming in makes the next step easier. (Use the Pan tool—the hand button on the Toolbar, if you can’t see both the wireframe and the Ray Dream Studio box.)

• Click the Select button (the arrow) on the Toolbar, then click and drag a corner of the wireframe to a corner of the Ray Dream Studio 5 box. A triangle appears when the cursor is over a corner of the wireframe.This process feels like pinning the corners of a springy wireframe to a tackboard using push-pins. If you think you made a mistake, you can always undo (Ctrl-Z.) That's really the main goal—pin as many corners of the wireframe as you need to get a reasonable match between the wireframe and the underlying photograph.

 

• Click and drag the remaining corners of the wireframe to corners of the Ray Dream Studio 5 box, as shown in the following illustrations. Drag each corner in the same sequence as is shown below and try to be fairly precise.

To look at the 3D model:
 

Click and drag across the trackball controller. You’ll see a shaded 3-D box with the correct dimensions. As you drag the trackball, the camera rotates around the box.		Reset your viewpoint to the one shown in the 2D photograph by clicking on the photograph's thumbnail.
Click Edit to switch back to Edit mode.

To add texture to the model:

• Click the Quick Texture button (the rabbit) on the Toolbar. This applies textures from the photograph and automatically switches to View mode.

1. Click Edit to return to Edit mode.
2. Click the Creation tab.
3. Click the Rectangle object.
4. Pin the corners of the rectangle to the corners of the gray poster board underneath the Ray Dream box.
5. Click the Quick Textures button to add texture to the ground plane. The result is a pretty realistically textured 3D model on gray poster board.
6. Use the trackball to preview & rotate your model in 3D.

Lesson 1: Adding a Second Image
Using just a single photograph, Canoma could not create textures for the back sides of the box or for the obscured area of the ground plane. Now that you know how to go from wireframe mode to View mode and back, it’s time to add more textures.
You can add images from different viewpoints to fill in the "bald spots" on any model. Later, we’ll discuss other tricks for filling in areas where you have no additional photographic information. For this tutorial, a single additional photograph, taken from behind the box is used to complete texturing the model.

• Download picture: tutorial2.jpg
• Click the Creation Tab.
• Click the box object. 

Wait! Do not start pinning!
A new wireframe is now superimposed on the second photo, but the alignment is all wrong.
Your task is to make the wireframe match this second photograph. Always look at how the wireframe and the photo line up, then use the trackball to roughly adjust the alignment. Only then can you start using pins.
Aligning the wireframe first saves a lot of effort (far fewer pins are needed) and also makes Canoma’s mathematics more stable. 

Don’t worry about getting the model perfectly aligned. Roughly the same viewpoint is fine. If you can see the correct face of the box, you’re OK.
After you release the trackball, the superimposed wireframe already matches the second image much better.

To pin and texture the second image: 

• Place pins on the corners of the rectangle and the box. Place pins first on those corners where the fit is worst. 

As you add pins, the rest of the wireframe soon fits the photograph.
• Switch to View mode, either by clicking the View button or by clicking the trackball.

The 3D camera position matches the photograph quite well. 
• Click the Quick Textures button (the rabbit) on the Toolbar to generate textures based on both photographs. 

The back side of the Ray Dream Studio 5 box, as well as the previously obscured (white) pieces of the ground plane are now filled with texture. Your model might have some white boundaries or visible seams. More precise pinning helps reduce that, but there’s a special texturing trick that can also improve the texture quality. More about that later!
• Use the trackball to verify that you have texture all around the 3D model.

Notice that there is a CD case behind the Ray Dream Studio 5 box. This is very typical of real world examples. As you add photographs, you may discover objects that were partially or fully obscured. When that happens, you can choose to model the objects. If you don’t model them, their image is flattened onto other objects. 
Look carefully at the CD case’s texture in the 3D preview. It looks like a truck drove over it.
Your next task is to model the CD case. To do that, you’ll want to take a look at things up close.

To model the CD case: 

• Click Edit to switch back to Edit mode.
• Click the Zoom button on the Toolbar, then click and drag the cursor over the area where the CD is located. This defines a rectangular area to zoom in on. 
• Create a box.
• Pin the new wireframe to the CD case, three or four pins should be enough.
• Click the View button and verify the existence and size of the new 3D object.

• Select Texture menu > Quality Resolution and choose a 1:1 resolution setting from the popup list.
• Click the Quality Texture button (the turtle) on the Toolbar.


• After textures are generated, they look better (although it does takes longer to generate them.)

You could stop there, but what if you need better textures for the front of the Ray Dream Studio 5 box? You might want to animate walk-through, and for that you'd want more detail. To add that detail, you'll add yet another image. The image you'll add does not show any new information, but it does show the front of the box in more detail.

You can imagine doing something similar with architectural photographs:

• first create a model using an aerial photograph 
• then add detail with close-ups shots taken at ground level.

• Download picture: tutorial2b.jpg
• Roughly align using the Trackball.
• Click the Ray Dream Studio box to select it and pin the visible corners.
• Click the gray ground plane to select it, but don't start pinning.

Close-up views often have the same problem. You just can't see the entire photo element you previously modeled. In this third photograph, none of the gray ground plane's corners are visible.
You can use a second (of three) Canoma tools to position the wireframe for the ground lane. These tools are called beads.

• Move the cursor over any edge (rather than a corner) of the wireframe. A little disk appears.
• Click on the edge of the wireframe to create a bead and drag it to the edge of the gray ground plane.
• Now switch to View mode.
• Click the Quality Textures button, and select a 1:1 resolution.

Why stop now? You can edit the texture on the Ray Dream Studio box, using a 2D pixel editing tool, such as Painter or Photoshop. You can edit the image in 2D ("head on" view), then Canoma automatically displays the results of your edits,
in proper perspective.

• If necessary, click the View button to switch to 3D Preview mode.
• Click the Texture Brush in the Toolbar.
• Click the face of the Ray Dream box. Canoma opens a 2D editing program.
• Make a change to the image—change the color, add some text, or retouch something. You can change the resolution, but don’t change the aspect ratio.
• Save your work. Save a flattened image file, to the same filename as the original. If the original was a JPG file and you added text or other layers, be sure to flatten the image before saving.
• Click back inside the Canoma’s program window.