Render Setup Editor

The Render Setup Editor is part of the Ventuz Configuration and is used to create an XML configuration for complex display walls. The content for such display walls may come from a single or from multiple Ventuz machines.
Generally speaking the Render Setup Editor is used to solve following problem: Display Ventuz content correctly on an arbitrary complex display wall built up of N displays connected to M machines.

User Interface

The editor basically consists of three parts: the Toolbar on top with some edit commands, the Display Editor in the center to arrange machines and displays and the Statusbar at the bottom with some additional information for the selected object.

The display wall shown in the example consists of 4x3 displays and has a total resolution of 5120 x 2160 pixels. It is built from 3 machines: two machines have a 2x2 display setup, the third machine has a 4x1 display setup.
The dashed frame marks the visual border of the whole Cluster or Render Setup respectively. On top of this frame the visual resolution of the Cluster is displayed. (The Cluster always has the default name CLUSTER.)
The broad frame marks the visual border of one machine. Below this border the machine name, its visual resolution and its position is displayed (more details below)! Each display has its name written in the center (with its ID in brackets); if a display is selected its coordinates are shown too. The name and the assigned color can be changed by editing the properties (CTRL + SHIFT + E or Edit properties in the toolbar). If a machine is selected, its ID can be changed to a new free value.

The Toolbar at top of the editor contains several button. From left to right their functionality is as follows:

• Create New Setup: Lauches the New Setup Dialog to create a new Render Setup based on numeric values
• Reset All: Resets the position of all machines and displays
• Undo: Reverts last modification
• Redo: Re-Applies last reverted modification
• Add Machine: Launches the New Machine Dialog to add a further machine to the existing Render Setup
• Delete Selection: Deletes the currently selected items
• Edit properties: Presents dialog to edit some basic machine and display properties
• Split Selection: Launches the Split Dialog to subdivide selected items
• Zoom to Fit: Zooms and pans to the selected items so that they are displayed centered and fill the available Display Editor space. If nothing is selected zoom and pan is reset so that the complete Cluster is visible.
• Zoom to Cluster / Reset Zoom: Resets zoom and pan to default values
• Show Machine Borders: Toggles the visualization of the machine border
• Show Color Marker: Toggles the visibility of the color marker in the upper left corner of the display fragments
• Show test pattern on output: Commands running Ventuz to render a specific test pattern instead of a scene
• Multiply test pattern with output color: The test pattern is colored according to the assigned display color
• Select active test pattern: Show a collection of different test pattern which can by rendered by Ventuz
• Display settings of current test patterns: Modifies active test pattern
• Shaping: The editor switches to the Shaping & Warping editor

To create a new Render Setup launch the New Setup dialog. This can be done by pressing CTRL + N or clicking on the first button in the Toolbar. This will bring up the following dialog:

The New Setup dialog consists of two tabs: Simple and Advanced.
In Simple mode one has to specify the number of displays per machine, their arrangement and the resolution per display. Finally the number of machines has to be given. Clicking Create will arrange the machines from left to right in the Display Editor.
In Advanced mode first of all one specifies the display arrangement for the whole Cluster and the resolution per display. In Advanced mode it is possible to specify a Bezel or Overlap area for displays with frames or projectors. The unit of these values is pixels.
In the next step the total display arrangement must be distributed over a certain number of machines.
In the Machine section one has to specify the display arrangement per machine if there are multiple possibilities for the whole cluster with N machines.
Example: a cluster of 4x2 displays with 2 machines can be created from 2 machines with 4x1 displays aligned vertically or 2 machines with 2x2 displays aligned horizontally.

It is possible to create Bezel values from the physical dimensions of a display. To open this Bezel Helper dialog click on the button left to the bezel values.

From the display size with frame and without frame (only the visible pixel area) this dialog calculates the horizontal and vertical bezel values.

Automatic Render Setup from VMS

There is an additional way to get an initial Render Setup if one creates a new entry in the Ventuz Configuration. The Ventuz Machine Service (VMS) is able to retrieve the display configuration from NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards. It reads the Mosaic or Eyefinity configuration and creates a corresponding display arrangement in the Render Setup editor.

For the example above the initial Render Setup from the VMS will look as follows:

As there is no information about the visual relationship of the machines to each other, they are arranged horizontally from left to right. To achieve the final result you just have to move the 4x1 machine to the bottom of the other two.

Coordinate Space

The machines and displays in the Render Setup Editor lie in a pixel-based coordinate space. The origin of this coordinate space is the top-left corner of the cluster bounding-box. The cluster bounding-box is the smallest bounding-box containing all machines. The X coordinate advances to the right; the Y coordinate to the bottom. Note that even if you move the whole cluster configuration to other coordinates than [0;0], it is reseted to [0;0] before it is saved to file. The position of the whole cluster does not affect the render output of Ventuz with the according Render Setup configuration
loaded! For a single machine Render Setup this coordinate space matches the coordinate space of a full-scene Viewport in Ventuz.
The origin of the world coordinate space in the according Ventuz scene is always in the center of the cluster bounding-box.

Logical vs. Visual Resolution

In the context of the Render Setup configuration we will talk about Logical and Visual Resolutions.
These terms will be explained here.
The logical resolution of a machine is defined by the Mosaic or Eyefinity configuration of the graphics board. A 2x2 display setup with a resolution of 1280 x 720 px per display has a logical resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixel.

The visual resolution however is defined by final position of the displays in the Render Setup configuration. In the example below the displays are arranged horizontally and have bezel between each other. This leads to the visual resolution of 5420 x 720 pixel.

Manipulating a Render Setup

Bezel and Overlap

It is possible to adjust the amount of bezel or overlap between displays interactively in the Display Editor. If multiple displays are selected a Shifting Frame is drawn around the selection. It has a handle on each side to change the bezel/overlap horizontally or vertically.

The values in the handles are related to the last selection and are reseted on a new selection. The display shifting can also be performed with the Arrow keys and a pressed Shift key! Double-clicking on a handle brings up a dialog to set the bezel/overlap values in pixel or in percent of the display size.

Split and Combine

Machines and Displays can be split into fragments to create complex display arrangements. The Split Dialog, which is available in the Context Menu or in the Toolbar, provides two splitting procedures. This is useful or even necessary for screens which have an internal daisychaining mechanism which allows you to link multiple screens from one output.

Split by Divide: The selected items are divided equally by the specified horizontal and vertical divisors. This splitting procedure works only if the division results in integer values!
Split by Fill: The selected items are split into parts of a specific size. If the initial item cannot be filled completely by the specified size, the remaining areas are assigned to a part of its own and can be deleted afterwards.
Split by Cut: The selected items are split by performing cuts from left, right, top and bottom according to the specified values. If all four values are larger than zero the split will result in nine items.

Split machine or display parts can be combined again if they have the original relation of proximity and the selection is a rectangle. The Combine command is available via Context Menu or keyboard shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + C.

Machine ID

The machine ID makes sure that a Ventuz scene can determine which part of an overall cluster content should be rendered. Currently the machine IDs are assigned automatically. If a new machine is added to an existing Render Setup configuration the smallest free ID is taken. In the actual version it is not possible to assign a custom ID to a machine. If this is necessary, you have to edit the Render Setup XML file (.vrs).

Keyboard Shortcuts

Here is an overview of the available mouse and keyboard operations.

	View
drag		Pan
wheel		Zoom
double-click		Reset Pan an Zoom
CTRL + F		Zoom to Fit
CTRL + R		Reset Zoom
	Selection
click		Select
click+drag		Rectangle Selection
click		Context Menu
CTRL  click	Single Selection	Select parent item
CTRL  click	Multi Selection	Add/Remove to/from selection
	Editing
SHIFT  move		Move selection without snapping
CTRL + N		Create New Setup
CTRL + Z		Undo
CTRL + Y		Redo
CTRL + +		Add Machine
DELETE		Delete Selection
CTRL + SHIFT + E	Single Selection	Edit properties
CTRL + SHIFT + S		Split Selection
CTRL + SHIFT + C	Multi Selection	Combine Selection
CTRL + SHIFT + R		Reset selection
←, →, ↑, ↓		Move selection by 10 pixel
CTRL + ←, →, ↑, ↓		Move selection by 1 pixel
SHIFT + ←, →, ↑, ↓		Change distance by 10 pixel
CTRL + SHIFT + ←, →, ↑, ↓		Change distance by 1 pixel

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