Mask Workspace

In Amorphium Mask is a protective coating, which keeps distortions, sculpting, and paint tool from effecting parts or the whole object. Mask works with Mesh and Tin objects, it does not work with Wax or Biosphere objects. Mask will be saved with the project file, and on objects exported to the Amorphium 1 or 2 formats. Mask can not be keyframed or recorded in a task file.

Tools sets that respond to Mask: All tool sets in Tools. All tools in FX ( except Rotate tool ). All Tools in HeightShop, All tools in Morph, All tools in Paint ( except eye dropper tool ). Only the Liquify tool in Mapper. None of the tools sets in the Tin workspace are effected by Mask.

Mask Tool Set
There are eleven tools in the mask tool set.

The Three brush tools utilize the brush palette.

Brush On: applies mask using an air brush. Brush Off: removes mask using an air brush. Smooth Brush: softens the edge of between mask and unmask areas, or softens the lightly mask areas. When using the ON or Off brush the direction setting on the brush palette will effect the behavior of the tool. So the mask On brush can remove mask when the direction is set to out, and the mask Off brush will apply mask when the direction is set to out.

There are four outline tool that work by dragging an outline over the object, then release the button to apply the tool. These four tool are also divided in halves with the left side of the icon being the remove and the right side being the apply tool.

Rectangular Tool: applies or removes mask drawing a rectangle or square. Circular Tool: applies or removes mask drawing a circle or oval.

There are five tools that effect the whole object. The Mask All and Clear Mask is divided in halves.

Mask/Clear Mask Tool: mask or clears all mask on the object.

Invert Mask Tool: inverts the mask and unmasked areas.

Smooth All Tool: smoothes all the mask.

Masking Mesh Objects
When mask is applied to, or removed from the object, it has to hit the three vertices of each polygon ( triangles ) to full cover or be removed from the entire polygon.

Vertices are the corners of the Triangles

All vertices not hit by tool

All vertices need to be hit to cover whole polygon

Sometimes vertices are hidden inside the object, to do precise masking zooming into the object is necessary.

Vertices hidden inside object	Zoom to the inside of object
Locate vertices and mask	Precise masking complete

The more vertices an object has, the sharper the edge of mask will be.

522 Vertices

8194 Vertices ( default Organic )

33282 Vertices

MeshMan Tools and Mask

Mask can be used to specifically determine areas that will increase or decrease the polygon count when using MeshMan's Quad or Decimate tools. Masked areas will not be effected by these tools and unmasked areas will.

Decimate: decreases the polygon count.
Quad: increases the polygon count.

Point Cloud Default Sphere	Masked Area
Polygon Count Increased	Polygon Count Decreased

Mask and Boolean Functions

When one of the objects being used in a boolean operation has mask, the mask will be applied to part of the new object. Add boolean will be wherever the mask area is outside of the merge area. For subtract, wherever a mask area is touching an unmasked area. For intersect it can be a combination, wherever the mask was touching an unmask area or what ever part of the masked object is left after the boolean operation. When the flatten hierarchy tool is used, objects that had mask will retain mask in the same area.

Add Boolean	Intersect Boolean
Subtract Boolean 1	Subtract Boolean 2

Flatten Hierarchy

Masking Tin Objects Masking Tin objects is different than mesh because the visible geometry does not display the red masked area. Instead the masked red area is displayed on the Tin object's cage.



There are some viewing options which will assist in masking Tin. They are on the Display menu.

Display None	Display Cage

With these two option enabled only the cage ( no geometry ) will be displayed.

In this mode specific areas of the Tin can be easily masked.
When only a vertex is masked, the vertex and half the edges ( lines ) going in all directions receive mask. To mask an entire edge, both vertices need to be masked. To mask an entire loop all four vertices need to be masked.

Vertex Masked

Edge Masked

Loop Masked

This interface tutorial is written and provided by : Stephen Ray