VS3D File Menu

1.1.4 Hammer - Load/Save/Import/Export.

"File / Hammer => Load Hammer (.vs3)..." : This will load a ".vs3" relief sculpture surface as a hammer tip. After selecting a file, the "Load Hammer Surface" dialog will appear. This dialog has four settings.

• "Insert Mode" : "Load" - replace existing hammer tip with surface data from file. "Merge" - the resulting hammer tip height (at each hammer tip grid point) is the greater of: the existing hammer tip height, and the imported surface height.

• "Minimum Height Threshold" : This specifies what value in the imported surface height is mapped to the hammer tip height of 0.

• "Maximum Height Threshold" : This specifies what value in the imported surface height is mapped to the hammer tip height of 1.
  
• "Sampling %" : This determines the sampling rate for the imported data before it is loaded/merged. Normally, this should be set to the default - which will cause the imported surface to be scaled to fit the hammer tip XY grid size.

The hammer tip is, essentially, a small sculpture grid with surface heights always ranging between 0 and 1. After scaling the incoming surface heights (using the Minimum and Maximum thresholds), any resulting values less than 0 are set to 0, and any resulting values greater than 1 are set to 1. The current hammer tip is shown in the small window at left when the main mode is set to "Hammer".

"File / Hammer => Save Hammer (.vs3)..." : This will save the current hammer tip to a ".vs3" file. The saved surface heights will range from 0 to 1.

"File / Hammer => Import => VS3D Raw ASCII (.vsa)..." : This will load a ".vsa" file as a hammer tip. After selecting a file, the "Load Hammer Surface" dialog will appear. This dialog is exactly the same as that for the "File / Hammer => Load Hammer (.vs3)..." menu.

"File / Hammer => Export => VS3D Raw ASCII (.vsa)..." : This will save the hammer tip as a ".vsa" file. The saved surface heights will range from 0 to 1.

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