Getting the Best Out of Alias 2019

ROBIN OLDROYD: So in the nick of time everything works, hopefully. When you're dealing with the iron, you're travelling, it's not the best thing. So I'm Robin Oldroyd, I am a technical specialist at Autodesk, and hopefully you're in the right class. We're going to be talking about Alias 2019. If you're not, then probably a good time to go and find the right class.

So this is a little bit about me. I work in the UK, or I live in the UK, but I look after customers across Europe focused mainly on northern Europe. But I'm part of the global automotive team supporting all the automotive customers and other large customers as well. So I came to Autodesk from Alias in 2006 when Autodesk bought Alias, so I've been around a while. And I was just saying to someone earlier that I actually was reminded how long I've been around because I met the guy that taught me Alias 20 years ago. I met him two weeks ago, and I met him 20 years ago when I first learned Alias, anyway.

So what we wanted to do with this class was really give you our view and the view of the 2019, all the things, the good bits, let's say, and just run through those things. I'm not selling you the software. I will tell you a few things that I found that you just got to watch out for or things that I have found that I had problems with. They may not be problems, but there's just a few hints and tips in there as well. So we want to illustrate Alias and show you the next installment and how we're modernizing Alias and moving it forward, and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a second.

So these are the objectives of the class, really show you what's in 2019 dot one and dot two. So in Europe, we do a presentation series called The Automatic Launch Tours, and I think we do it in North America as well. And when we started to talk about Alias, it was 2019, but since then we've had a couple of releases as well, and 2019.2 only got released last week. So it's kind of weird when you come to AU, you put a class in six months ahead, and then when it comes down to it, when you got to do the class, especially with Alias 2019, there's a lot more stuff out of there. So hopefully we're going to be good on time, but we'll see how we go.

So just a quick highlight about the product strategy, and this hasn't really changed for a number of years now. It's he similar goals and similar things. So we're talking about perfecting. We're want to perfect Alias and make it better for you. We want to remove all those extra clicks. We want to just refine, get rid of, all of those little things that make your day harder, but then also we want to look at things that we can do to differentiate. So differentiating is one of the other pillars where we're adding new technology into Alias and as I go through the presentation, it will become more clear of what we're talking about.

And then we also want to look to the future and bridge to the future, so we're putting a lot of effort and time into Alias to actually refine it and regenerate it, rejuvenate it, because there's a lot of old code in Alias. and so it needs to be cleaned and helped, so there's a lot of that going on, which is something you just don't see day to day, but you probably will see it from things that we've done today. So getting into 2019, just want to highlight some of the different things that have been done in the main release.

And when I talk about this, you might say, well, that was in such and such a release, and that was in-- so generally, when we get to the major release, we'll talk about things that have happened in the point releases just previous. Doesn't mean we're trying to pull the wool over your eyes. It just means we're just trying to let you know about the things that are going on. So there's three new innovative technologies, three new modeling tools, and one new navigation tool. And you think, oh, that's not much. Well, let's have the rest. Then there's another 65 modeling tweaks and enhancements, and I'm not going to be able to go through absolutely every one because we'd probably be here for a few hours. We only have one hour, so a lot of things to cover.

But I advise you, and people don't seem to do it very often, but go to the Help. Look at the Help. It's really quite full, and you can actually print it out and do it as bedtime reading if you want, if your sad like me. There's a number of performance enhancements as well. So there's some quite big things that we're trying to do, and that comes from all this code clean up that allows us to do. There's things that I thought we would never be able to do that we've added in in the recent years. I think that going forward there's a lot to come. Translation and user interface are always key obviously. Alias has got a very specific way of working, and as users in the room, I'm sure you're aware of how that helps you on a daily basis.

And then we highlight we're fixing bugs, because I think in the past the customers I talk to would get a little frustrated that they don't know what we fixed. You can get a list of all of the bugs fixed if you go into Autodesk account, there's a README file. You can get a list of everything, so you can see if we've done the things that matter to you. So this is a good point in time to say whenever I present, I like to just remind customers if that we don't know about it, we're not going to be able to fix it. And you think, well, you should know about it.

We don't use all of the same workflows, and so I really encourage you to go on to Autodesk account and log cases for this. And this isn't the same thing, but we have got some of the development team in the room from the XD side, which I'll introduce at the end. So you have an opportunity to talk to them about things that are happening in Alias, and have a direct conversation with them today. This room, handily, we don't have to leave, so we can stay in here and they can have those conversations after.

So actually, I won't run over 60 minutes because other people might have classes, but if you want to stay around, there's that opportunity to have that discussion. So we're highlighting the bugs we're fixing because it's important, that perfecting is an important part of that. So I've just taken a broad view of a design process, and automotive pictures kind of because I work in automotive a lot. That's where I pull my inspiration from. And what I'm going to do is try and just position some of the different features as we go through the workflow. So we're going to start with the 2D and 3D, and we're going to get somewhere down here on the images, but further down with some things for the Class A and so on as well and general everyday things is included in there.

So the first thing is the Photoshop Live Link. So we wanted to better connect 2D and 3D, because that's a simple thing to do. If we can allow your customers to enable you to actually have things, be able to import canvases, bring them in from Photoshop or Sketchbook, and have them live in Alias so that they are always connected, you can view, you can edit the layers in Photoshop, and then you can update the build so you can push it from-- or you can just save it from Photoshop and choose when you add it in.

So when you open up the canvas layer, that then is the sort of instigation of it looking to check if the file's still there. If the file is not there, it also allows you to reconnect it. So it really helps in that situation where you're a modeler working with a designer, and you could actually have that connection, and it doesn't matter where the file is. If it's on the network, it will still keep the link. Obviously, the link's got to be live, and you can't just you pull the network or whatever. So a really great tool to allow you to do more design collaboration, not do gestures in the air or talk about it in words. You can actually get something physical.

So a quick question to see who's in the room. So how many people in the room are modelers or would class themselves as modelers? How many people in the room class themselves as designers or that kind of thing? Visualization artists? Class A? Oh, we've got a whole raft of everybody. Management? A few? OK. So we got Everything OK, cool. So that was Photoshop Live Link, one point tool, but very useful and handy to have.

So I'm going to move on to computational design. Computational design is something that we've added into Alias by adding Dynamo and connecting to Dynamo. So Dynamo comes with the package. It's installed as part of the package, goes with all of the products, and it allows you to natively work in Alias, but then communicate and connect with Dynamo. So you've got one integrated development environment, so you don't have to go out to different packages, you can keep that connection and update. You'll see it in a minute. So Dynamo uses visual programming, and visual programming is something that non programmers and programmers can use and utilize. Two seconds.

So it also is about algorithmic modeling and automation, so you can create a model and reusable algorithms to explore your designs and automate a lot of those processes. So what we're trying to do is take away a lot of those repetitive tasks, or things that you would do as part your process that then enable you to be more free and creative. So what is visual programming? Well, a simple way of looking at it is we have here some nodes that are connected together. So we have a number of nodes wired together to automate modeling tasks effectively.

This is a simple example that is probably looks a bit silly. Well, I'm creating points and putting curves between it. Well, yeah, that's very easy to do in Alias, and similarly, we've got sliders then to drive it. But I just wanted a simple example to show you you have a number of modules or a number of nodes, you then connect them together to make them do different things. And when you see some of the larger scripts, they look very complicated, but the idea is that we deliver some templates or that you work-- and not everybody has to deliver those. You just have certain areas of those scripts that you would interact with and modify.

But actually, if you learn this and having gone through the learning process of Dynamo, it is very intuitive. It's surprisingly intuitive actually. So let's just look at what problems we're trying to solve. We will explore multiple designs quickly. That's one of the challenges we do everyday with our tools in Alias. We want to improve the transition from concept to design, so we want to have more iterations in that process. We want to do more on the design and less rework, so actually having Dynamo as part of this toolkit will help us do that and maintain that design intent throughout the design process.

So bringing computational design and Alias together really gives us the connection of helping us to bring data together, information, imagination, and intent and combine them together to work together in a specific environment, and it's a framework for us to deal with algorithmic design and build some functional goals. And we can combine computational design with Alias modeling tools. So tools you use every day, we're going to combine that with it and it unlocks that fundamentally new approach for using Alias as a design software but radically changing the way you could do things and evolving it and going forward.

So here we've got an example of Dynamo just running in the side, and it enables you to create complex patterns and textures. So here we've taken a surface, we've gone into Dynamo, it's bi-directional, so we can connect the nodes, and as the node connects back to Alias and vise versa. So we can go into the pattern and we can start to create complex patterns and shapes like this that usually you would have to do by hand. I've had many customers ring me and say, well, I need to create this texture. It looks like this, and it fades here, and it's got all these patterns, and it's got a scale.

And this is what Dynamo can really do for us. It really can add all that power to it. And then you can define how it's going in the direction. So you can iterate quickly on things, you can add logic and behaviors, and as you build this as a suite of tools in your own studio, you'll start to use it more and more, but you'll also expand it. And so my job here is just to show you the art of the possible a little bit. What is possible with Dynamo and then look at potentially what's happening, things we're doing to maintain and go forward.

So actually removing repetitive tasks is a great one, because how many times we do something in a pattern and then we have to change it because the designer wants to change it? Well, actually he's got the sliders, he can just change the values, the attraction, the number of controls. And you saw in the Dynamo window, there's different ways you can highlight different areas. So you can actually just say, well, you just deal with these controls here and that will give you all you want. You can go and do it yourself. And that geometry is compatible downstream, so just imagine where you could take this.

If you start to build this through, you could start to build tools that help you build in your own design themes and things. You could be using it for more engineering based tasks. So we've got things that we could do in Alias, like you could build a draft, you could create something, you could then modify the draft and have it all update and push things through, and you'll see that in an example in a second. So in the process of doing this, it is a very wide topic, and I think if you just look at AU, the amount of Dynamo classes for different streams there have been, it is quite incredible.

So what we first had to do was categorize really the different types of patterns and different types of tools we're going to create. So here you've got a set of examples of this. So we defined what patterns were, what surfaces were, what volumes were, and what lattices were. Because by doing that, we wanted to build a set of templates that you could use straightaway. And those templates are there for you to edit, move, do whatever you want with, but you need a start point with all these things.

So we worked with Mode Lab. And I don't think Ron is in the room, but he around somewhere. So Ron from Mode Lab-- we've been working with them. And Mode Lab helped us build those templates. So with 2019, I think you get 12 templates that you can download. They don't come with the software specifically. They come online on a large network. Because if they're on a large network, we can keep refreshing and adding to them without having to follow the release cycle of the product.

So these are the examples. And if we just go into here, this is the Dynamo Resources. So we've organized things. And I'll bring up some slides in a minute of how you can get on the training. But there's a lot of resources in there to help you.

And there's a slide coming up later which I'll take a picture of. I am going to upload. And apologies that the presentation wouldn't upload, but I will upload it after the class, because it should be on there.

So these are the templates that come with 2019. You've got things for doing wheel rims. You've got light can design, surface texture and patterns, home assistant type of configuration. And we say home assistant, but it could be all sorts of things within product design as well. Automobile grills as well. And as I say, that will go forward, and we'll talk a bit more about that later.

So I wanted to show a couple of examples, because it's interesting to just understand the process. So we're in Alias. We go into to the Transform Tools, and we've got Dynamo. You click the button. It starts Dynamo in the background, or it pops it up and brings it as a front window. We load in the Dynamo file, and then we can do whatever we want in Alias.

You see there's a Send button. And actually, in 2019.2, we've improved that so you can only send one thing until you've connected it. You can't then send another thing, because you keep hitting a button and expect to do things.

So what happens in here is we're connecting to an Illustrator file. So it's using a workflow of Alias, Dynamo, and Illustrator. And that Illustrator file, we've just switched out. But you went back to Alias, and you can see that it's driven and created the geometry.

So because this script is taking things, the curve, to generate the revolve-- it's a very simple example-- then it's pushing back the geometry into Alias once it's done it. But in that script, it's also connected to Illustrator to take the patent information. So when we show this, and when we switch it back and forward, you can then change it, or you could do this live in Illustrator and just save the file and either overwrite it. But the many variants would say keep them and just relink them. So that's one example.

Then I've got another example from one of my colleagues, James Cronin-- you may know him-- where we're going to build out this profile. And we're going to build a shoe sole. And so he's building kind of the normal bump on the shoe. And he's using that as the input to create in Dynamo. So that's the first input, because he wants it to pattern across the bottom of the sole. So we go into Dynamo. The script's there. We can go in now and start to link up the different textures.

But not only do we want to just add in the link for the geometry. We want to add in some of the parameters to help us control it. So if we go in here, you see we've applied the texture. It runs across the surface. It's set by certain boundaries.

No shoe has the sole evenly distributed all over. So if we go into Sketchbook, we can then start to put in some ramps and some textures, can draw in some lines and fills. And we can use that as a texture to control how the displacement is. And by driving those two, it means that we've got a whole host of complicated things. Imagine modeling that and repeating it and trying to get it right in Alias. It would take you days. And it's guaranteed that the designer would come along and want to change it. But you know, that's why we have this.

So we've created this. I didn't watch what he was doing. But we're going to now apply some different textures that he's just created to this. And you'll see it update, where it changes the repeat and density of the pattern. A great example of, I think, showing what Dynamo really is going to add and help. So now he's going to draw in some other textures, because, you know, the pattern on the shoe is always different. So the white areas are going to help us add deformation and make the pattern raised.

So once he's finished adding the textures, we save it out, go back in, relink those up. And then you'll see it'll lay onto the textures. So this is really powerful in the kind of things. We're using things that are more natural in design, sketching, and illustration to drive things in a modeling environment. And that's amazing. Well, I think it is anyway.

But then we're not finished, because-- well, actually we want to go and change the element. You know, we could swap out the piece of geometry we started with as the stud of this. So we could go back in, and we could edit that. And that would also update. So we could swap it out for a different type. Or we could just scale it up, or we could change the draft angles. Or, you know, just think of the different things you could do. There's a mass of things. So he's just going to go modify that, make some changes, and then that will update into the model as well. So history in Alias is then driving that pushback to Dynamo, and then we get the change back into the actual model. OK.

So then James did some renderings of some of the examples that he'd created. And they look pretty cool, better than VRED, I believe. That's the one that we've just really seen. But a great way of doing this kind of texturing and stuff.

So this is how you can learn more. And 2019 was the first release for the Dynamo integration, OK? And it's going to take us a little while to get to the same scale as the Bim group. But these are the learning resources that you can go. And Shinji is actually in the room, who's doing a YouTube video as well. So if you look on YouTube, Alias Dynamo, he's putting some videos out there of common problems that he gets asked by customers or we come across and then ask him if he could do it, which is great.

So you've got all these different things, forums GitHub, DynamoBim. Obviously that's more for Bim, but you never know. There's going to be maybe a lot of crossover. And what we're now trying to do is build this community, hence why we've been working with Mode Lab to get the templates. We're continually working with Mode Lab to basically keep generating more templates as well as customers tell us what they want.

There is also probably a need once you've got the basics of Dynamo to actually-- if you've got a certain project or type of thing you want to do, Mode Lab will work with you, and other people are out there as well, who will work with you to support you in one of those first projects to help you get it done. And I'm not sure in North America of which partners can do it. But the partners were all fairly well versed in Dynamo as well.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ROBIN OLDROYD: Sorry?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ROBIN OLDROYD: OK. Yeah. So this is an example of one of our customers in the UK Tata Motors, TMETC. And Pierre-Paul did a presentation at our automotive innovation forum in Munich. So every February, March, we have an innovation forum. And luckily, Pierre-Paul was using the Dynamo connection in the beta program. And he started doing some amazing things, so we asked him if he could present what he'd done. Because always proof is in the actual doing of it and showing it. Showing these examples is fine, but having a customer do these kind of things is great.

And if you search on LinkedIn, you'd probably fine Pierre Paul. He created a little writeup on it. I'm not sure there's a video of it, but he did create a little writeup of it from his talk at AIF.

So let's move and change a little bit. So let's talk about perfecting. We talked about some more whiz-bang stuff, like some cool new stuff that we've added in. So let's talk to some things that will help you day-to-day, OK?

So File Import Export, File I/O, is something that we all do every day. We probably save I don't know how many times. We should have done a study on it to work out some figures. But quite a lot.

So in 2018, for a 600-megabyte file approximately, takes about 57 seconds to open it. OK? So with parallelizing and tessellation on this, that's going to help and improve the performance. Means we can load the model faster, saves you a little bit of time. Maybe gets that pressure off your shoulder when your boss is getting you to do something.

So 2019, we wanted to improve that. And we got that down to 21 seconds. Different files, different data types will vary in how much. But we're getting a three times improvement with the example we had.

But we didn't want to stop there, because then we got another file with symmetry on, and that was taking 75 seconds. OK? So it's a comparable example, but also just showing when you've got symmetry on that it might take a little bit longer. That equally is down to 25 seconds. So there's a couple of points where it's coming to save time.

And then in Alias 2019, if you save it without symmetry on, it's only 10 seconds. So there's a bit of a hit with the symmetry being on. And maybe it's a bit of learning for us there as well. But that's great, because hopefully that's just going to save you a bit of time. It's not going to be a world beater in doing things, but it's just going to give you a few more minutes in the day, probably more than a few more minutes. Maybe you can go and get yourself-- well, you won't get yourself a coffee, because you're not waiting for the file to open and close.

So performance enhancements as well. We've also got a number of things in the Section Editor, Cross-Section Editor. So this tool, if you took a similar sized file, roughly 500 megabytes, and you wanted to put sections across it, which you probably wouldn't do across the whole file, it was going to take you five minutes in 2018, which is not comparable with our competitors. And it's just probably not acceptable. You can't wait that long for sections to be put onto a model. So we made some really good improvements in 2019, and got it down to 36 seconds for this file example, which means that you can actually start to use the tool in more confidence that you can get what you need.

The other problem is then that actually if you altered those sections, or you put curvature combs on, and you refine the curvature combs, that's the next big hit. You've got your sections, but you then haven't got the right settings. So that's going to take another four minutes. OK, design manager's walked out the room, and he thinks you're a total dunce, because it wouldn't work. So now, hey, 3.5 seconds. So that's really good, because that means you can start to use these tools. I'm seeing some nods, which is good.

And on average, we're finding files that we're working with, it's two minutes down to two seconds, which is a pretty staggering improvement. And it do try it yourself. It's no smoke and mirrors. It does work, as you can see in the video actually.

So some other things that have changed. So I'm just going to cover 2019.2 at this point, because it just makes sense-- or 2019.1. I get confused. It's in 2019 somewhere.

So the Cross-Section Editor has changed a little bit. But again, it's these little refinements. So we've added some tick boxes down the side here so that we can choose which sections we're going to select and apply in one hit. You also will see if you use the Cross-section Editor, Global has become all objects. And if you also go into the Tool tab, we've added the dynamic cross-section into this editor. So you can directly get all your sectioning tools within the same area, OK? And then we've also added in a line width for the draw style. There's a couple of other enhancements as well, but those are predominately the main ones that we've added in, in Section in the point releases. So this continued refinement on the quarterly recycle really helps us just to do these little tweaks as we go forward, which hopefully is the way you want and appreciate.

So Trim. There were a lot of different trim enhancements between 2018 and 2019. So I'm taking catchall and saying it's 2019 when it probably isn't, OK? So in the Trim tool, we've got a number of different options. We've now got a Show Preview, Chain Select, Trim History, and Mouse Defined Actions.

So the Mouse Defined Actions is using your mouse to get trim, divide-- sorry, trim. Trim-- you know what I'm talking about. Trim-- keep, remove, and divide. Thank you. Sorry. I would like to say it was a late night, but it certainly wasn't. So you can use your mouse to do all those things. And it just is helping you in the operation.

But the other thing is, we've got a preview. So you see this yellow border? When we trim this, I specifically don't do all the trims and leave a gap. So when you shade it, you've got a gap. You go back and revert it. You actually now get all your crosshairs.

So imagine you've been working on a grill with a really complicated pattern. And you go and do that grill. You've got it all nice, and you trim it. And you go, oh, that one! You go back, untrim it. All of your crosshairs would have gone. So now you can keep those in the toolbox, and you can use those to maintain this history. It won't work for something that was prior to 2018.2 or something, I think. So when you get to 2019, if you're trimming things, it will only apply it. And you have to turn it on, OK? It's a choice, because there's some things in there.

The other thing that's worth noting as well is we've got the Show Preview. If you've got a rather large file-- and I'm pointing it out because I want you to know-- you might find that the click is a second or so before you see the crosshair, OK? So if you don't need the preview, just turn it off, because the amount of data in there, there's some performance hit. And there's a bug request in for improving it. So that's the trim. And that's-- Show Last Selectors. I'm using different terminology, Trim History. It's Show Last Selectors, but hopefully you got the idea.

So then I'm not done, but I'm just pausing to highlight some of the other stuff, because I think it's also important. And I'm not going to go in great detail, but Check Model gets some options. So now we can define the tolerances in the toolbox. Because we don't want to go and change our construction preferences, do a check, and then we carry on modeling, and we forget we've changed the construction preferences. We just want to do it at a discreet moment in time. So doing that in the tool is a great way to do it.

Also 2019.1 is a 50% performance improvement. So we should not forget that. But that's difficult to kind of illustrate here.

Curve-to-curve deviation. We've got a max curve density. It's not a performance improvement, but it's just a way of you being able to limit the amount of things you're making the computer do. You use that to help you do things.

We've got the active tool. So now it appears in the top left. In the point releases, 0.1 and 0.2, we added a few things so that you can now put that on the right-hand side. So I can imagine someone went, oh, I'm right-handed, I want it over here. And Alias's great thing is it's so flexible. And so it now also has options. So you when you pull up on the tool, you can just double-click and open the option box as well.

Seams were added to the Stitch tool. Merge Shaders in the Multi-lister And then we've got a couple of things in the Object Lister. So when you've got the Object Lister up, you can go and hover over the group note, and it will show you what's in that group note. And it will pop this window out, and it'll appear. If you have a layer, you can do the same. And there are a few other enhancements and tweaks to the Object Lister as well. Again, worth reading the notes, but there are the highlights.

Chamfer gets a proportional crown option. So now when you've created your chamfer surface, you can just grab the handle in the middle and just crown it. Alt-D for rebuild hotkeys. So now when you're working away, you don't have to go all the way to the control panel. Hit Alt-D pop it up in front of you, make your change, and carry on.

CV Centroid-- this is more a reminder for some other things. But CV Centroid is part of the center point, but also something that has been long awaited is the pivot point on canvases and the fact you can snap it and move it. And yeah, I used to get asked that all the time, so I'm very glad we've done that. That's pretty one of those little things that really matters.

And then same scaling of objects of different size. So there were some issues with different objects scaling in different ratios. Now when you pick a group of objects, you can scale them as you would expect.

So keeping going, because there's a lot more. We've halfway through. So yeah, look out. I should just put all these bullets up. Let's do that. This there. This looks easier. Broken slides.

So the Look Around tool-- and this was one of the tools that, as an Alias user, I held down the Shift and Alt when I was using the tool. And I had to ring a colleague and go, this doesn't work. I can't get it working.

So the idea behind the tool, the Lookaround tool, is it's a new viewing tool. You click your point of interest, and then it will switch you from your head view to the point of interest. And you'll be looking at where you were stood, OK? And then it allows you to rotate and move around as if it was your head point. So you're moving around your head.

But you don't need your clutch keys, OK? So you can lift off your clutch keys and then just move around. If you hold your clutch keys down, it just doesn't work as you probably expect. And that just stumped me a little bit. It's one of those learning things that hopefully I can tell you and pass that on so that you don't miss it.

You can capture the lookout points as well with Variant. So the idea is that once you've done some specific views, you can then add them as part of your design review. So you go back and look at things again, use it for doing sight lines, those kind of things. But a really nice tool for navigating in a different way in Alias.

So this is where the demo gods are praying, because VR on a presentation is never a good thing. But I'll just talk you through VR, and then we'll look at it in the headset. So we've added VR to Alias. How many of you knew we'd added VR to Alias? That's cool.

So the reason we added it-- because you go, well, you've got VRED, and that's got VR. And then you've got other things, and they've got VR. Well, the idea is that we just want you to be able to come and do a walk-up review. So you're working on the tube. Your design boss or your designer comes up to you and says, hey, can I just have a look at this? You pick the surfaces, and you pop into VR. And you should need to do no more than that, OK?

So it works directly with Oculus, HTC. I'm using a Samsung Odyssey, because it's just easy to-- portable. And if it all works, then it will be used to set up and go. But you could see I was having a little bit of a problem earlier because of certain things. So let's flick over to the software.

And it's a good time also to just talk about some of the options. So we've added a number of options over the different releases and just refined the way the tool works, because you want different quality levels so you can set what it does when it puts in. It's a low, medium, high kind of setup. You now can choose different devices. So mixed reality wasn't supported initially, but it is now in the 0.1 and 0.2. You can ask it to detect the different device. And you've got also adjustment for the ground plane, because the ground plane can be in different positions. If you're working in Y0, and the center line is across the axle, you obviously need to compensate for that when you're working.

So let's just set it going while I'm jabbering on. Let's go high, medium. And let me just check-- oh, wake up. So this is usually where you start sweating. And it's not good when you've got to put a headset on.

So it's now doing auto-processing for me. It's going to take the model. It's going to do what it needs to do. And then we get in VR-- let me just check what's happening. It's in there, yeah. When we get in VR-- so the demo gods are looking down on me. Good.

So I'm going to put the headset on. So don't leave the room, please, because my presentation would feel a bit flat after that. So headset on. Hopefully-- can you see what I can see?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

ROBIN OLDROYD: I'm glad I asked that question. OK. So the idea is that I can go in--

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

ROBIN OLDROYD: It's having a joke with me, isn't it? I feel like I need a joke like, it's behind you.

[LAUGHTER]

Shinji, could you just come and try-- I don't-- I don't know why you can't just-- no, it won't help. Right. I'm going to do this the difficult way. It's not going to give you the full effect. All right. So yeah, I don't know whether putting it on is just actually causing the problem. Could you just hold it up? Yeah, thanks.

So I've got the controllers. And if I stand in front, you can see them here. Basically I've got a thumb pad here, which I press, and I then get a teleport. And this is going to be a bit weird. But it goes around corners as well. So let's-- you get the line. This is Sod's law.

Tell you what, let's just try one thing, because I wonder if it's Steam that's interfering. It doesn't need Steam, but it's dependent-- right. We'll keep going. So this is just-- I think you actually just shut it down. Yes.

AUDIENCE: Yeah, try and shut down the PowerPoint.

ROBIN OLDROYD: Yeah. Good old PowerPoint. Thank you. All right, let's go again. The good thing, it doesn't take too long to load. I am going to do-- get this done.

So the idea is on the controllers, you've got several different controls. You've got a flick here, the left and right on the analog switch. So you can go five degrees, I think it is.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

ROBIN OLDROYD: Huh?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

ROBIN OLDROYD: Yes. I think we might have to give up on it, because we're just going to run out of time. It's coming.

So on the controls, we've got sticks to move around. On the other controller, we can flick through the different variants. Come on. OK, I'm just going to explain it. It was asking too much. I'll try and get it working after, because, as I said, we don't have to leave if people really want to see it. It does usually work, but when you put a projector on things, it just doesn't help.

So you've on your analog sticks, you've got things that you can flick through the variants. You've got things you can flick through the angles. You can press the touchpad, and you can go through wireframe, shaded, non-shaded. We've just added in zebra striping as well. So you can actually put some kind of analytics on as well. The teleport when you press the thumbpad allows you to walk around the vehicle. So you can stand pretty much stationary, and it will teleport to different areas. We also now auto-recognize the headset in the settings. And we've added a number of different things in to allow you just to do various things.

The other thing that is really important that people don't know about, and I always get asked the question-- when you want to change the height that you're looking at and the position you were in-- so it always-- with a VR, it always sets it to the ground, whatever the VR headset would be. So the ground is always relative to the headset. If you're in an interior, that's not maybe the best, because you want to actually be able to use the height, the zed height, based on your viewing position. So you can go into the interior and crouch down without actually having to crouch down.

So if you use this in the _int in your variant, as you flick to that variant, it will then put you-- it will change the zed height instead of respecting what the mixed reality or the Oculus or HTC is doing. It's something that's in the Help, but as we know, we don't all read the Help all the time, especially when it's new stuff. So--

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

ROBIN OLDROYD: OK, we'll go again. So in your Variant Lister, you've got-- I can illustrate. You've got a viewpoint that's here. And if you've got the viewpoint that you want to be-- you've set it up with a viewpoint that sat down, because you're in the HMD, it puts you up here.

So when you put int-- when you name, sorry, the variant bookmark-- or the variant, you put int into it.

AUDIENCE: At the end of it.

ROBIN OLDROYD: At the end of it or the beginning, yeah.

AUDIENCE: It doesn't matter where?

ROBIN OLDROYD: I don't think it matters. I always put it at the end. But it then we'll switch. And I had one set up that would mean basically if we stood in the same place, I got int, and it would drop me down. Do you get that now? OK.

AUDIENCE: What is that distance based on? Where is it getting the value?

ROBIN OLDROYD: Well, it's getting that value from the viewpoint. Otherwise, it gets the value from where the HMD-- or the headset is to your head when you set the headset up. So it's either relevant to the ground on the headset, the normal way. If you put int in, it respects Alias's height position.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

ROBIN OLDROYD: Yeah. Yeah. OK.

AUDIENCE: In theory, you could do, like, a sky point with a top-down view.

ROBIN OLDROYD: Yeah. Yes. So let's get rid of that. Oh. There you go. It decided to wake up. So let's move on. Sorry about this. My computer is really trying to mess me up. Just a minute. Let me try and work out what the heck is going on. Ah. That's not going to help. All right.