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Ventuz Introduction

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General

  • Index
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Ventuz Designer

  • Designer Indices
Introduction
  • Designer Introduction Index
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  • Working with Nodes
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  • Render to Disk
User Interface
  • Designer User Interface Index
  • Designer Interface
  • Renderer Window
  • Layer Editor
  • Property Editor
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2D Workflow
  • 2D Workflow Index
  • 2D Workflow
  • Layer Editor
  • Common Layer Properties
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3D Workflow
  • 3D Workflow Index
  • 3D Workflow
  • Hierarchy and Content Editors
  • Renderer Window
  • Camera Navigation
  • Manipulate Objects with Gizmos
  • Layer Editor
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  • Isolated Objects
  • Containers
  • Text Rendering
  • Character Sets
  • Geometry Import
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  • Particle System
  • Creating Realistic Reflections
  • Unreal Integration
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  • E2E Node Overview
Logic Workflow
  • Logic Workflow Index
  • Hierarchy and Content Editors
  • Content Editor
  • Hierarchy Editor
  • Working with Nodes
  • Property Editor
  • Containers
  • Project and Scene Data
  • Reading Data in Ventuz
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  • Input Subsystem
  • Multitouch
  • TUIO Protocol
  • Open Sound Control
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  • E2E Node Overview
Animation Workflow
  • Animation Workflow Index
  • Animation Workflow
  • Animation Editor
  • Content Editor
  • Hierarchy Editor
  • Property Editor
  • Animation and State Engine
  • Templates
  • Template Engine
  • Unreal Integration
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Project Structure
  • Project Structure Index
  • Annotations
  • Projects and Scenes
  • Project Properties
  • Project Maintenance
  • Project and Scene Data
  • Scene Management
  • Scene Statistics
  • Scene Tree
  • Performance Statistics
How Tos
  • Designer How to Index
  • How to Run Ventuz
  • How to Work with Designer
  • Ventuz Designer Drag&Drop Workflow
  • How to work with Shadows
  • How to Build Content for Multiple Screens
  • How to Use Emoijs
  • How to Build a Template
  • How to Use the Color Difference Keyer
  • How To Use the HDR Engine
  • How Create Lens Flares and Bloom
  • How to Create Visuals Loader Node
  • How to Remote Control with a Phone
  • How to use Head Mounted Displays
  • How to work with 3D Reference Layers
  • How to create a Firework Particle System
  • How to use DDS with new Block Compression modes
  • How to use the Substance Integration
  • How To Integrate Unreal
  • How To Integrate Notch
  • How To use the Vertex Integration
  • How To Control and Customize Ventuz
Reference
  • Available Nodes
  • Animation Nodes
  • Material&Color Nodes
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Ventuz Director

  • Index
  • Introduction
  • Environment
  • Show
  • User Interface
  • Assets
  • Taking Action
  • Property Editor
  • Shot Box
  • Project Data
  • Pages
  • Playlist
  • Timeline
  • Content References
  • Topology
  • Channels
  • Macros
  • Designing Templates
  • Plug-Ins
  • Shortcuts
  • Command Line Options
  • Application Settings
  • Glossary
  • GPI Configuration

Ventuz Runtime & Configuration

  • Runtime Index
  • Configuration Configuration Editor
  • Machine Configuration
  • Video/Audio Configuration
  • Web Configuration Editor and License Manager
  • Render Setup Editor
  • Warping and Soft-Edging Editor
  • Machine Clustering
  • Supported Hardware
  • Director Mode
  • Runtime How Tos Index
  • How to Configure Audio
  • How to Use Live Options
  • How To Play Out On Multiple Screens
  • How To Render on a Machine Cluster
  • How to Use Head Mounted Displays
  • How to Setup Spout with Ventuz
  • How to Use Newtek NDI
  • How to Use a Mixed Frame Rate Cluster
  • How to Use Tracking

How To

Designer
  • Designer How to Index
  • How to Run Ventuz
  • How to Work with Designer
  • Ventuz Designer Drag&Drop Workflow
  • How to work with Shadows
  • How to Build Content for Multiple Screens
  • How to Use Emoijs
  • How to Build a Template
  • How to Use the Color Difference Keyer
  • How To Use the HDR Engine
  • How Create Lens Flares and Bloom
  • How to Create Visuals Loader Node
  • How to Remote Control with a Phone
  • How to use Head Mounted Displays
  • How to work with 3D Reference Layers
  • How to create a Firework Particle System
  • How to use DDS with new Block Compression modes
  • How to use the Substance Integration
  • How To Integrate Unreal
  • How To Integrate Notch
  • How To build and playback Ventuz Content in Vertex
Runtime & Configuration
  • Runtime How Tos Index
  • How to Configure Audio
  • How to Use Live Options
  • How To Play Out On Multiple Screens
  • How To Render on a Machine Cluster
  • How to use Head Mounted Displays
  • How to setup Spout with Ventuz
  • How to use Newtek NDI
  • How to use a Mixed Frame Rate Cluster
  • How to use Tracking
  • How To Integrate Unreal
  • How To Integrate Notch
  • How To build and playback Ventuz Content in Vertex
Director
  • How To Control Multiple Graphics Independently From Each Other
  • How to use the Companion with Director

Ventuz Node Reference

ANIMATION
  • Mover
  • Alternator
  • Simple Control
  • Timeline Control
  • Anmation Rig
  • Keyframe Animation
  • Animation Group
COLOR/MATERIAL
  • Alpha
  • Fog
  • Ground Fog
  • Sky Box
  • Color to RGBA
  • HSLA to Color
  • RGBA to Color
  • Color Transformer
  • HLSL Shader
  • Color
  • Material
  • Color Picker
  • Substance Material
DATA
  • Database
  • Excel
  • JSON
  • RSS Feed
  • Resource Linker
  • Text File
  • XML
E2E
  • E2E Axis
  • E2E Data
  • E2E Control
  • E2E Layer
  • E2E Provider
  • E2E Node Overview
GEOMETRY
  • Rectangle
  • Rounded Rectangle
  • Gradient Rectangle
  • Overlay Rectangle
  • Cube
  • Circle
  • Sphere
  • Cylinder
  • Cone
  • Torus
  • Chart
  • Random Points
  • Mesh Loader
  • Geometry Import (Live)
  • Volume
  • Get Bounding Box
  • Arrow
  • Particle System
  • Path Renderer
  • Geometry Renderer
INTERACTION
  • Interaction Rect
  • Touch Button
  • Touch Excluder
  • Touch Marker
  • Touch Paint
  • Touch Pattern
  • Touch Proxy
  • Touch Ripples
  • Touch Transformations
  • Web Browser
  • Touch Teleport
  • Touch Simulator
INPUT/OUTPUT (I/O)
  • GPI
  • Joystick
  • Keyboard
  • MIDI
  • Mouse
  • Network
  • Open Sound Control
  • Serial
  • Timecode
  • DMX
  • HTTP
  • RamDiskWriter
LAYER
  • 3D Layers
  • 3D Layer Reference
  • 2D Layers
  • PSD Import Layer
  • E2E Layer
  • Others
LIGHT
  • Light Sources
LOGIC
  • Array Processing
  • Convert To Text
  • Cluster Synchronization
  • Counter
  • Date Time
  • Directory
  • Dispatcher
  • Enumeration
  • Expressions
  • Invert
  • Log
  • Loop Breaker
  • Math Effects
  • Matrix Operations
  • Scene Event
  • Script
  • String Operations
  • System ID
  • Text Splitter
  • Timer
  • Toggle
  • URL
  • Value Switch
  • Value Buffer
  • Variables
  • Visual Indexer
RENDER OPTIONS
  • Alpha Blending
  • Color Write
  • Alpha Testing
  • Clip Plane
  • Filter
  • Mask
  • Mirror
  • Effect
  • Render Cube Map
  • Draw Modes
  • Stencil
  • ZTesting
SOUND
  • Audio Clip
  • Sound
  • Volume Control
  • Audio Analysis
SLIDES
  • Slide Manager
  • Slide
  • Slide Port
  • Pivot
TEXT
  • Text Effects
  • Text Layouts
  • Text Rendering
TEXTURE
  • Background
  • Hatch
  • Image
  • Texture
  • SVG Loader
  • Gradient Texture
  • Live Video
  • Movie Stream
  • Movie Frame
  • Movie Clip
  • Texture Loader
  • Snapshot
  • Snapshot Framebuffer
  • Texture Saver
  • Video Source Selector
  • VIO Input
  • Spout Receiver
  • NDI Receiver
  • Substance Loader
  • QR Code
VR/AR
  • Tracked Devices
  • Draw Tracked Devices
WORLD
  • Axis
  • Billboard
  • GetWorld
  • SetWorld
  • Arrange
  • Ticker
  • Layout
  • Group
  • World Z Sort
  • YesNo
  • Switch
  • Spread
  • Filter Pass
  • Set Pass
  • Hierarchy Container
  • Scene Port
  • Content Container
  • Template Port
  • Container Info
  • Camera
  • Paths

Advanced and Development

  • Advanced and Development Index
  • Command Line Options
  • Ventuz IP Ports
  • Ventuz Machine Service
  • TUIO
  • .NET Scripting
  • HLSL Shader Programming
  • Ventuz API and SDK
  • Ventuz Extension API
  • Ventuz VIO API
  • Ventuz File Format (VFF)
  • Ventuz Stream Out API
  • Lens Calibration File for FreeD
  • E2E Node Overview
  • Unreal Integration
  • Notch Integration
Remoting
  • Remoting Index
  • Remoting Overview
  • How To Control and Customize Ventuz
  • Remoting 4
  • Remoting 4 via Websockets
  • Remoting 4 via HTTP
  • Director Remoting
  • Deprecated Remoting
  • Remoting Machine Signature

Misc

  • Presets
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Introduction

Table of Contents

  1. A Template-Based Workflow
  2. Installation
  3. License
  4. A First Look
    1. Creating a Show
    2. VMS & Runtime
    3. Window Layouts
  5. Cueing a Template
  6. Getting It On Air
  7. Project-Wide Values
  8. Planning Ahead
  9. What's Next?

Ventuz Director is a template-based show control application. Where the Ventuz Designer is an authoring tool used to design visually rich and highly interactive 3D content, Director focuses exclusively on the job of using such content as part of a larger show. In fact, Director does not even create any 3D output itself but sends control commands to the Ventuz Runtime which provides the full power of the Ventuz Rendering Engine.

A Director operator does not concern with graphic design but simply uses pre-prepared graphics in the form of templates and makes sure that the right information gets shown at the right time.

A Template-Based Workflow

So what are templates? A typical workflow starts with a designer creating a Ventuz project. He defines the look-and-feel of a project such as which colors to use in a bar chart or the style of an over the shoulder graphic. However, the actual content/values are usually not known at this point in time. So instead of storing the values shown in a chart inside the scene, he rather creates a template for the chart. A template defines what animations to play to bring it on screen, what the graphical elements the chart consists of and what animations to play to get it off again. Most importantly, a template also defines what values need to be filled-in at show time. In our example, those might be the latest update of counts during an election. The actual result does not matter for the designer, in fact he will most likely prepare the Ventuz Project weeks or months before the actual event occurs.

On the day of the election, the operator running the show grabs a copy of the Ventuz project and heads off to the show. He opens up Director and is basically ready to go. Whenever a bar chart is needed, he just selects it inside Director from the list of all templates he has been supplied with. He cues it, fills in the actual values and when the director of the show needs the bar chart, the operator just presses "take". It's that simple!

The remainder of this document assumes the reader is an operator and guides him through the second part of the workflow described above. It uses the demo content that shipped with the Ventuz installation and therefore being able to design templates is not required in order to follow the steps shown.

Installation

To install Director, download the latest installer from the ​Ventuz Website. The installer contains Ventuz Director, Designer and Runtime as well as a set of configuration tools. Once the download has finished,  double click on the installer. After reading and accepting the End-User License Agreement, choose the type of installation and location, press install and everything is ready to go.

Ventuz frequently publishes updates that contain both bugfixes and new features. Within a major version (e.g. v4.0.0-V4.0.x), only bugfixes are added to ensure scene compatibility and maximum stability. A new major release (e.g. an update of V4.0.0 to V4.1.0) can contain new features that may prevent older versions of Ventuz from reading files once they have been saved in the new release!

License

To use Director, a license is required. Therefore starting Director without a license will automatically launch the Ventuz License Manager. There are various Ventuz Editions that support cluster rendering, SDI output and more. If a license has already been purchased, see Ventuz Getting Started on how to activate it. Since this guide is written for new users, we'll instead focus on acquiring a Community License.

The screenshot above shows two entries: The first represents a Ventuz dongle that has been detected which contains no appropriate licenses. Purchased licenses are usually installed on a dongle so an operator can take the license with him when switching machines. For Community licenses, a license is stored on the machine itself instead of on a dongle. Visit ​Our Website to obtain a Community License Key. Once obtained, it can be activated in the Ventuz License Manager.

An active internet connection is required to activate and use a Community Edition Ventuz Installation!

While a Community Edition has some ​Functional Limits you can also try out the full potential of the Director using a PLE (Prototyping and Learning Edition) that will disrupt the operation of the Director repeatedly but offers the full functionality of the software. Both editions can be acquired in our ​Our Shop.

A First Look

When opening up Director by selecting the Ventuz Director entry in the Windows Start menu, the first thing a user sees is an empty workspace.

The center row of three icons represent the last three shows that have been opened which may or may not contain entries depending on - of course - if there have been opened shows before at all. The workspace also contains:

  1. Create new show
  2. Browse for show
  3. Open user manual
  4. Selected Topology
  5. Log message icon
  6. System time
  7. Project icon and name

In the lower right corner is the Messages icon. Whenever an error or warning is logged, this icon will flash red or orange respectively.  Click it to open up the message window that contains the full application log.  Click it again to hide the message window.

Creating a Show

We start by creating a new Show. Go to the File/New... in the main menu bar at the top of the application or press Ctrl + N on your keyboard. A show represents a single event or occasion. A weekly news show for example would consist of one Ventuz project and a show for each week. Each show has different content, but all use the same basic setup and the same set of templates.

To create the show, simply select the project it is based on from the list of previously used projects or search for it using the Browse button. If the project has not been set up for usage in Director yet, an additional dialog will appear requesting which of the scenes available in the project should be used. This information is written back to the project file and will not have to be entered on subsequent shows.

VMS & Runtime

As soon as a show is opened, a few things will happen in the background. Director will connect to the Ventuz Machine Service (VMS) that has been installed as part of the Ventuz installation process. You can find it on the right side of the Windows Start bar at the bottom of the screen (where for example the Windows volume control is as well). As a typical Windows machine has a number of services running, one usually has to click on the small triangle to reveal all other services to see the small "V" icon of the VMS. The V is green if everything is okay or red if there was an error. Hover over the icon to get more information about the VMS's status.

  1. VMS that has a valid connection to a running Ventuz Presentation Runtime (green status)
  2. A running Ventuz Runtime

In addition to the VMS, an instance of the Ventuz Runtime is started. This is the application that actually performs all rendering. Director just grabs the outputs and shows them inside it's own user interface. If there is an SDI-video board in the machine and it has been configured correctly to be used with Ventuz, the rendering output will now appear on the SDI signal.

For more information on configuring your Ventuz environment and especially getting SDI hardware to work with Director, see Setting up the Environment.

Window Layouts

Director uses a highly configurable docking window user interface. New windows as well as additional layouts can be added/removed via the Window main menu. In this menu, you can also change the visibility of windows.

All layouts are stored in the user-settings of the local machine and can also be bundled into the Ventuz Project file. So when opening a show for a project someone else has created, the arrangement of windows may look different from the default layout shown here and some windows may have been hidden or may have been removed from the layout.

The default layout contains two render output windows, one for on-air content and one for preview, in the middle of the workspace. Arranged around them are multiple docking windows which will be discussed as needed.

Cueing a Template

To get content on air, one first picks a template and puts it into the cue. Move the mouse to the docking window on the left labeled Templates and double- the 01NS1L thumbnail in the top left corner. Three things will happen:

  1. Director tells the Presentation Runtime to load the required scene. The first time you activate a template, this might take a few seconds depending on the size of the scene file. In the Show Control, the bar below the render outputs, the status text changes to "Loading 01NS1L".
  2. Once the scene is loaded, the Preview window in the middle of the workspace will show some dark gray bars and the text "First Line". This is how the template will look when we put it on air.
  3. The Properties docking window (right) generates controls to edit the values for that template. The 01NS1L template for example has a property called "First Line". Change the text inside the text box to "Welcome to the VHL". The preview window will update instantaneously to reflect your changes!

The fastest way to access templates is by pressing + on your keyboard's number pad. This opens the Shot Box where you can enter the first few characters of a template's name and select it from the filtered search result.

Getting It On Air

The preview is rendered internally by the Runtime but notice that it does not appear in the on-air (= Program) window. To put the template on screen, click on the Take Button on the left of the Show Control (just beneath the lower left corner of the program output window), or press F1. Again, multiple things happen:

  1. Ventuz starts playing the in-animation for the 01NS1L template and the template appears on screen.
  2. The Properties window gets cleared. The cue is ready to be used again.
  3. Cue another template, edit its values and take it. The Ventuz Template Engine inside Presenter will automatically choose the right animations to transition between the two templates.
  4. Press the Take Button without putting anything into the cue and the template goes off screen.

Project-Wide Values

A show often has properties that are not associated with one template in particular but the show as a whole. One example would be the current score in a football match, another the name of a guest speaker in a moderated panel. Instead of adding such properties to each panel, the author of the Ventuz scenes can declare them in a dedicated space, the Project Data, and thus associate them with the project in general instead of any particular scene or template.

Open the Project Data docking window via the Window menu in the main menu bar. By default, the Project Data window opens in the right docking area as an additional tab along side the Properties window. To give it more room, -press and hold on the "Project Data" label of the docking window. Then drag it to the drop area symbol that appeared on the top of the application window (small white/blue box with a triangle in it). As soon as you hover over that icon, a preview of how the window will dock appears. Release and the Project Data window is now docked to the top of the workspace.

To see the effects of this panel, cue the FS Scoreboard template. By changing the "HomeScore" property, the score shown on the scoreboard changes. when now cueing the Scoreboard template, the same score is shown here as well.

Planning Ahead

What if the show is following some form of script or the general order of templates is know in advance. There are three basic approaches/workflows to prepare for such an event:

  • Pages: Pages are snapshots of what you create inside the Property Editor. They contain both a template and it's data values and are stored inside your Ventuz project.
  • Playlist: The playlist allows an operator to create a simple list ("script") of what he wants to cue during a show.
  • Timeline: The timeline can record everything that is happening during a show or be used for playing back such a recording.

More details on these approaches and how they can be combined will be given in the respective chapters.

What's Next?

While this is basically all that is required to run a show, Director offers a lot more functionality for you to discover. The remainder of the Ventuz Director user manual will guide you through all of this and help you become a first grade Ventuz Director operator!

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