Hi. With our PBR workflow, it’s best if there is a virtual annotator that is glued to where you stuck both ends of the annotator. Like a that found in drafting dimensions, you click the edges of two objects (it auto snaps to the edges smartly) and display that distance in units. It does not only annotate with calculation (as you move it displays the distance between the two object/actors. You can can lock this values in place so that when it’s accidentally moves or something not to rotate or move somewhere you can’t see in simulation, it tells you that something’s not suppose to moving. You can use it to measure distances between cameras, lights, skysphere, volumes, etc.
It also annotates scale as global to that object (or group) as well as local to changes in its vertex movements/displacement.
This innovative smart annotator is also used for measuring extrusion distance, vertex movements, edge movements. It also annotates rotation and scale for the object/actor as global and vertex movement as local (coz’ all of it is about simplified as vertex movement- it’s putting vertices somewhere be it locally on the object or as a whole when you “teleport” actors to a new location).
It also annotates shaders used (maybe the last 7) and within the shaders, it annotates last maps used.
The smart annotator, a live annotator would be a great tool to document a projects. It will be overwhelming with large maps with many object and many edits made to it. It would look like your regular drafting blueprint, like a map you get to see it’s dimensions especially and distances between objects, so when you get back to it (coz’ things are always forgotten how that was made). This would reduce the dependency on notebooks or notepads on computers. It’s best if the documentation is right there, as if it’s an illustration of how it was made. It’ll be easier to calculate placement of objects with consistency without trial and error with duplicate x this many times, compensating for object length or width or height, in this rotation, defining pivot point- that’s too much process just to quick prototype.
It could look like (but more detailed and smarter) for both orthographic and perspective:
http://www.mycadsite.com/tutorials/level_3/images/extra_3-002.gif
This smart/live annotator would make it possible to measure precisely real life lighting setup and distances and perhaps someday work with brands to have their exact bulb specifications and also camera brands so you can achieve the almost exact look of real life (coz’ it’s all about the photon physics that the GPU excels at).
Thanks. God bless. Revelation 21:4