Inherits NSObject.
Stores updatable rendering parameters of elements contained in a created makeup effect. Element instances are created from ElementTemplate instances attached to FeatureTemplate and or FinishTemplate used for creating the effect. Each ElementTemplate attached to both FeatureTemplate and FinishTemplate used to create the effect is mapped to a single Element.
Element is defined by the following:
- name : read-only member used for identification between different elements
- color : color of the rendered feature
- area : area where the rendering will be performed.
Color is stored in Color class which contains a 4 dimensional vector specifying red, green, blue and alpha channels.
Area is specified as a name of the image file that contains a greyscale image specifying how much of the color of this Element should be used at each fragment of the mesh used for rendering of the effect containing this Element. For each pixel in the area image, if the pixel is white 100% of color from this element will be used. If the pixel is black 100% of the color from the previous element will be used. The pixel values in between are lineraly interpolated.
Once an effect is created from a FeatureTemplate each ElementTemplate in the feature is mapped to one Element. The previous element of the first element in an effect is the output of the previous effect. If there are no previous effects displayed, the previous element is raw input image without augmentation.
The location where area images are stored is <path to platform dependent assets folder> + "/Textures/Area/" + Effect.type + Element.area where Effect.type is type of the effect containing this Element and Element.area is the area parameter of this Element. The location for storing of the color map is <path to platform dependent assets folder> + "/Textures/" + Element.texture.
Since the area image is used as a texture on a mesh used for rendering the feature it will only work correctly if the uv mapping used on the mesh matches the area image. This means that area images can be reused between effects only if the effects have the same type. Therefore, when specifying a new custom area image, the image file needs to be placed in the subfolder specific to the type of the effect new area was created for.
The available meshes are stored in .obj format in the "Assets/Models" folder of the package. UV maps from these meshes should be used when creating new area images.
