Throwers

A Thrower is a helper virtual object that facilitates the mapping of content onto various Viewport objects by taking into account their position in the 3D scene of the Viewport.

Creating and using Throwers

You can create a thrower through Viewport's right click menu or by dragging from the Viewport toolbar.

You can change which thrower is placed by the Toolbar by holding your mouse over the tiny arrow near the Thrower's icon in the Toolbar.

Mapping content from a Thrower to Viewport objects

If you select any Viewport object, in its Content collapsible, you'll see a Sources section. In there, you can select the Thrower you would want to act as a content source of this Viewport object.

Alternatively, you can simply drag from a Thrower onto a Viewport object to map it.

Types of Throwers

There are 5 types of Throwers, each one of them projects (or throws) content in a different way: Perspective, Orthogonal, Spherical, Cubic and Cylindrical.

Perspective thrower

Perspective thrower content as a projector would.

In its Properties, there is a Frustum collapsible, which adjusts how the thrower projects the content onto the object.

Orthogonal thrower

Orthogonal thrower projects content in a parallel way.

By adjusting its size, you also modify the way the thrower projects the content onto viewport objects.

Spherical thrower

Spherical thrower throws content in all directions.

An example of equirectangular content.

It works best with equirectangular content.

Good to know: if your content appears horizontally flipped, use Horizontal flip checkbox.

Cubic thrower

Cubic thrower throws its content in all directions.

For the content itself it requires a cubemap. A cubemap is a texture where 6 rectangles, each representing one face of a cube, are positioned in a pattern as shown above.

Good to know: make sure the resolution of your cubemap is the same as the resolution of your Thrower.

This cube map then results in mapping as shown above.

Good to know: if your content appears horizontally flipped, use Horizontal flip checkbox.

If your content is split into 6 square textures, you can use To Cube Map node to combine them into a suitable cube map.