Testing Exported 3D Models
The PVRShaman tool supplied with the PowerVR Tools and SDK package allows viewing POD files outside of ZapWorks Studio. Although the lighting and rendering is not identical to that used in Zappar, this remains a useful tool for checking that the required objects and animations have been exported correctly. To get a more accurate preview of how the file will look in Zappar, uncheck the "Default Lighting" option in the "Render" menu. For most 3D models you will also want to ensure the "Depth Test" option is checked, and you might need to alter the "Culling" option depending on the setup of the 3D model. "Disable Culling" will ensure that all the triangles in the object will be shown regardless of which direction they are viewed from.
If the POD file is exported into the same folder as the image textures then PVRShaman should automatically load the textures when the POD file is opened. If it cannot find the referenced image files it will allow the user to edit the paths to the texture files used in the POD file.
PVRShaman also supports changing the textures associated with the different materials in the POD. Although POD and PVRShaman support associating materials with shaders and "effect files", Zappar currently only supports simple textures for materials from image files.
To edit any of the materials in the POD, double-click the name of the material in the "POD Explorer" panel on the left of the PVRShaman window. This will allow you to browse to a different image file to specify the texture, which should be placed in the same folder as the POD to allow for easy import into ZapWorks Studio.
If you have altered any of the paths to the textures inside PVRShaman, you will be able to save out those changes to the POD file. This should be done before attempting to import the file into ZapWorks Studio.
The other tabs in the Material Properties window will not affect rendering in Zappar, but can be used to obtain a better approximation of Zappar's rendering inside PVRShaman. Specifically setting the "Diffuse" values in the "Colour" tab to white (1.000 in all channels), and setting the "Translucent" Blend Operation for any textures containing transparency should give a better idea of how things will look in Zappar.
The rules for texture images are the same as in ZapWorks Studio in general – they must be power-of-two sizes (width and height must be 64, 128, 256, 512, etc pixels) and in JPG or PNG format. For file-size reasons we recommend JPG format unless the texture requires transparent or translucent pixels, in which case the PNG format can be used. Textures should be as small as possible to reduce download size and memory usage.