The ‘Visual Scripting System’ in SimLab Composer is a tool created to minimize the programming effort for non-technical users with no coding skills. Therefore, instead of writing the computer code in a text editor, the Visual Scripting tool allows the user to develop her\his desired programs via block diagrams using a graphical user interface. This makes the code easier to be written as well as to be understood: Any designer, artist or animator reading the diagrams can quickly grasp the flow of logic therein.
Getting Started
When you select the Visual Scripting from the automation workbench tools, the window shown in the figure below will appear. It contains four main parts:
1) Options for ‘Run’ the existing flow, ‘Create’ a new flow, ‘Open’ or ‘Save’ flows.
2) The ‘Main Object Groups Bar’, which includes the category titles of all the available sources and functions.
3) For each ‘Object Group’, corresponding ‘Sources’ and ‘Functions’ are available.
4) The ‘Work Space’, where blocks can be dragged, dropped and linked to create the desired flow charts.
Any flow in the Visual Scripting should consist of three main components: sources, smart blocks and connections.
A) Sources: Sources are used to define file paths and 3D nodes to be used as inputs for different blocks in the diagram. User can find several source types in the sources tab.
B) Blocks: Blocks are basically functions that (can) take inputs and produce outputs. Each block performs a single process. For example, the block in the left side in the previous figure takes an integer number as input and converts it to a string as an output. User can find several block types categorized into different tabs throughout the main bar.
C) Connections: Connections are used to make the whole flowchart meaningful by linking sources and blocks. They thus define which sources and blocks are connected. Accordingly, they arrange the execution order of the block diagram. The green ports on the blocks are not essential but they are very important to ensure the right execution order and to create dependencies between the blocks. To make the process easier for users, ports on each block are colored based on the data type that should be passed through them.
After completing the flow diagram, hit the run button to start the execution. A pop up message will appear once the execution completes. Flowcharts can be saved and shared to be used in different projects.
In this video tutorial below you can learn how to using the Visual Scripting System in the SimLab Composer.
