Room Nodes

Rooms are the context for all 3D interactions in IMVU and act as the stage for members to display and arrange the Furniture in their Inventory. When creating a Room product you need to understand how furniture interacts within your 3D environment.

Introduction

Before your Room can be submitted to the IMVU Catalog, it will need to include Nodes that will allow furniture to be placed within it. These are called Furniture Nodes and they need to be placed by you before a sofa can sit on the floor, a picture hang on a wall, or a chandelier suspend from the ceiling.

There are three types of Room Nodes, these are Floor Nodes, Ceiling Nodes, and Wall Nodes. Each are named specifically for their Node type, and each has a Axis that points into the 3D space, depending upon their specific location.

Floor Nodes

Floor Nodes have their Z Axis pointing upward into the Room

Wall Nodes

Wall Nodes have their Z Axis pointing inwards towards the center of the Room

Ceiling Nodes

Ceiling Nodes have their Z Axis pointing downwards into the Room Within 3D Max, you can check the orientation of your Nodes by switching your Reference Coordinate System to ‘Local’ and select your Node(s):

Proper Naming
Room/Furniture Nodes are Linked to the Room’s Skeleton Node and need to be named accordingly:

Floor Nodes:
furniture.Floor.01

Wall Nodes:
furniture.Wall.01

Ceiling Nodes:
furniture.Ceiling.01

We recommend you limit the amount of Furniture nodes in your scene to 650 or less.

We arrived at this number assuming there would be at most 100 pieces of furniture in a room and each on of those would have at least 1 node and up to 99 nodes. Although the cost of each individual node is insignificant, multiplying that by thousands means a performance hit while chatting in 3D. So, 650 or less, please.

Furniture/Room Nodes need to be placed so that the center of the Node sits at the inward facing surface of the floor, wall, or ceiling. To be safe we recommend that the Node be nudged a little bit further into the space so that objects like pictures, doorways, or floor shadows appear within the room and not beyond the surface.

Since adding Furniture/Room Nodes to a 3D Mesh can be time consuming, we have created a 3D Max Example Model to help speed things along. You can find it here: FurnitureNodes.max

To import these Nodes into your Room model, choose File/Merge in 3D Max, then select those Nodes that you wish to import. We recommend that you import and place each Node type individually… so floor nodes go in first, get placed, then move on to wall nodes, etc. This makes the task less daunting and gives you the most control.

If you need to create more Nodes, just Duplicate the Nodes you Merge and place them wherever you need them. Each Node needs to be uniquely named, but their numbers do not need to be chronological, so if you are missing a few numbers you are still okay.

NOTE:

Since members can “nudge” their Furniture around while in Edit Mode, there is no need for the Nodes to be right next to each other. There is also no limit to the number of Furniture items that can be placed on a single Node (as far as we know).

NOTE:

If your Room does not include walls or a ceiling, there is no need to include them.

Updated on July 21, 2023

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