Getting Around trueSpace Page 11



Tutorials
Getting Around in trueSpace 5 and 6 Page 11 Quick-jump to topics in this tutorial: Help is available! Selecting views Finding the tools and options Creating a primitive Drawing curves with the drawpanel tool Selecting faces/edges/vertices Grouping and ungrouping Texturing (Texturing, Textures, Layers, Light emitting textures, Animated textures, Applying the texture) Lighting Animating (Animation Control Group and Animation Parameters, Keyframe Editor/Scene Editor, Rendering the Animation, Animation Paths) Simulations Rendering Layers in trueSpace 6
10. Animating Animation Paths Let's move on and learn about the various animation tools in trueSpace. From the object library load the Porche 911 car object into a new scene. We're going to drive this car around the screen and have a camera and spotlight follow it. Next load the figure 8 path from the path library. (Fig. 10.7) If you open the KFE/SE, you’ll notice that there is already something a play-range at the top, going out about 40 frames. This is linked to the figure eight, which is linked to the car. So even though we don’t have an actual animation track for the car itself yet, we can hit the play button and the car will run around the figure eight. This is a very simple way of getting objects to move around a scene.

Fig. 10.7
Pressing the Play animation button now will make the car move in a very small fig 8 motion. Not quite what we want. Make sure that the show path tool is enabled and use the object scale tool to increase the size of the path so that the path goes just off the monitor screen. Make sure that you hold the left and right mouse buttons down while you scale. Great, let's press the play button again and see what happens. The car moves around the figure of 8 but what we really want is for it to follow the path and turn around the corners. To do this we enable the "Look ahead" tool . Whoa!! doing this makes the car flip up on its bumper. Click the undo button to make the wheels on the car touch the ground again. When you use the "Look ahead" tool objects look ahead through their Z axis. What we need to do is change the orientation of the axis so that the z axis points to the front and the Y axis points upwards. This is easily achieved using the rotate tool with grid snap turned on. It also helps to move the axis to the center of the car as in the diagram. (Fig. 10.8) To do this in trueSpace 5 and 6, first we have to delete the animation. (In trueSpace 6.5, we don't have to delete the animation to be able to move the axes.) Open the KFE/SE and click on the + sign in front of the car object to expand the list of grouped parts and the animation connected to the car. Now right-click on the animation and select "Delete". (Fig. 10.9)

Fig. 10.8		Fig. 10.9
To move the axes to the center of the car, click on the "Move axes to center of object" tool (Fig. 10.10). It's best if you switch to "Draw objects as wire" for working with the axes (Fig. 10.11). Now either click on the "Object Rotate" tool and rotate the axes (you might want to right-click the grid snap button and enter 90 for the x, y and z values first), or enter x = 90.00, y = 0.00, z = -180.00 for the Rotation values in the object info box (Fig. 10.12).

Fig. 10.10	Fig. 10.11		Fig. 10.12
Hide the axes by clicking on the "Show axes" tool or using the Delete key. In trueSpace 5 and 6, since we deleted the animation, we have to redo it. (Load the figure 8 path, scale it and enable "Look Ahead" for the car.) In trueSpace 6.5, since we didn't have to delete the animation to be able to move the axis, we don't have to redo the animation, but we have to enable the "Look Ahead" option again. Play back the animation and the car correctly follows the path around the screen. Now let's add a camera somewhere outside the path and raised up a bit. To make the camera follow the car around the scene we need to first have the camera selected then click on the "Look at" button. In the KFE, you should now also see an Animation track for the camera. By using the Look-At function, we’ve linked it into the car's animation. Now if you play the animation, you should get a kind of drive-by effect as the camera follows the car’s movement. It is important to get the placement of your camera done before you use the Look-at feature, as once it’s linked to the car's animation, any movement or adjustments you make to the camera will be recorded as new animation movements. This could be used to do a ‘bullet-time’ type of animation where the camera flies around the car. While not exactly how they do bullet-time, it could be used to create similar effects. It's critical here for the camera to remain looking at the car to have auto record enabled first. After clicking the "Look at" tool your cursor changes to a glue bottle. You can now select the object that you want the camera to remain looked at. In this case click on the car. Now we need to change our view to be looking through the camera by selecting "View from object" from the views menu. We are now looking through the camera. Press Play and watch the animation. We can now see the car driving around the screen. Pretty cool!! (In the same manner as setting up the camera we can create a spotlight and animate it looking at the car moving). To make our on screen animation continuous right click on the "Play" animation toolbar button and select the "Loop" option. Now pressing play makes our animation keep on looping until we press the "ESC" key or double right click the mouse. We're almost there but our animation is only 40 frames long and therefore not very smooth. To finish off our animation of the car, load the KFE or SE. You are now confronted with a quite complicated looking screen. (Fig. 10.13) Don't worry it's quite straight forward working in here.

Fig. 10.13
Select the 911 car object. Notice in the right hand window (called the track view window) that there are 2 animation tracks. One controls the entire scene and the other controls the car. In this case we have only one moving object so it doesn't matter which line we work on. Anyway select the little black square on the end of the right 911 animation track. Drag this to the right whilst watching its frame position alter in the status bar along the bottom of the KFE/SE. Stop when you get to 200 frames. Exit the KFE / SE and play back your animation. You now have a nice smooth animation lasting 201 frames. 201 frames? Where did the extra frame come from? Don't forget our first frame is frame 0 so in reality one second of animation is from frame 0 to frame 29. In trueSpace it's often a good idea to begin at frame 1 (6.5 warning: The new animation features always assume that you will begin at frame 0 and then adjust the animation later. trueSpace will automatically record a KF even with auto record off at frame 0). Also when working on an animation, always return to frame 0 before continuing to work on your scene or make changes. trueSpace has another quirk that objects jump around as though animated unless changes are made at frame 0.
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This section was written by Nigel Doyle and James Diel with some contributions by myself. Copyright © 2002-2012 by Susan Lee.

Tutorials

Getting Around in trueSpace 5 and 6