3D Animation Concepts

CS0007

George Novacky

Overview

Creating a new world (slides 5 – 13)

Remembering camera position (slides 14 - 22)

Traditional Problem Solving in CS

Read and understand a problem or task specification

Design a solution (develop an algorithm)

Implement (code)

Test

Revise, as needed

Problem Solving in Alice

Read and understand a scenario – tell a story, play a game, carry out a task.A princess has been grounded by her

father (a wizard) and kept inside the castle. Being a rather rebellious princess, she has emailed the local dragon taxi service. The dragon will fly to the princess and she will climb aboard the dragon to escape from the castle – to meet some friends at the village dance club.

Problem Solving in Alice

Set up the initial scene in a new world Learning to set up a scene has a learning curve -- play with the scene editor an hour or so!

The princess example Setting up the initial scene

Select Template

Add Objects

Click on Add Objects button Toggles from code editor to scene editor

Scene Editor

Add objects to the world Two options

Drag and drop

Click on thumbnail; then click on Add Instance button

Position & OrientationObjects

are positioned in 3-D space have a sense of orientation have six degrees of movement (directions of movement)

Mouse Control Toolkit

To reposition objects in the world, use the buttons in the mouse control toolkit

Pull-down menu methodsAlternative technique for positioning object and subparts during scene setup.

Quad View – Relative Positioning

Empty quad view pane?

Scroll & Zoom controls can be used (usually) to reorient the camera view.

Controlling the camera

Not a part of programming concepts instruction

However, it is helpful because Moving the camera during initial scene setup can be disorienting

It is fun to manipulate the camera

Using a Dummy Marker during initial scene setup

Typically used for:Positioning large and small objects in a scene

Remembering camera positions for multiple scenes

Remembering where a “good” camera position is

Example

Giving the knight a sword

Dropping a dummy marker: Step 1

In the scene editor, click on the More controls button (right hand side)

Dropping a dummy marker: Step 2

Click on the Drop Dummy at Camera button.

Rename Dummy Marker

In the Object Tree, rename the Dummy object to a more meaningful name, such as originalPosition (not required, but very useful!)

Using a dummy markerTo return the camera to its original position, during scene setup

Pull-down the menu for on the move camera to dummy button and select the originalPosition dummy marker.

Save the world

This is the world that we will use in continuing presentations in this class.