3D Animation Concepts

1. 3D Animation Concepts CSC1401 Steve Cooper

2. Overview • Creating a new world (slides 5 – 13) • Remembering camera position (slides 14 - 22)

3. 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

4. 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.

5. 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

6. Select Template

7. Add Objects • Click on Add Objects button • Toggles from code editor to scene editor

8. Scene Editor • Add objects to the world • Two options • Drag and drop • Click on thumbnail; then click on Add Instance button

9. Position & Orientation • Objects • are positioned in 3-D space • have a sense of orientation • have six degrees of movement (directions of movement)

10. Mouse Control Toolkit • To reposition objects in the world, use the buttons in the mouse control toolkit

11. Pull-down menu methods • Alternative technique for positioning object and subparts during scene setup.

12. Quad View – Relative Positioning

13. Empty quad view pane? • Scroll & Zoom controls can be used (usually) to reorient the camera view.

14. Controlling the camera • Not a part of programming concepts instruction • Only text coverage is Tips & Techniques 8 • However, it is helpful because • Moving the camera during initial scene setup can be disorienting • It is fun to manipulating the camera

15. 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

16. Example • Giving the knight a sword

17. Dropping a dummy marker: Step 1 • In the scene editor, click on the More controls button (right hand side)

18. Dropping a dummy marker: Step 2 • Click on the Drop Dummy at Camera button.

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

20. Using a dummy marker • To 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.

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

22. Textbook • More information • Setting up a scene • Chapter 1 • Appendix A • Problem solving in Alice • Chapter 2, Section 1