Article Preview
Buy Now
COLUMN
Shape Animation
An animation system based on Object3D's Shape property
Issue: 2.1 (August/September 2003)
Author: Joe Nastasi
Author Bio: Joe Nastasi is a full-time REALbasic consultant and the developer of A-OK! The Wings of Mercury and FTP Suite. He also wonders where the heck the last year went!
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 8,848
Starting Page Number: 38
Article Number: 2119
Related Web Link(s):
http://support.realsoftware.com/feedback
Excerpt of article text...
A new year of
REALbasic Developer and a new direction for The Topographic Apprentice! This month starts a series of articles that describe the design of an animation library that is based on Object3D's Shape property and facilitates the execution of shape animations. It will be fairly flexible and will be designed to be compatible with a yet-to-be-designed animation editor.The Concept
RB3D allows you to load more than one 3DMF model into an Object3D. The models could be a set of models of a figure walking, fighting, and falling down, for example. Each model is a slightly different pose. The Shape property is the vehicle that allows you to switch between models. If three models are loaded into an Object3D, the models are instantly switched by setting the Shape property to 0, 1, or 2. (The array that holds the models is zero-based.)
Let's say you've created a figure that has four running positions, two punching positions, and two blocking positions. This means a total of eight 3DMF models will be loaded into Object3D. It is important to load the models in the proper order because the loading order defines what Shape property value will access what model. Table 1 defines our models and their Shape value.
Pose Name File Name Shape ID
...End of Excerpt. Please purchase the magazine to read the full article.