Note: if you unintentionally leave the Tutorial you can get back to it by clicking the Start button on the toolbar.

Basic Motion Tutorial
This tutorial will allow you to select an Animoid and move it's arms and legs. You'll find out how to move the camera to get different views of the Animoid.

This is a basic task you'll need to be able to do before you can start to edit Animoids.

Load an Animoid for Editing
Click on the Characters and Props tab to start to work with the Animoid you used on your last session.

If this is your first try, you'll get the default ("untitled") Animoid.

Note: you can't issue any commands while the Animoid is loading.

If you'd rather select a different Animoid: select File, New from the Main Menu. When the Select File Type dialog appears:

select Animoid to choose an existing model.

(Note: the Movie Set and Movie Scene options are disabled when Skill Level is Novice.)

A new Dialog will appear:

Browse through this Dialog and single click on the Animoid you want to view or edit.

If you want to start building an Animoid from scratch, select File, New from the main menu.

Position the Camera
When the Characters and Props session starts, the Camera Action Button is selected and the Camera Control opens automatically. The CAMERA Control Panel looks like:

The easiest way to move the camera is just to click on the 3D Canvas and drag your mouse:

• Left click and drag to rotate.
• Right click and drag to move side to side, up and down.
• Center click and drag to move back and forward.

However, you can also select the sliders on the CAMERA Control Panel with your mouse and drag them.

Note: the Field of View option on the CAMERA Control Panel has no equivalent mouse drag option on the 3D Canvas.

If you lose the Animoid just press the Reset button to restore the camera to it's default position.

If you click on the Pan checkbox then the sliders change to allow you to slide the camera from side to side - as opposed to rotating it around the Animoid.

Note that, if you move the camera too close to the Animoid you end up inside it! Since the skin of an Animoid can only be seen from the outside you can end up seeing nothing if you look inside an Animoid! Animoids are made up of overlapping segments. So, sometimes, when you pass through one segment, you'll see others inside. You can see that in the next picture where we have zoomed the camera inside the head.

If the Camera Control itself ever gets lost you can open it again by clicking Camera Action Button .

Branches and Root Segments
Animoids are built out of Segments. Segments start life as cylindrical tubes. However you can use the tools within the ANIMOIDS program to change the shape of those tubes.

There are two types of Segments:

• Linked Segments are Segments that are attached to a "Parent" Segment.

  These Segments are best for things like arms and legs. Because when the "Parent" Segment is moved, any Linked Segments attached to it automatically move.

  The only way to translate the start position of a Linked Segment is to move its Parent.

  You can rotate a Linked Segment. It rotates about the attachment point to its Parent.

• Root Segments are Segments that are not attached to a Parent.

  You can both translate and rotate a Root Segment. However, if you construct an Animoid out of all Root Segments it will be very difficult to animate since moving any one Segment will have no effect on the others.

A set of linked Segments is called a Branch.

Rotate a Segment
Since most Segments are linked to a Parent Segment, you can't actually move the Segment without moving its Parent. However, you can Rotate the Segment about the point where it joins its Parent.

First, click on the Segment Action Button , to make sure it has a green border.

The Rotate Segment Control should appear. It looks like:

Once the Action Button is selected, just click on a Segment on the 3D Canvas and drag to rotate:

• Left click and drag to rotate around the local X or Y axis.
• Right click and drag to rotate around the local Z axis.

Moving the three sliders in the control panel has the same effect as the mouse drag actions. However, before you can move the Animoid with the Control Panel you need to Pick the segment that you want to move.

If you try to move the sliders before you pick a segment then you'll get a warning in the Status field that looks like:

To pick a Segment simply click on an arm or leg of the Animoid. You should notice that the Selected Target field changes to name the segment you picked. E.g.

Picking segments can sometimes be difficult in three dimensions - especially if the segment is small or hidden by other segments. So you might sometimes find it easier (or more reliable) to pick a segment by clicking on that Selected target field and choosing a segment by name from the resulting list.

Once you have successfully picked a Segment then you can use the three sliders in the control panel to start moving that segment.

When the branch checkbox is checked (which it is by default), you can rotate an entire downstream portion of the Branch rather than just moving the selected Segment. E.g. when branch is checked and you move the upper arm, the lower arm, hand and fingers move also.

However, the branch motion is currently computed by applying the selected X, Y, Z rotation to the local axes of each segment. If the axes of the branch segments are not moderately well aligned to start with, then the resulting branch translation may not turn out to be exactly what you hoped for. Give it a try. We think that you'll find that sometimes this is an exceptionally useful feature. Other times you'll need to move segments individually.

Once you move a segment you have effectively edited the Animoid. So the next time you close the application or switch to another Animoid you'll be asked if you want to save your changes.

Reminder - save good changes often - undo (CTRL-Z) is not supported for all actions!

Tips

When the Animoid is in it's default position (facing forward)

• the X axis points to the right of the screen,
• the Y axis points to the top of the screen and
• the Z axis points off the screen (towards you).

That Control looks like:

This control works much like the Rotate Segment Control described above.

However the Move Root Segment Control allows you to translate the entire segment (Branch) side to side, up and down or back to front.

As before, you can also move the Branch by dragging your mouse on the 3D Canvas:

• Left click and drag to move left or right, up or down.
• Right click and drag to move back or forward.

When you click on any Segment to select it, ANIMOIDS figures out which is the associated Root Segment and uses that for the translation.

When you move a Root Segment, any Linked Segments attached to it also move.

Since linked Segments are so useful, it's quite possible that some Animoids are built out of only one Branch. In that case, the Move Branch action will move the entire Animoid!

Just remember - although it may seem easier to build your characters out of Root Segments you might make your creation much harder to animate. The main goal of ANIMOIDS is to make it easy to build animated characters. So use Linked Segments for things like arms and legs that normally stay attached when moved!

More
Go to the start of the Tutorial.

Try the Download from Gallery tutorial.