What are Texture Coordinates
This is probably the most advanced editing feature available in Animoids. Most users won't touch this. But for those of you who need the ability to adjust how a texture image file maps to a Segment of your Animoid, read on...

When a Segment is initially created, each node on the segment is mapped to a location on a generic texture file. That is, each node in a Segment contains a set of coordinates that tells what part of a texture file should be displayed for that node. These coordinates are the Texture Coordinates.

Animoids does not allow you to see the numerical values for these coordinates. But what it does is allow you to overlay the nodes from a Segment onto the image file of a texture then allow you to drag nodes around on the image file. This indirectly allows you to change the texture coordinates of the Segment.

Why would you want to do this?

• Perhaps you want to use an existing image file (say of a face) and stretch it to fit the features of your Animoid.
  
• Current Animoid image files are mapped symmetrically to both sides of a Segment. That would often mean that both sides were identical. However, if you make changes to the texture coordinates of one side of your segment then you can make one side look different from the other.

Texture Coordinates Control Panel
Open the TEXTURE COORDS Control Panel by clicking the Texture Coordinates action from the Action Panel:

The resulting control panel looks like:

Every time you click on a Segment on your Animoid the Control Panel loads the texture for that Segment.

If you pick a segment that does not have a texture, the control panel says: no texture on selected segment.

You'll probably find it necessary to drag this TEXTURE COORDS Control into it's own window so that you can resize it to see the entire texture file. (Otherwise you'll find it even more difficult to follow what is going on!)

Picking Points
We'll state our goal here. Then we'll summarize what we need to do. Then we'll go through it step by step, in detail.

Goal:

• Change the texture coordiantes of one or more nodes on your Animoid.

• Pick a point on your Animoid.
• View that point on your Control Panel.
• Move that point on your Control Panel.
• View the effect on your Animoid.

For this example, we'll pick a point on the Animoid's head that is close to the hairline on the texture:

As normal, the picked point is displayed as a blue ball.

Note that I did not bother to display the head as wireframe (although I could have). In this example, it's better to see the texture as well as the picked point.

Now look at the TEXTURE COORDS Control Panel. You'll see the same blue ball in this panel - showing how the selected node is mapped to the texture image:

You can now hold down the mouse on the blue ball in the Control Panel and drag it to a new position. As you drag it, the ball turns green. When you release the mouse the ball turns blue again and the coordinates of the ball changes. E.g.:

Now look at the Animoid itself. The hair line has moved near the selected point!

Note that the change in Texture Coordinates applies to the Animoid itself - not the texture/image file. So this change in Texture Coordinates will similarly distort any other images that are used as textures on this particular Animoid Segment.

Used carefully, this technique can be quite useful for advanced editing.

Reminder - save good changes often - undo is not supported for all actions! (In this case it's the Animoid itself that you'll want to save. The process above does not change the texture file or texture image.)

Manual Editing of Texture Coordinates and Node Points
Select (Intermediate Skill Level) action View/Edit Point (under Point Controls to open the EDIT POINT Control Panel:

When you click on one point on a Segment, the physical (x,y,z) coordinates and the texture coordinates appear in this Control Panel.

You can now change any of these coordinates by editing the data in the Control Panel and see the effect immediately on the Segment.

Note that: if you select either too few or too many points, nothing will display. The display works only if there is one and only one point selected.

Remember: you can clear a selected point by selecting it again. Or you can clear all points with the "clear selected points" button .

More
Go to the start of the Tutorial.

Try the Behavior tutorial.