PLEASE NOTE: This software is not officially supported by Specular. It's beta software. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!
Circularity takes a bunch of objects and changes their position to mimic a variety of circular or curved paths. For Circularity to work properly, you must have a set of objects where the first object is the parent, and then rest of the objects are children of that parent. The easiest way to use Circularity is like this:
1. Place a text object in the world.
2. Select the text object's eventmark.
3. Choose "Break into Characters" from the Model menu. (notice that all of the individual text objects now have their eventmark selected)
4. Choose Animation Assistant->Circularity from the Animation Menu
There are currently 3 types of paths you can create with Circularity:
Globe: This type looks like the Universal-Pictures-text-around-a-globe thing
LifeSaver: This type looks like text around a Lifesaver
Corkscrew: This rotates the objects sort of like a corkscrew
Other features:
Orientation: in the LifeSaver type, you can choose between having the rotation of each letter follow the curve ("Curve") or keep the letter's rotation the same ("Straight").
Spiral: "Amount" determines how far each letter will move. "Radial Change" determines if the spiral goes in towards the center (enter a negative number) or out from the center (enter a positive number).
Automatic Offset: This isn't an option in the dialog, it's just something that happens to your objects. Basically, it means that after you've used the Circularity AA, the object's offsets will have changed so that rotating the parent text object will rotate the whole piece of text around the circular path you've created. Try using the Spin AA on this object now and you'll see why this is so useful.
So what can this thing really do? Lot's of cool stuff. You'll probably need to experiment a little-- but it'll be worth it.
Known Problems: Sometimes the screen does not refresh properly.
Known Problems That Won't Be Fixed Anytime Soon: Since the Animation Assistant API does not have bounding box info, letter spacing is not always accurate, especially with larger (like capital "W") or smaller (like lowercase "i") letters.
Please send all comments, suggestions, and bug reports to hirmes@specular.com. Enjoy!
