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Belgian Amiga Club - ADF Collection
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BS1 part 41.zip
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BS1 part 41
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Sculpt-Animate 4D tutor.adf
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tutor4d
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Tutorial on Sculpt-Animate 4D
--------------------------------
imported by the band in 1989
This is a very (very) basic tutoiral on a simple "scene" and animation with
Sculpt-Animate 4D. It covers creating two simple objects and animating one
around another (object hierarchy). This tutorial is in no way covers all the
powerfull features of the program, its just a simple exercise to get ya going.
Step 1: Make a scene.
After booting up with the program open the SA4D icon and let the program
load, lets start with the"World"comands. First lets make a ground, I chose
the checker, but you can use what you like (solid grounds make for less
rendering time). Then adjust the colors to what you would like using the
sliders and selecting the top or bottom box. Go to the Illumination requester
and bring the "V" amount up so the color is now more of a gray. We'll leave
the Sky to none because we are going to be looking down at are creation.
Now that we've made the world lets go to the Objects. Go to the Edit/Add
and pick Sphere, when the requester comes up delete the number and type in
a 2. Now the sphere will come in to our world, select it by hitting the three
dots at the upper left of the window (it doesn't matter which window ie- North,
West, or Down, yet!). Now it should turn yellow. Go to the Edit/Do and hit
Expand, a requester will come up, now move the requester so you ca see the
object. Now move the top slider left till the sphere gets a little bit more then
half the original size. Hit OK. Now we'll move the sphere up so we can let
the cone move under it, make sure the sphere is still yellow and go to the
East or North window. Now put the pointer on top of the sphere and pick the
little claw on the lower left of the window, it should close. Now we can
move the sphere anywhere we want, we'll just move it up a bit, enough so
the smaller cone can go under it. Hit the claw again and we'll get our pointer
back. Now to color it, go to the Edit/Modify and pick Faces. A requester comes
up and now we can color it and pick what kind of texture it shall be. Make the
color red with the slider and then go to the box were it should say Dull. click
the box until it says Shiny (you can chose what ever you like but Mirror will of trace time).
add alot of trace time). After everything looks good hit OK. Now were going to
make a path. Go to the Edit/Add and a Circle, when the requester comes up type
in 24 and click OK, this well give us 24 vertices (or points if like) on the
circle, which become 24 frames of our animation. The circle will be purple(or
unselected), so go up to the Edit menu end select Select/Swap, this will make
the Circle yellow and the sphere will become unselected. In the West window
click one of the vertices alittle below the middle on the right side, it should
turn purple. Then place the cursor on the vertice right above it, don't click
it! Now go to the Edit/Do and pick "Make Path", a little arrow should now be
pointing down along the circle (Dat be da Path!). Now we have to size the
circle, select the vertice that you unselected before and make it yellow again.
Go to the Edit/Do and pick Expand, the requester comes up again and adjust the
circle to a size that would fit around the Sphere. Use the Grabber tool (the
small claw) again and move the circle around the Sphere. Ungrab the circle by
clicking the claw once more. Now its time to name some things. With the circle
still selected (yellow), place the cursor on one of the circle's vertices, go
to the Edit/Name and pick Indicated Path, a new requester comes up, type in
"Path" and hit return. The name should now appear in the list section. Now
click OK, Go to the Edit/Select menu and pick Swap, the Path should now become
purple and the Sphere will be yellow. Go back to the Edit/Name menu and pick
Selected Vertices, the requester will come up again, but this time before you
type anything in click Offspring, the name Path should now be in the Parentage
box, now type in "Ball", the Ball has just become the child of the Path which
means it will follow.(hierarchy motion) This is similar to the AmigaDOS root
directory and subdirectories that we have all come to know and love. Hit OK,
and we're ready to make our final object. Go to the Edit/Add and pick Cone.
At the requester type in 10. Now here is a little problem, the cone is
unselected, but the sphere is. Place the cursor on one of the sphere's vertices
(you may have to go to another window to adjust it so your really on the
sphere). Go to the Edit/Unselect and hit connected. The sphere sould now be
purple. Now place the cursor on one of the vertices of the cone, go to the
Edit/Select and pick connected again, our cone will now be yellow, Make the
cone the same color like the sphere with the Edit/Modify requester, click OK.
Now adjust the cone's size with the Edit/Do/Expand requester. Hint: if the cone
disappears click the Center box in the Expand requester and it will change to
Cursor, this will bring the object to where the cursor is. Now lets rotate the
cone with the rotate gadget on the top left hand side of the window, go to the
North window to do this. Use the Grabber tool to move the cone around and
adjust it so the cone's edge will be on the vertice of the Path that you had
the cursor on when you did the Do/make path command (this is the beginning of
the path). With the cone still selected, go to the Edit/Name menu and pick
Selected Vertices again, now click the Offspring box, now the Parentage box
should say Path+Ball. Type in "Cone", the Path and Ball just had a child named
Cone...(Ha Ha...its getting late). Hit OK. Now lets set up our Observer, Target and
Lighting. Click the Select/Unselect gadget on the upper right hand of the
window (the three dots). Now place the cursor in the middle of the sphere, and
pick the Observer/Target from the menu. A little small box should now be in the
sphere, this is where our cammera will be pointing at. Go to the North window
and adjust the cursor to give the cammera some distance from the sphere. Pick
the Observer/Location menu and a small dot kinda thing will appear where the
cursor is. To check if we're right in our view go to the Observer/Mode and
pick Wire-Frame, go to the Observer/Lens and pick Wide-angle, go to the
Observer/Image-size and pick Full, hit F8. Now we should see our scene Path and
all. Click the left mouse button to get us back to the Tri-view. Adjust the
cammera's view with the cursor + Observer/Location process and keep checking
the scene's wire-frame image until you get something you like. Now for
Lighting. Place the cursor a little above and a little behind you cammera.
Go to the Edit/Add and pick Lamp. A small white dot will appear were the cursor
is, this is your Light. You can adjust the brightness of the Lamp by going to
the Edit/Modify Lamps section. Note: if the Lamps brightness is to high you
will wash the whole scene out. Try about 110 if your cammera is not to close
to the objects your viewing. I kept the Lamp kind of high so I could see the
specular of the objects (the point were the light hits the objects and makes
a shiny dot). Now go to the Observer Menu and pick, Mode- Snapshot ( this is
not full raytrace, it will not show shadows on the ground, but the rendering
time is alot faster then Photo which is full trace), keep the Lens- Wideangle,
Image size- Medium ( this is kind of small but again the trace time is faster),
Anti-aliasing- Best, Display-Early ( this is an option if you want to see the
frames rendered one at a time, if you choose late it will only show it when
its done tracing). Now go to Project/Save and pick scene, name it Spin.
NOW Lets animate...(finally)
Animation:
Go to the Project/Load and pick Take.( I've Arc the Take I used with this file
but you don't have to use it, you can just delete it and when the Take is gone
just type Spin in the box and hit OK it will say "Take not found create new
Take?", and click OK). Now place the cursor in the Tri-view at the intersection
of the Path and Cone (use the different windows again). This is very IMPORTANT!
Go to the Edit/Modify and pick Local Origin, this is the center of gravity of
the cone so it will follow the path right. Make sure the order of the
Parent-Offspring is right by having the Parentage-Path+Ball, Offspring-Cone
so you will be setting the center of gravity for the Cone ( you could set the
center of gravity for different object-path relationships by adjusting the
cursor and the going to Modify Local Origin, then clicking Offspring and the
Name in the list then clicking SET, its hard to understand this but you'll get
the hang of it). So click SET, and then OK. Now go to Edit/Modify and pick
Take. A new requester appears. Type in at Number of frames 25, this will make
a smooth loop by adding one repeating the first frame at the end. Now click
Save Globle Scene. After that click Preview and see if your animation worked.
It will start put all 25 frames together in Wire-frame and give you a semi
accurate animation of your scene. The speed is not adjustable but a 24 frame
animation is pretty smooth and not so fast, anything lower then 24 it gets
to fast and your objects become a blur. Now if everything has gone right, and
you like what you see, click Render All. This will render every frame (and I
do mean EVERY), and then put them in a Anim file. And thats it, when its all
done you can load it in SA4D by going to Project/Load Animation and view it,
or use Movie.
the band
Note on Animation time: It took my standard Amiga 500 with 1 meg 18 freaking
hours to do this, at Snapshot-Medium image size. so if you don't want to tie
up your computer this long try some of the other Modes.