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01-04-2006, 19:45 paralekha Joined on 08-15-2005 Posts 7 Animation tutorial file request Hi Ventuz Team, it would be much helpful if detailed tutorial and project files on animation timeline, state machine etc. are available. Also, in absence of complete documentation, new commented project files using various repository components would be much appreciated. In other words, please give us MORE project files under tutorial download section! Many thanks and regards Paralekha    Report

01-05-2006, 7:57 Christian Schmidt Joined on 05-16-2005 Dubai, U.A.E. Posts 289 Re: Animation tutorial file request Hi Paralekha! The Animation and Texturing section of the online manual will be included in an upcoming release. And we are currently building a tutorial project which focuses on graphical effects. We might postpone the release of this project in favor one focusing on animations. I will discuss this with my colleagues. In the meantime, if you have any questions please feel free to ask. I will try to answer them as elaborate as possible. Chris    Report

01-05-2006, 17:43 paralekha Joined on 08-15-2005 Posts 7 Re: Animation tutorial file request Hi Chris! Thank you for you prompt reply. 1) Right now, I'm stuck with the timing of animation in time line. I've used these: Windows Keyboard (for trigger) -> Mover (one shot) -> Simple Control -> Keyframe Animation -> Axis (whose values I'm changing) in the default slice. In the timeline view, I've added several keyframes e.g. for position Z, rotation Y, position X etc. I want to first animate position Z, then rotation Y, then position X (for example) in 2 sec-5 sec-5sec sequence (total 12 sec). Now it appears in the render window, that the animation is stuck for say 3 sec i.e. later sequences are not showing. How can I overcome this? Also how the duration value of Mover  and the Global speed (in %) of Keyframe Animation afftect the total animation duration? 2) Can't understand and use Begin, Next, Previous, Before, End properties of Keyframe Animation control. Also the small square before these properties are activated / exposed? (becomes green) if left clicked: how to deactivate them? 3) Regarding graphical vs animation tutorial projects, please go ahead with your own schedule/plan. But we will be delighted to have more DEMOS/TUTORIALS in the download section. Surely you have such files (big or small) lying in your system. Just release them for our understanding/experimentation. I mean give us more demo files to play with and to be wowed by the capabilities of Ventuz! GC05 demo, VJ Demo were absolutely delicious, better than the showcase video files as they allow learning Ventuz. Big thanks and regards paralekha    Report

01-06-2006, 15:30 Christian Schmidt Joined on 05-16-2005 Dubai, U.A.E. Posts 289 Re: Animation tutorial file request Hi! First of all, i could not recreate your scenario with the stuck animation. It would be helpful if you could provide the scene file with the seamingly corrupt animation. I might be able to pinpoint the problem then. Now, in answering your questions I will elaborate a little bit. There are several ways to create and play your animation. Let's start using the SimpleControl node you used as well. The SimpleControl node effectivly takes over control of the whole animation once it is bound to the Keyframe Animation node. The State Machine and State Logic are now longer functioning as the Animation is now run by the Simple Controler. The Simple Controler only plays back a linear animation in the range of the very first and very last keyframe of an animation. It does not matter where the first and last keyframes are in the timeline. But i would recommend starting at time index 0, as it helps you keep track of things. The timeline slice the Simple Controler has to play can be set in the Simple Control node. As i mentioned before, all Animation Controll parameters of the Keyframe Animation node are no longer working once you pass the controls to the Simple Controller. That applies for the Global Animation speed as well. The animation speed is now indirectly controlled by the Simple Control. The faster the progress, the faster the animation is being played back. Therefore, in your scene, the duration of the Mover bound to the progress property of the Simple Controler defines the overall speed of the animation. The duration property of the Mover is also based on seconds. One second of animation (which is represented by 10 frames or 0.1 seconds in the default Animation Editor settings) will be played back in exactly one second if the duration of the Mover is set to one as well. 100 frames or ten seconds of animation equal a duration of ten and so on. Since Ventuz is realtime and always renders animations smoothly, regardless of the speed used, the Mover duration can be used to adjust the speed of a previously build animation according to your needs. This is especially useful if you create various separate animations controlled by Simple Controllers and animate their progress in another (main) keyframe animation. Nested animations, i.e. controlling a keyframe animation with another keyframe animation is a very powerful way of reusing and adjusting already existing animations. Now, let's take a look at another way of creating your animation using only the Keyframe  Animation node and its State Machine. For that, i am going to explain the State Machine a little bit, what the Logic Editor has to do with that and what the Begin, End and other Animation properties are. The Simple Control node is used to play back linear animations. Non-linear animations or animations that offer different variations or alternatives in the timeline cannot be controlled with it. This is where the State Machine comes into play. States define key moments in your animation, e.g. the Begin of the Animation, its End or a point in time where the animation splits up into two different versions. These versions by the way are displayed and can be edited on different timeline slices. States are also keyframes; well actually keyframes are bound to the State. States garantuee that its keyframe is always the same, no matter how often you use the State. This is very important and helpful in more complex logics, but i will get to that later on. You can establish and access certain keypoints in an animation by defining States to be the Begin, End or Present State in your Animation Logic. You can either set this State parameter by selecting a State in the Logic Editor and adjust the setting in the Property Editor or simply by pressing the keys B, P or E accordingly. It is not necessary to set these properties, but helps a lot when controlling the animation. If you create a keyframe animation, Ventuz automatically sets the first State created as the Begin state. Once set, you can use the Keyframe Animation node methods to quickly jump to one of those points in your animation. By activating the Being method, the animation will always be reset. The End method will jump the animation to its very end and the Present method will jump the animation to the State defined as the Present state. The Present state is usually only used by the Slide Manager as it is used to define the state of a slide, in which all its content as visible. However it can also be used when linking different animations together. All these methods can be bound to any other event, e.g. the press of a key, a mouse click or somthing al little more creative such as a OnRepeat event of a Mover node. The possibilities are almost endless. The Next and Prev(ious) methods of the Keyframe Animation mode are default methods for controlling an animation. There are two ways of creating animations using the State Machine. Both start with defining which node properties you want to animate. Either drag&drop a property onto the Animation Editor or click on a property description while holding down the [CTRL] key, in which cases a Keyframe Aniamtion node is automatically created or manually add a Keyframe Animation node to the Content Editor an bind properties. Once all properties are linked to the Animation node and are displayed in the Channel List of the Animation Editor, you can start creating the animation. This can be done in two very different ways. You can either create keyframes first and then add States to your timeline or start by creating and linking States. In the latter case, Ventuz automatically creates keyframe animations and slices for all States in the timeline. In your case, both versions make sense. Usually however, you should start by creating keyframes if the animation is more linear and if the animation is very dynamic or interactive you should start by defining States first and tweak the animation later. Now lets get back to your animation. Let's start with the first method and create keyframes first. Start animating the properties of the Axis. Now add two States at the very beginning and the end of the animation. There are small icons (with a green and red triangle) located at both States. They correspond to the Next and Prev(ious) methods of the Keyframe Animation node. A you can see, the first State S1 has already been set as the Begin State by Ventuz. Now select the Keyframe Animation node in the Content Editor and press Begin. The animation will reset. Now press the Next method and the animation will play. Once it is finished you can press the Prev method and the animation will run backwards right up to the beginning. Before i explain the methods in more detail, you should try out another way of animating the Axis. As before, bind the Axis properties to the Keyframe Animation node. Now create two States either by double clicking on the empty space of the Logic Editor or by selecting the Add State button in the toolbar of the Animation Editor. Create a binding between both states by drag&drop of the first State S1 using the right mouse button. Holding down the mouse button will show you a black connection marker. Move the mouse over the second State and release the right mouse button. A connection between both states has been created. Ventuz also created a slice for this animation and added the two default control methods Next and Prev to this connection. The Logic editor now looks identical to the one we created before. Switch to the TimeLine view. The default time for the keyframe animation Ventuz created between both Slides is one second. Adjust the time by dragging the S2 State marker along the timeline. You have to select the "S2" description above the timeline for that. We will now change the keyframes of the second state. Switch over to the Logic Editor and select the S2 state. The keyframe values of this State are displayed in the Value window between the timeline and the channel list. Adjust the values according to your wishes by entering them directly using double click on them or scrub the values using the left mosue button. You could have changed those values in the Logic View or Diagram View as well. For that, you should have moved the time marker above State S2. If the marker is in the correct position, the value editor will have a blue border and the name of the State is displayed above it. In order to adjust the animation we will use the State keyframes themselves and not add additional keyframes. If you select a State keyframe (marked blue) you can move it around in the timeline without affecting the State itself. If you move the State keyframe away from the State, the bar between the State and the keyframe is also blue. The animation will hold the keyframe value for the length of this bar. In other words, the value of the keyframe is not changing in the time represented by the blue duration bar. You can use this feature in both directions for every State. This allows you to tweak animation without adding keyframes. The animation should now behave the same way as before. However it was made in two different ways. Last but not least, let me explain the methods of the Keyframe Animation node. Those methods are default methods which are used all the time if you control your animation with the State Logic. However, those methods are not enough if you have a non-linear logic. You need more methods you can bind to internal or external events in order to control the animation. For this reason you can add as many additional methods to the Keyframe Animation node as you require. Right click on the Keyframe Animation node in the Content Editor to display its context menu. Browse through the "Custom Model" entry and select "Add->Method->Method". A dialog window pop up and asks you for a name for the method as well as the property category you want it added to. Choose any name, for example "My Method" and press OK. The  Keyframe Animation node now has an additional method you can use in the Logic Editor as well as bind it to other events. Such a method, as well as the Next and Prev methods, can be used to define what animation part of the non-linear animation logic is being played. Drag&drop the method onto the start or end of a State connection or on top of an existing one in order to link the method to the slice animation. You can unbind any method in the Logic Editor by selection the Slide connection and resetting the the Rule for Begin and End of the connection in the Property Editor. Finally let me explain exposing of properties. If you left click on the small square on the left side of any property it is exposed. This is only accessible if you work with containers. Exposed properties of nodes inside of a container are passed to the container. The container now posseses the previously exposed property. This is very helpful when creating templates for other project members or when creating your own reusable Repository nodes. In order to unexpose a property you have to double click on the square. This will open the Expose dialog window. You can either unexpose the property there or adjust the Expose setting according to your needs. Thanks for the input regarding our tutorial and demo projects by the way. We will continue to add those and start offering demo presentations that can be viewed with the stand-alone Presenter as well. Chris P.S. Look for screenshots and more descriptions regarding animation in the upcoming release.    Report