Avid 3D User’s Guide

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Avid® 3D

User’s Guide

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Avid

Copyright and Disclaimer

Product specifications are subject to change without notice and do not represent a commitment on the part of Avid Technology, Inc.

The software described in this document is furnished under a license agreement. You can obtain a copy of that license by visiting Avid's Web site at www.avid.com. The terms of that license are also available in the product in the same directory as the software. The software may not be reverse assembled and may be used or copied only in accordance with the terms of the license agreement. It is against the law to copy the software on any medium except as specifically allowed in the license agreement.

Avid products or portions thereof are protected by one or more of the following United States Patents: 4,746,994; 4,970,663; 5,045,940; 5,063,448, 5,245,432, 5,267,351; 5,309,528; 5,325,200; 5,355,450; 5,396,594; 5,440,348; 5,452,378; 5,467,288; 5,513,375; 5,528,310; 5,557,423; 5,577,190; 5,584,006; 5,627,765; 5,634,020; 5,640,601; 5,644,364; 5,654,737; 5,701,404; 5,724,605; 5,726,717; 5,729,673; 5,731,819; 5,745,637; 5,752,029; 5,754,180; 5,754,851; 5,781,188; 5,799,150; 5,812,216; 5,828,678; 5,842,014; 5,852,435; 5,889,532; 5,912,675; 5,930,797; 5,966,134; 5,977,982; 5,995,079; 5,999,190; 6,011,562; 6,014,150; 6,023,703; 6,031,529; 6,091,422; 6,154,221; 6,157,929; 6,160,548; 6,167,404; 6,192,388; 6,208,357; 6,226,005; 6,310,621; 6,317,142; 6,353,437; 6,400,368; 6,466,214; 6,469,702; 6,473,094; 6,539,163; 6,552,731; 6,553,140; 6,570,578; 6,573,898; 6,621,504; 6,664,966; 6,686,918; D352,278; D392,267; D392,268; D392,269; D395,291; D396,853; D398,912. Other patents are pending.

No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, for any purpose without the express written permission of Avid Technology, Inc.

The Avid 3D application uses JScript and Visual Basic Scripting Edition from Microsoft Corporation.

Attn. Government User(s). Restricted Rights Legend

U.S. GOVERNMENT RESTRICTED RIGHTS. This Software and its documentation are “commercial computer software” or “commercial computer software documentation.” In the event that such Software or documentation is acquired by or on behalf of a unit or agency of the U.S. Government, all rights with respect to this Software and documentation are subject to the terms of the License Agreement, pursuant to FAR §12.212(a) and/or DFARS §227.7202-1(a), as applicable.

Trademarks

888 I/O, Adrenaline, AirPlay, AirSPACE, AirSPACE HD, AniMatte, AudioSuite, AudioVision, AutoSync, Avid, Avid DNA, AVIDdrive, AVIDdrive Towers, Avid Mojo, AvidNet, AvidNetwork, AVIDstripe, Avid Unity, Avid Xpress, AVoption, AVX, CamCutter, ChromaCurve, ChromaWheel, DAE, D-Fi, D-fx, Digidesign, Digidesign Audio Engine, Digidesign Intelligent Noise Reduction, DigiDrive, Digital Nonlinear Accelerator, DigiTranslator, DINR, dotXSI, D-Verb, Equinox, ExpertRender, FieldPak, Film Composer, FilmScribe, FluidMotion, HIIP, HyperSPACE, HyperSPACE HDCAM, IllusionFX, Image Independence, Intraframe, iS9, iS18, iS23, iS36, Lo-Fi, Magic Mask, make manage move | media, Marquee, Matador, Maxim, MCXpress, Media Composer, MediaDock, MediaDock Shuttle, Media Fusion, Media Illusion, MediaLog, Media Reader, Media Recorder, MEDIArray, MediaShare, Meridien, MetaSync, NaturalMatch, Nearchive, NetReview, NewsCutter, Nitris, OMF, OMF Interchange, OMM, Open Media Framework, Open Media Management, ProEncode, Pro Tools, QuietDrive, Recti-Fi, RetroLoop, rS9, rS18, Sci-Fi, Softimage, Sound Designer II, SPACE, SPACEShift, Symphony, the Avid|DS logo, the XSI logo, Trilligent, UnityRAID, Vari-Fi, Video Slave Driver, VideoSPACE, Xdeck, and XSI are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Avid Technology, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.

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Digimation and Digimation Model Bank are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Digimation, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.

mental ray and mental images are registered trademarks of mental images GmbH & Co. KG in the U.S.A. and some other countries. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

GOT FOOTAGE?

Editors — Filmmakers — Special Effects Artists — Game Developers — Animators — Educators — Broadcasters — Content creators of every genre — Just finished an incredible project and want to share it with the world?

Send us your reels and we may use your footage in our show reel or demo!*

For a copy of our release and Avid’s mailing address, go to www.avid.com/footage.

*Note: Avid cannot guarantee the use of materials submitted.

Avid 3D User’s Guide• 0130-06217-01 • June 2004

Using This Guide. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Symbols and Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

If You Need Help. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Accessing the Online Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

How to Order Documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Avid Educational Services. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Chapter 1 Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Starting Avid 3D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Starting with the Windows Start Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Starting from the Avid 3D Shortcut. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Starting from the Command Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Avid 3D Startup Options. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Command Line Options. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Creating the First Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Exiting Avid 3D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Chapter 2 Managing Projects and Scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Types of Projects and Scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Fixed-Camera Scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Free-Camera Scenes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

The Project Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

The Project Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Contents

Creating a New Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Opening an Existing Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Maintaining Project Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Managing Invalid Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Setting a Default Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Deleting Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Referenced Files in Saved Scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Importing Scenes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Creating Scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Opening Scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Opening Locked Scenes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Setting a Scene’s Resolution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

Deleting Scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

Saving Scenes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

Saving Scenes with a Different Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Saving Scenes to a Different Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Copying Referenced Files Under Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Correcting External File Paths for Scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Backing Up and Recovering Your Work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Autosaving Scene Files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Backing Up Saved Scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Recovering Scene Files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Chapter 3 The Avid 3D Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

Overview of the Avid 3D Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Lower Interface Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Control Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Accessing Commands and Tools. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Using Access and Shortcut Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Using Shortcut Keys to Activate Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Contents

Sticky-key Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Temporary (Supra) Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Example: Activating Basic Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Keeping Track of the Active Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Repeating Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Undoing and Redoing Edits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Viewing Your Work in 3D Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Coordinate Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Cartesian Coordinates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

XYZ Axes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

XYZ Coordinates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

XZ, XY, YZ Planes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

Global and Local Coordinate Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Distance Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Viewports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Identifying Viewports by Letter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Muting and Soloing Viewports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Changing the Viewport Color. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

Resizing Viewports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

Displaying the Viewport Grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

Viewport Views. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

Camera Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

Viewpoints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

Display Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

Outputting Avid 3D Views to an Avid Mojo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Configuring Avid 3D to Output to an Avid Mojo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

Navigating in Viewports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Framing Objects in Viewports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

Changing the Viewpoint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

Panning and Zooming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

Contents

Orbiting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Dollying and Rolling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Resetting Coordinates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Hiding and Unhiding Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Display Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

The Library Panel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

The Scene Explorer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Selecting Scene Elements in the Scene Explorer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Renaming Scene Elements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

The Tools and Options Panel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

The Multi-Purpose Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Modifying Properties in Property Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

Anatomy of a Property Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Property Page Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Changing Values Using Sliders. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Entering Values in a Text Box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Relative Input Using Math Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Modifying On-screen Parameters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

Displaying On-screen Parameters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

Modifying and Animating the On-screen Parameter Values . . . . . . . . . 90

Defining Color Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

Defining Colors with Sliders. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

Defining Colors with the Color Editors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Chapter 4 Avid 3D Basics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Using the Library Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

Basic Scene Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

Geometric Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

Control Objects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

Cameras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

Contents

Lights. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Primitive Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

U and V Directions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

U, V, and Base Subdivisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Start and End Angles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

Open and Closed Ends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

Rigs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

Light Rigs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

Camera Rigs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

Motion Path Rigs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

Text Rigs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

Object Rigs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

Digital Video Effects (DVEs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

A Word about Models. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

Components of Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

Types of Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

Clusters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

Element Names. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

Valid Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

Namespaces and Unique Names. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

Renaming Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

Selecting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

What You Can Select . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

Selecting Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

Selecting Objects Using the Rectangle Selection Tool . . . . . . . . . 112

Selection and Hierarchies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

Node Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

Branch Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

Tree Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

Selecting Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

Contents

Selecting Points Using the Rectangle Selection Tool. . . . . . . . . . 115

Selecting Polygons Using the Freeform Selection Tool . . . . . . . . 115

Selecting Polygons Using the Range Selection Tool . . . . . . . . . . 115

Selecting Polygons Using the Loop Selection Tool . . . . . . . . . . . 116

Selecting Clusters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

Extending the Selection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

Deselecting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

Transforming Objects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

Local versus Global Transformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

Transformations and Hierarchies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

Centers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

Useful Tools for Transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

Local Transform Property Editor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

Transformation Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

Transforming Interactively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

Specifying Axes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

Setting the Manipulation Pivot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

Transforming Interactively with the SRT Manipulators . . . . . . . . . 122

Transformation Axes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

Setting Values Numerically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124

Transforming Hidden Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124

Translating Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124

Using the Translate Manipulator. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

Rotating Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

Using the Rotate Manipulator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

Scaling Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

Using the Scale Manipulator. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

Transforming with the Bounding-Box Manipulator. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

Center Manipulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130

Snapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

Resetting Transformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

Contents

Aligning Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

Duplicating Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

Chapter 5 Importing and Exporting Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

What Can Be Imported and Exported? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

Importing Models and Scenes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

Considerations when Importing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

Importing EMDL Models. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

Image Clips and Imported Models. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

Importing dotXSI Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

Exporting Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138

Chapter 6 Modifying Object Geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

Deforming Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

Working with Deformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

Applying Deformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

Modifying Deformation Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Animating Deformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Removing Deformations (Resetting Shapes) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

Muting Deformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

Deformations on Hierarchies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

Simple Deformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

Applying Simple Deformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

Types of Simple Deformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

Lattices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

Creating and Applying Lattices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

Quickstretch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

Before You Apply Quickstretch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

Applying Quickstretch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

Viewing a Quickstretch Deformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

Motion Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

Contents

Quickstretch Deformation Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

Waves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

Wave Control Objects and Wave Operators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

Making Waves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

Modifying Wave Control Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

Modifying Wave Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

Deforming by Curves. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

Working with Profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

Overview of Profiles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

Displaying Curves in the Profile Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164

Modifying Curves in the Profile Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

Linear and Smooth Curves. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

Adding Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

Removing Points. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

Moving Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

Transforming Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

Editing Proportionally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

Modifying Points and Polygons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170

Manipulating Points and Polygons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170

Transforming Points and Polygons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170

Moving Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

Resetting Shapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

Deleting Points and Polygons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

Chapter 7 Working with Text and Logos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

About Text and Logos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

Overview of Text and Logos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

Overview of Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

Overview of Logos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

Creating and Editing Text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

Creating Text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

Contents

Creating Text with Text Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

Creating Text with the Object Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

Editing and Formatting Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

Typing Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182

Setting Font Attributes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184

Setting Line Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

Importing RTF Files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

Saving RTF Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

Controlling Size and Spacing of Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186

Creating Logos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

Preparing EPS Files for Import. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

Importing Curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

Extruding and Beveling Text and Logos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188

Extruding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188

Beveling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

Applying Materials and Textures to Text and Logos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

Advanced Text and Logo Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192

Controlling the Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193

Offsetting Curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193

Creating Clusters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193

Creating Clusters per Island/Character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193

Creating Clusters Along the Depth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194

Exploding the Mesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194

Tessellating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

Minimum Polygon Count . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

Delaunay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196

Medial Axis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

Controlling the Extrusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

Controlling the Beveling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

Controlling the Size and Direction of the Bevel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

Contents

Mitering and Rounding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

Controlling the Bevel Profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

Creating a Text Rig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200

Chapter 8 Lights and Cameras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203

Lights and Shadows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204

Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204

Types of Lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204

Scene Ambience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

Setting a Realistic Ambient Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206

Creating Lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

The Default Light Rig. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

Adding Lights. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208

Manipulating Lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208

Manipulating Spotlights. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208

Setting Light Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

Setting a Light’s Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

Setting the Light’s Intensity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210

Setting a Light’s Falloff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211

Setting a Spotlight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

Viewing from the Spotlight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214

Creating Shadows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214

Creating a Volumic Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

Creating a Lens Flare. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216

Creating a Glow Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218

Cameras. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

Cameras versus Viewpoints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

How Cameras Are Set Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

The Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

The Camera Interest. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

Camera Direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

Contents

The Active Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

Making Cameras Visible. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

Working with Cameras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

Selecting Cameras and Camera Interests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

Selecting Camera Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

Camera Safe Areas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

Positioning Cameras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

Undoing/Redoing Camera Moves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

Resetting Camera Position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

Setting Camera Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

The Camera Property Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

Setting the Field of View. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

Selecting a Projection Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226

Animating Cameras. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

Animating the Camera Interest. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

Animating a Camera Roll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228

Camera Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

Depth of Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

Fisheye . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230

Z-Depth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230

Applying a Camera Effect. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230

Editing a Camera Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231

Chapter 9 Textures and Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233

Previewing with the Render Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

Creating a Render Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

Moving and Resizing a Render Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235

Hiding the Render Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236

Closing the Render Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236

Setting Render Region Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236

Tracking Objects with the Render Region. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

Contents

Materials. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238

Applying Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238

Surface Color. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239

Transparency. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240

Setting Transparency Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241

Refraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242

Reflectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

Setting Reflection Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244

Textures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

2D Textures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

3D Textures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246

Applying Textures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246

Viewing Textures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247

Repeating and Tiling a Texture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247

Removing Textures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248

Applying Materials and Textures to Polygons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248

Managing Cluster Overlap. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249

Changing the Display Order for Overlapping Clusters . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

Texture Projections and Supports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

Scaling, Rotating, and Translating the Texture Support Object . . . . . 253

Modifying the Texture’s Projection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254

Using Textures as Maps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254

Bump Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255

Selecting a Bump Map Image. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256

Creating a Bump Map. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256

Displacement Maps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257

Transparency Maps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258

Environment Maps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259

Using Environment Maps to Light a Scene. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260

Contents

Chapter 10 Animating in Avid 3D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261

What Can You Animate?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262

Animation Basics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262

Setting the Scene’s Frame Format and Rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262

Setting the Default Frame Format and Rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

Displaying the Playback Frame Rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264

Marking Parameters for Animation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265

Marking Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265

Marking Transformation Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266

Clearing (Unmarking) Marked Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266

The Animation Button. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266

Ghosting Animation Objects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268

Copying Animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269

Using a Property Editor or On-Screen Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . 269

Removing Animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269

Using the Animation Tools Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269

Using a Property Editor or On-Screen Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . 270

Playing Animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270

Setting the Start and End Frames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270

Using the Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270

Setting the Timeline Display Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271

Setting the Timeline Range for Playback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272

Using the Playback Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273

Looping the Playback. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274

Playing Back All Frames or Playing in Real Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275

Optimizing Playback. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275

Playing Back Audio with Your Animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276

Keyframe Animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277

Setting Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278

Methods for Setting and Removing Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278

Contents

Keying Current Values at a Different Frame. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279

Moving between Keys. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280

Keying Parameters in Property Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280

Keying Marked Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281

The Keyframe Button’s Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281

Keying Specific Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282

Moving between Keys in a Property Editor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282

Removing Keys in a Property Editor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283

Keying Transformations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283

Keying Transformations Quickly. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284

Setting Keys Automatically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284

Editing Function Curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

Working in the Function Curve Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286

Opening the Function Curve Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287

Using the Animation Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287

Using the Function Curve Editor’s Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288

Commands and Tools for Editing Fcurves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289

Opening the Function Curve Editor with Specific Fcurves Selected. . .

290

Setting Up the Function Curve Graph. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290

Undoing and Redoing Fcurve Modifications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

Viewing Function Curves. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

Hiding and Displaying Fcurves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292

Hiding and Displaying Fcurve Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292

Zooming, Panning, and Framing in the Graph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292

Zooming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293

Panning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293

Panning and Zooming Vertically or Horizontally. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294

Framing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294

Selecting Function Curves. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294

Contents

Deselecting Fcurves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296

Selecting (Tagging) Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296

Deselecting Keys. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297

Selecting Keys by Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298

Moving Function Curves, Keys, and Regions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299

Moving Whatever is Selected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299

Moving Fcurves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300

Moving Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300

Moving Keys by Region. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300

Moving Fcurves, Keys, and Regions Precisely . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301

Adding and Deleting Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301

Adding Keys Interactively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302

Inserting Keys Without Changing the Fcurve Shape. . . . . . . . . . . 302

Deleting Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303

Removing Animation from Fcurves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303

Snapping Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304

Scaling Function Curves, Keys, and Regions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305

Scaling Precisely . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305

Scaling Regions Interactively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306

Scaling with a Pivot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307

Cutting, Copying, and Pasting in the Graph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308

Function Curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308

Keys. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308

Regions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309

Choosing a Function Curve Interpolation Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309

Editing a Function Curve’s Slope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310

Changing the Handles’ Length and Angle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

Breaking and Unifying the Slope Angle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312

Controlling the Length of the Slope Handles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313

Snapping Slope Handles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314

Contents

Extrapolating Function Curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314

Creating Function Curve Cycles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315

Tips for Creating Seamless Cycles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316

Creating a Basic Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316

Creating a Relative Cycle (Offset) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317

Deleting Fcurve Cycles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317

Function Curve Presets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318

Animating with Constraints. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319

Position Constraints. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320

Direction Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321

Path Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323

Setting Objects on Paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323

Creating a Path from Path Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325

Modifying the Path Timing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325

Modifying the Path Curve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327

Tangency Constraints. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327

Creating Offsets between Constrained and Constraining Objects . . . 329

Activating and Deactivating Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330

Automating Animation with Math Presets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330

Editing Math Presets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331

Deleting Math Presets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331

Animating the Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331

Animating a Camera from a Viewport View. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332

Previewing Animation in a Flipbook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333

Creating Your Preview Animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334

Loading Animation in the Flipbook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334

Setting Up the Flipbook View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336

Playing the Flipbook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337

Exporting a Flipbook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339

Contents

Chapter 11 Particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341

Particles in Avid 3D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342

What Makes Up a Particle System?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342

Creating Particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344

Editing the Particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345

Selecting Particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347

Deforming Particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348

Deleting Particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348

Viewing Particles in the Viewports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349

Selecting a Display Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349

Previewing Particles in the Render Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350

Displaying and Hiding Particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351

Playing Particle Simulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352

Setting the Length of the Particle Simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353

Setting Up the Particle Emission. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354

Editing the Particle Emissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354

Adding Variation to Emission Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354

Setting the Number of Particles Emitted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355

Particle Speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356

Origin and Direction of Particle Emission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356

Particle Spread. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358

Particle Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358

Editing the Particle Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359

Adding Variation to Particle Type Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359

Changing Particle Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360

Setting the Particle’s Lifetime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360

Setting the Particle’s Mass and Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361

Setting a Particle’s Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361

Animating the Color Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362

Adding Color Variance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364

Contents

Adding Noise to Particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365

Applying Forces to Particles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366

Types of Forces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366

Gravity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367

Wind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367

Fan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368

Turbulence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368

Creating a Natural Force . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369

Displaying and Hiding Force Control Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370

Muting Forces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371

Creating Particle Collisions with Obstacles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371

Setting Up Obstacles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372

Setting the Obstacle’s Collision Geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372

Setting the Collision’s Physical Behavior. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373

Muting Obstacles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373

Attaching Sprites and Images to Particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374

Setting the Sprite’s Output Color. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375

Setting Up Sprite Image Sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376

Changing the Look of Particles with Effects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377

Editing the Particle Effects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377

Particle Billboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377

Particle Shape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378

Particle Gradient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379

Chapter 12 Output Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381

Rendering the Final Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382

Previewing a Single Frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382

Saving a Frame Preview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382

Rendering Your Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383

Global Rendering Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383

Setting Global Rendering Options. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383

Contents

Setting Output File Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384

Specifying the Format Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385

Activating Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386

Setting Motion Blur Options. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386

Setting Effect and Map Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387

Exporting AAF and MXF Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387

About MXF Media Files and the AAF Master Clip. . . . . . . . . . . . . 388

Setting Camera and Field Rendering Options for AAF/MXF . . . . . 390

Creating Movies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390

Optimizing a Scene for Rendering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392

Object Geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392

Textures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393

2D Textures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393

3D Textures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393

Bump Maps and Displacement Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393

Lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395

Contents

Using This Guide

Congratulations on your purchase of the Avid 3D software. You can use Avid 3D to create, customize, and animate 3D content, visual effects, text and titling for your productions.

The documentation describes the features and hardware of all models. Therefore, your system might not contain certain features and hardware that are covered in the documentation.

This guide is intended for all Avid 3D users, from beginner to advanced. This guide contains the conceptual information and task-oriented instructions you need to create 3D animation and effects in Avid 3D.

Using This Guide

Symbols and Conventions

Avid 3D documentation uses the following symbols and conventions:

Symbol or Convention Meaning or Action

> This symbol indicates menu commands (and

Margin tips

Italic font Italic font is used to emphasize certain words and to

Courier Bold font

A note provides important related information, reminders, recommendations, and strong suggestions.

A caution means that a specific action you take could cause harm to your computer or cause you to lose data.

A warning describes an action that could cause you physical harm. Follow the guidelines in this document or on the unit itself when handling electrical equipment.

subcommands) in the order you select them. For example, File > Import means to open the File menu and then select the Import command.

This symbol indicates a single-step procedure. Multiple arrows in a list indicate that you perform one of the actions listed.

In the margin, you will find tips that help you perform tasks more easily and efficiently.

indicate variables.

Courier Bold font identifies text that you type.

Bold font Bold indicates a user interaction.

Ctrl+key or mouse action Press and hold the first key while you press the last

key or perform the mouse action. For example, Shift+Alt+C or Ctrl+drag.

If You Need Help

If you are having trouble using Avid 3D:

1. Retry the action, carefully following the instructions given for that task in this guide. It is especially important to check each step of your workflow.

2. Check for the latest information that might have become available after the documentation was published in one of two locations:

- If release notes are available, they ship with your application.

- If ReadMe files are available, they are supplied in your Avid

If You Need Help

application folder. ReadMe files are also available from Help.

Release notes and ReadMe files are also available from the Knowledgebase.

3. Check the documentation that came with your Avid application or your hardware for maintenance or hardware-related issues.

4. Visit Avid Online Support at www.avid.com/support. Online support is available 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Search the Knowledgebase to find answers, to view error messages, to access troubleshooting tips, to download updates, and to read/join online message-board discussions.

5. For Technical Support, please call 800-800-AVID (800-800-2843). For Broadcast On-Air Sites and Call Letter Stations, call

800-NEWSDNG (800-639-7364).

Accessing the Online Library

The Avid 3D Online Library contains all the product documentation in PDF format as well as a selection of movies for getting started. Avid recommends the movies as your first resource for learning how to use your application.

You will need Adobe® Acrobat® Reader® installed to view the documentation online. You can download the latest version of the Reader from the Adobe Web site.

To access the documentation from the Online Library:

1. Insert the Online Library into the drive.

2. Double-click the Mainmenu file.

Using This Guide

How to Order Documentation

To order additional copies of this documentation from within the United States, call Avid Sales at 800-949-AVID (800-949-2843). If you are placing an order from outside the United States, contact your local Avid representative.

Avid Educational Services

For information on courses/schedules, training centers, certifications, courseware, and books, please visit www.avid.com/training or call Avid Sales at 800-949-AVID (800-949-2843).

Chapter 1

Getting Started

Provides information about the various options for starting the Avid 3D application and creating your first project.

Chapter 1 Getting Started

Starting Avid 3D

There are several ways to start Avid 3D:

• Using the Windows Start menu.

• Using the command line.

• Using the Avid 3D shortcut on your desktop.

Starting with the Windows Start Menu

If you installed in the default configuration, you can start from the Windows Start menu in the lower-left corner of the Windows desktop. To do this:

t Choose Start > A l l Programs > Av i d > Av id 3 D.

Starting from the Avid 3D Shortcut

t Start Avid 3D by double-clicking the shortcut on your desktop.

The shortcut runs a Windows batch file called 3d.bat that sources an environment script and then starts the application executable called

3d.exe. By default, the batch file is located in the c:\Program Files\Avid\Avid3D_v1\Application\bin folder.

To modify a shortcut by specifying startup options:

1. Right-click on the shortcut icon and choose Properties.

2. On the Shortcut tab of the Shortcuts dialog box, add any desired options to the command line in the Target text box. Make sure the entire command, including the options, are enclosed inside quotation marks.

For more information about the desktop, shortcuts, the Windows Explorer, and folder windows, please see your Windows operating system documentation.

Starting from the Command Line

You can start Avid 3D from the command line. This is useful if you want to specify startup options. See “Avid 3D Startup Options” on page 31.

To start from the Avid 3D command line:

1. Open an “SI Command Prompt”. If your Start menu is in its default

configuration, you can choose Start > All Programs > Avid > Avid 3D > Command Prompt.

2. To start without any options, type:

To start from the Windows command line:

t If you use a standard Windows command prompt to start Avid 3D,

navigate to the Avid 3D program directory (by default, c:\Program Files\Avid\Avid3D_v1\Application\bin) and type:

3d.bat

Once Avid 3D has started, you can exit the command prompt window at any time.

Starting Avid 3D

Avid 3D Startup Options

Startup options can be used when starting Avid 3D from the command line. To get a list of command-line options you can use when starting Avid 3D, type:

3d -h

Usage

3d [-autoloadmedia <mediapath>][-autoloadtype <mediatype>] [-uilang <languageid>][-helplang <languageid>]

Chapter 1 Getting Started

Command Line Options

-autoloadmedia <mediapath>

-autoloadtype <mediatype>

-uilang <languageid>

-helplang <languageid>

Set the media path to be loaded upon startup. For use with Avid Xpress Pro’s Send To export settings. Do not modify.

Set the media type to be loaded upon startup. For use with Avid Xpress Pro’s Send To export settings. Do not modify.

Specifies the language of the Avid 3D user interface: en for English or jp for Japanese.

Specifies the language for the online help: en for English or jp for Japanese.

Creating the First Project

The first time you run Avid 3D, you are automatically working in an empty “Untitled” scene in the AVID3DMEDIA project.

t To create a new project in which to store your own scenes, choose File >

New Project from the main menu.

t To add an existing project to your project list, choose File > Project

Manager from the main menu.

For more information about working with projects and scenes, see “Managing

Projects and Scenes” on page 35.

Exiting Avid 3D

After you have completed your work session in Avid 3D, save your work and exit.

To exit:

1. Do one of the following:

t Choose File > Exit from the main menu. t Click the close icon (×) at the far right of the title bar. t Press Alt+F4.

2. If you have made any changes to the scene, you are prompted to save them before exiting. Click one of the following:

t Ye s to save your changes. For more information about saving scenes

t No to exit without saving. t Cancel to continue working.

Exiting Avid 3D

in general, see “Saving Scenes” on page 44.

Chapter 1 Getting Started

Chapter 2

Managing Projects and Scenes

In Avid 3D you build scenes that are stored in a folder structure called a project.

Chapter 2 Managing Projects and Scenes

Types of Projects and Scenes

In Avid 3D you build scenes that are stored in a folder structure called a project. The scenes you build will be essentially of two types: a scene that uses a fixed camera or a scene that uses a free camera.

Fixed-Camera Scenes

Fixed-camera scenes, not surprisingly, feature a camera that is fixed in place. Typically, fixed-camera scenes are already set up with a backplate positioned so that the image fills the camera’s field of view. A second camera may be available for accurately positioning objects, but the scenes is ultimately rendered from the point of view of the fixed camera. Fixed-camera scenes are ideal when creating 3D DVEs or animated bugs.

The perspective camera and orthographic camera rigs are just two examples of fixed-camera scenes. Both can be found in the object library under Cameras.

Free-Camera Scenes

Free-camera scenes allow unrestricted camera movement within the 3D world. All scenes created from the File > New Scene menu are, by default, freecamera scenes.

Because free cameras can be pointed anywhere, you usually need to keep the scene’s surrounding background in mind. The Avid 3D library includes two kinds of backgrounds: environments and environment maps.

Environments are spheres, large enough to contain even the most elaborate scenes, with an image (such as a starfield or a cloudy sky) projected on their interior. You can also illuminate specific areas of environments to achieve a particular effect. They can be found under Environments in the object library.

Environment maps are images applied to the scene itself. Unlike environments, they do not need illuminating, they can provide their own lighting. Environment maps are ideal for creating image-based lighting effects or for setting up blue and green screen projects. However, scenes with environment maps take longer to render. They are found under Scene > Environment in the material and fx library.

Projects

In Avid 3D you always work within the structure of a project. Projects are a system of folders that contain the scenes that you build and all the external files that are referenced in the scenes. A project can contain an unlimited number of scenes. Scene files can be recognized by their .scn filename extension.

Projects are used to keep your work organized and provide a level of consistency that can be used to simplify production with a team.

The Project Manager

The Project Manager is the tool that lets you manage multiple projects and scenes. You can create new projects and scenes, open existing projects and scenes, scan your system for projects, and add and remove projects and scenes from a list of projects. To work in Avid 3D, you must create a project or open an existing one.

To open the Project Manager:

Projects

t Choose File > Project Manager from the main menu.

The Project Structure

A project is a system of folders that store and organize the different elements of your work.

A set of subfolders are created in every new project. The browser opens by default to these folders when opening, saving, importing or exporting specific scene elements. Not all the subfolders are used when creating content in Avid 3D. The table below lists the folders used by Avid 3D and describes the type of files that get stored in them:

Project folder Type of files stored

Audio Audio clips used for synching.

Backup Backed up scene files with the backup version appended to the file

dotXSI Exported ascii format dotXSI files (*.xsi).

name. See “Backing Up and Recovering Your Work” on page 47.

Chapter 2 Managing Projects and Scenes

Project folder Type of files stored

Models Exported models (*.emdl).

Pictures Texture images and sequences.

Render_Pictures Rendered frames.

Scenes Scene files (*.scn).

Simulation Generated simulation files for particles (*.ptp). Although you can

System Hidden system folder used to identify the project. If this folder is

Creating a New Project

When you start Avid 3D, the last project you worked with is opened and an empty “Untitled” scene is created. If no project exists or you are running Avid 3D for the first time, the default project is opened and an empty “Untitled” scene is created. You can create a new project at any time while working in Avid 3D.

save .ptp files anywhere, it is recommended that you use a standard location.

removed or modified, the project will be invalid.

To create a project:

1. Do one of the following: t If you are already working in Avid 3D and want to create a new

project, choose File > New Project from the main menu to display the New Project dialog box.

t If the Project Manager is open, click the New Project button to

display the New Project dialog box.

2. In the Project Name text box, enter a unique name for your project.

3. In the Location text box, edit the path of the folder to which you would like the project to be saved.

Store your projects in any convenient location outside the Avid 3D directory structure. This way, if you reinstall or upgrade Avid 3D, you do not run the risk of deleting your work.

4. In the Project Manager, click New Scene to create a new scene for your project.

Opening an Existing Project

To open a project:

1. From the main menu, choose File > Project Manager. All projects stored in the project list are displayed in the Select a Project

pane of the Project Manager dialog box.

2. Click on a project name in the Select a Project list box. If you do not find the project you need in the displayed list, click the Scan

Disk button and select a folder to scan for projects.

3. In the Select a Scene list box, double-click on a scene in the project you wish to work on.

Maintaining Project Lists

If you work with numerous individual projects, you may find that sometimes some projects are relevant to your work, and others are not. Project lists in the Project Manager let you access the projects you need with the click of a mouse.

Projects

To build and maintain project lists:

1. Choose File > Project Manager from the main menu to open the Project Manager.

2. In the Project List controls, click one of the following:

t Add Project adds a project to the project list. t Remove from List removes a project from the project list. This does

not delete the project.

t Scan Disk opens a browser that lets you search for more projects in

the specified directories.

t Clear List removes all projects from the list. Use this command if

you want to switch to another list.

t Import List opens a browser that lets you search for a project list file

containing a list of projects and their associated paths. These project names are added to any existing projects in the project list.

t Export List creates an ASCII text file containing the path and name

of each project currently displayed in the project list. You can then use Import List to access and display these projects.

Chapter 2 Managing Projects and Scenes

Managing Invalid Projects

A project can become invalid if it is moved to another location, if its hidden system sub-folder is deleted or altered, or if the project folder is renamed. In these cases, the Project Manager can no longer identify the project from the path information specified in its project list.

The Project Manager does not automatically remove an invalid project from its project list. Instead, the project is labelled as Invalid and you can choose to delete the project or rescan to locate it and add it back to the project list.

Setting a Default Project

If you work with a particular project most of the time, you can set it as the default project. The default project is opened automatically when you start Avid 3D. It is also the first project specified in the project list.

To set the default project:

1. Choose File > Project Manager from the main menu.

Deleting Projects

2. Select the project you want to make the default.

3. Click Set as Default.

You cannot delete the project in which you are currently working. To delete your current project, you must close it, open another project, then delete the project in the Project Manager.

You cannot delete a project that is set as the default project. You must set another project as the default, then delete the project in the Project Manager.

To delete a project:

1. Choose File > Project Manager from the main menu.

2. Click the name of the project to be deleted from the Select a Project pane.

3. Click the Delete Project button to delete the selected project.

Scenes

A scene file contains all the information necessary to identify and position all the models and their animation, lights, cameras, textures, etc. for rendering. All the elements are compiled into a single file with a .scn extension.

To save your work during a session, use the File > Save or Save As commands to update the existing one or create a new scene in your current project.

Referenced Files in Saved Scenes

Scenes can also reference many external files such as texture images, video clips, and audio clips. Some of these referenced files may be located outside of your project structure. When you save a scene, the path information that lets Avid 3D locate and refer to these external files is saved as well.

Importing Scenes

Scenes are created from scratch in Avid 3D, but you can also import existing SOFTIMAGE|XSI scenes. In addition, you can also load scene and object files from other 3D or CAD/CAM programs saved to the dotXSI™ or EMDL formats and import them into Avid 3D. For more information, see “Importing

and Exporting Files” on page 135.

Scenes

Creating Scenes

Each time you start Avid 3D or create a new project, a new scene is automatically generated. However, you can also create a new scene at any time while you are working. Because you cannot have more than one scene open at a time, you are prompted to save the current scene before you can create a new one.

To create a new scene in the current project:

t Choose File > New Scene from the main menu or press Ctrl+N.

If you have modified the scene that is currently open, you are prompted to save the changes.

The new scene is created within the current project and its name appears as “Untitled” on the title bar.

Chapter 2 Managing Projects and Scenes

To create a new scene in a different project

1. Choose File > Project Manager from the main menu.

2. Select a project in the Select a Project list box where you want to create

the new scene.

3. In the Select a Scene list box, make sure New Scene is selected and click the New Scene button.

The new scene is created in the selected project and its name appears as “Untitled” on the title bar.

Opening Scenes

You can only view one scene at a time in Avid 3D. Before you open a different scene, you are prompted to save any changes made to the one that is open.

As the scene is loaded, Avid 3D looks for all its referenced files using the files’ full path names. If any file is not located using this method, Avid 3D looks for the file name in the current project folder. If the file isn’t found here, the users path, and then the factory path is searched. If the file is still not located, then you must manually correct the file’s paths. It is therefore important to make sure that all the files you use in a scene are stored in a folder that Avid 3D can easily locate. For more information, see “Correcting External

File Paths for Scenes” on page 46.

To open a scene in a project that is not on your project list:

If you open a scene in a project that is not on your project list, a dialog box will prompt you to add the project to your list. Answer Yes or No as you like. In addition, the dialog box lets you specify the behavior when opening other files in the future:

• Always Ask continues to prompt you to add new projects to your list.

• Always Add New Projects automatically adds projects to your list

without prompting.

• Never Add New Projects does not add new projects to your list. You can

still add projects manually using the Project Manager.

Scenes

To open a scene from the browser:

1. Choose File > Open from the main menu.

2. In the browser, go to the location of the project file you want to load. You

can use the Up button to locate folders at higher levels.

3. Select the scene file to be loaded (its name appears in the File Name text

box) and click OK. You can also double-click the scene name and it opens.

To open a scene from the Project Manager:

1. Choose File > Project Manager from the main menu.

2. Select a project from the Select a Project list box.

3. In the Select a Scene list box, double-click on the scene you wish to work on or select the scene name and click the Open button.

To open a scene you have recently worked on:

t Choose Find > Recent Scenes from the main menu and select the desired

scene from the list.

To open a scene by dragging and dropping:

t You can drag and drop Avid 3D scene (*.scn) files from a browser or a

Opening Locked Scenes

When you open a scene file, a temporary “lock” file is created. The lock file is deleted when you close the scene.

Anyone else who opens the file in the meantime is given a warning that the file is currently in use. The purpose of the lock mechanism is to let you know that somebody else is already working on a scene, and to avoid concurrent saving which can lead to data lost.

You can still open a “locked” scene, but in this case the scene is loaded as a “shared copy” (which is displayed in the Avid 3D window title bar) and any changes you make to the file need to be saved under a different name.

Windows explorer onto the background of a viewport to load and replace the current scene.

Chapter 2 Managing Projects and Scenes

Setting a Scene’s Resolution

To ensure accurate framing and prevent timing problems in your animation, you should set the frame format before you begin constructing your scene.

To set the frame format:

1. Click the Inspect Render Options button in the render and preview

controls. The Render Options dialog box opens.

2. Click the Format tab then click the arrow button to the right of the Format text box to select the picture standard for your scene. default is the NTSC D1 4:3 standard.

You can also set custom resolutions and frame rates. For more information, see “Specifying the Format Options” on page 385.

3. Click OK.

Deleting Scenes

To delete a scene:

Saving Scenes

1. Choose File > Project Manager. The Project Manager dialog box opens.

2. Select a project from the Select a Project list box.

3. Click the name of the scene to be deleted from the Select a Scene pane.

4. Click the Delete button to delete the selected scene.

You cannot delete the scene in which you are currently working. To delete your current scene, you must close it, open another scene, then delete the scene in the Project Manager.

All scenes are saved as a single file with an .scn extension. The scene contains any models, 3D objects, lights, cameras, animation, rendering options, textures, materials, and effects that you have applied.

To save a scene:

1. Choose File > Save from the main menu.

If the scene has already been named, any changes are saved to the same file name. If the scene does not have a name (untitled), the Save Scene browser opens.

2. Enter a unique name for your scene in the File Name text box.

3. Use the path navigation buttons to locate the folder where you want to save your scene. It is recommended, however, that you save scenes to the Scenes folder of the project.

4. Click OK.

Saving Scenes with a Different Name

In some cases, you may want to create a copy of a scene and save it with a different name. This can be helpful when you want to test a more complex rendering effect before committing it to the actual scene.

To save a scene under a different name:

1. Choose File > Save As from the main menu to open the Save As dialog box.

Scenes

2. Type another name for the scene in the File Name browser and click OK. The new scene name is displayed on the title bar. The original scene

remains unchanged in its most recently saved form.

Saving Scenes to a Different Project

You can save a scene from one project to another:

1. Open an Avid 3D scene.

2. Choose File > Save As from the main menu to open the Save As dialog box.

3. Navigate to the location of the new project and save the scene with the same name into its Scenes folder.

4. Select the Copy External Files Under Project option. See the next section for details.

Chapter 2 Managing Projects and Scenes

Copying Referenced Files Under Project

You can take all the external referenced files and copy them to the current project. This is particularly useful when you send project files to other users who otherwise cannot access the referenced files themselves. Or, you may have saved a scene to a different project and want all the referenced files used in that scene to be copied to the new project.

t In the Save As dialog box (choose File > Save As), select Copy External

Files under Project and click OK. This scans your project and copies any

referenced files such as textures or audio files used in your scene to the new project.

Correcting External File Paths for Scenes

Each time you open or import a scene, Avid 3D attempts to locate the external files (such as picture files, audio files, etc.) associated with the scene. You may need to update the path of a referenced file or locate missing files in scenes.

To locate and correct missing referenced files in scenes:

1. Choose File > Source Paths from the main menu to open the Inspect

Source Paths property editor.

All referenced files and their paths are listed. The Resolved Path column lists the full paths as interpreted from the relative path entries in the File

Path column. If a file cannot be found, the word “Invalid” appears in the Status column.

2. Click the name of the invalid file and modify its path or file name to

resolve the error, or click Browse Selected Path to search for the file.

Modifying Multiple File Paths

If you have renamed or moved a directory containing external files, or changed your naming convention for referenced files (for example, changing all your existing images from clock1.pic, clock2.pic, clock3.pic, etc. to clock01.pic, clock02.pic, clock03.pic, etc.), you can modify the file paths of several files at once by using the Search and Replace dialog box.

To modify many file paths at once:

1. Choose File > Source Paths from the main menu.

2. Click the Search and Replace All button.

Backing Up and Recovering Your Work

3. In the Search and Replace dialog box that opens, choose your settings:

-In the File Category text box, select the type of files whose entries

you want to modify (for example, All, Image, Audio).

-In the Old String text box, enter the text string to search for in the

existing path and file names.

-In the New String text box, enter the replacement text.

- Check the Case Sensitive check box if you want to search and replace

using the specific capitalization you’ve entered.

4. Click OK.

Backing Up and Recovering Your Work

Avid 3D provides a number of ways of recovering your work. In most cases, you can easily recover your work if your system crashes through the autosave and recovery mechanisms. You also have backup options that let you load earlier saved versions of your scene if you want to backtrack and rework some of your content.

Autosaving Scene Files

The autosave options in the Data Management property editor lets you activate the autosave feature and determine how frequently autosaves are made.

The autosaved scene file is created and maintained separately from the files you save while working. It is deleted when you exit Avid 3D in a normal manner. You must still make sure to save your work each time you exit.

The autosaved scene file is maintained in the hidden System folder under the active project.

To set the frequency of autosave:

1. From the Options tab in the tools and options panel, click the Data Management tab to display the backup settings.

2. Select the Enable Autosave option to activate the autosave function. By default, autosave is set to save every 30 minutes, but you can change

this time span in the Autosave Interval text box.

Chapter 2 Managing Projects and Scenes

Backing Up Saved Scenes

Each time you save your scene, its file is automatically saved in a backup folder. This means you can go back and load an earlier version of your scene if needed. This can also come in handy if your scene file could not be automatically recovered.

The default number of backed-up scenes is four, but you can change this number (to a maximum of 100) in the Data Management property editor.

To set backup preferences:

t From the Options tab in the tools and options panel, click the Data

Management tab and set the number of backups in the Number of Scene Backups text box.

t Set backups over a specified number of days in the Number of Backup

Days to Keep text box. This is useful if you save often and the last backed

up version does not include the information you need. This option ensures that you can retrieve your work from the last backed up versions of the set number of previous days.

Make sure you have enough disk space so that your backup files are created successfully.

To reload a scene file from its backup folder:

1. Choose File > Open and navigate to your backup folder. By default, this

folder is called Backup and is located in your project folder. This folder contains all your saved scene files. These files are labeled

(Myscene)_B1, (Myscene)_B2, (Myscene)_B3 etc., with (Myscene)_B1 being the most recently saved scene.

2. Select the required backup version and click OK to load the scene.

Recovering Scene Files

After a crash occurs, a dialog box usually opens indicating that your scene file has been successfully saved to an autosave or crash backup directory in the project’s System folder.

Avid 3D first tries to load the autosave file (if the autosave option is enabled); if not, it falls back on the default crashsave file. You can continue to use the scene after restarting Avid 3D.

You can activate the autosave feature from the Data Management property editor in the tools and options panel, under Autosave. By default, files are saved every 30 minutes.

To recover a scene file after a system crash:

1. Restart Avid 3D after the crash. A dialog box opens asking if you want to try to recover the scene. Click Ye s .

2. If the scene is recoverable, an untitled scene opens with your latest work retrieved from the crashsave or autosave process.

Backing Up and Recovering Your Work

3. Save the scene under a new name and restart Avid 3D.

Chapter 2 Managing Projects and Scenes

Chapter 3

The Avid 3D Interface

The interface is your window to working in the world of Avid 3D. It comprises viewports for viewing your scene and several types of panels for accessing commands and tools.

Chapter 3 The Avid 3D Interface

Overview of the Avid 3D Interface

The default layout of the Avid 3D interface is made up of control panels and four viewports, many of which can be resized.

Title bar

Displays the name of the open project and scene.

Menu bar Provides

access to primary

project and editing

commands.

Control bar

Displays buttons for

one-click access to

camera, transformation,

and editing controls.

See page 53 for details.

Viewports

Let you view the contents of your scene in different ways. You can resize, hide, and mute viewports in any combination. See “Viewports”

on page 62 for details.

Library panel

Contains objects, materials, textures, images, and video clips you can use to create your scene. This panel is also home to the scene explorer. See

“The Library Panel” on page 76 for

more information.

Lower interface controls

(See page 53 for details.)

Tools and Options panel

Provides tools for modifying and animating elements in your scene, as well as setting user preferences and display and output options. See “The Tools and Options Panel”

on page 78 for more information.

Lower Interface Controls

The lower portion of the interface gives you access to the timeline and playback controls; basic keyframe animation controls; and preview and rendering controls, as well as a status line for information.

Overview of the Avid 3D Interface

Rendering and Preview Controls

Lets you set up and create rendered output of your scene. See

“Output Options” on page 381.

Control Bar

Timeline

Displays the current position of your animation in time and lets you move manually between frames. See

“Using the Timeline” on page 270.

Mouse/status line

Displays the current functions of your three mouse buttons as well as status and error messages when applicable.

Playback controls

Lets you play back animated scenes. See

“Playing Animation” on page 270.

Animation controls

Lets you set, remove, edit and navigate between keyframes. See “Keyframe

Animation” on page 277.

The control bar gives you quick access to many commands that are in the form of buttons. Many of these buttons have associated menu commands or shortcut keys.

The control bar includes buttons for navigating in the viewports, transforming scene elements, selecting scene elements and their various components, duplicating and deleting scene elements, undoing and redoing edits, and opening the multi-purpose editor for editing properties.

Chapter 3 The Avid 3D Interface

Undo and Redo controls—see

“Undoing and Redoing Edits” on page 58.

Navigation controls for changing the viewpoint in the viewport—see

“Navigating in Viewports” on page 71.

Transform controls for scaling, rotating, and translating scene elements—see “Transforming

Objects” on page 117.

Selection controls for selecting elements in various ways—see

“Selecting” on page 111.

Duplicate button

duplicates the selected object.

Accessing Commands and Tools

In Avid 3D, there are many ways in which you can access commands. Many of the tools that are available depend on the context in which you’re working (such as the type of object you have selected or the type of view in which you’re working). This section describes the different ways in which you get commands.

You can use the mouse for performing basic operations such as manipulating objects in a scene, choosing commands, and selecting options in property editors. You must use a three-button mouse.

Multi-purpose editor button for editing

properties—see “The

Multi-Purpose Editor” on page 79.

Delete button

deletes the selected element.

Using Access and Shortcut Keys

Keyboard shortcuts are specific key combinations that perform the equivalent of certain menu commands. There are two types of keyboard shortcuts: access keys and shortcut keys.

Access keys—The underlined letters you see in many menu names. Pressing Alt+[underlined letter] activates its associated command.

Underlined letters in the menus and menu commands are not displayed by default in Windows XP. To display them, open Control Panel > Display >

Appearance > Effects. Deselect the option called Hide underlined letters for keyboard navigation indicators until I press the Alt key.

Accessing Commands and Tools

Shortcut keys—Commands that have been mapped to your keyboard. For example, pressing Ctrl+[key] activates an associated command.

Shortcut keys, if available, are listed to the right of many menu command names and tooltips. Refer to Online Help for a list of all available keyboard shortcuts.

Note that not every menu command has a shortcut or access key.

Shortcut keys...

...from the keyboard

Press the key that corresponds to a command. Key combinations are displayed to the right of their associated commands in the main menu.

Access keys...

Press Alt+underlined letter of the

menu name to open a menu of

Press a key that corresponds to

...from the menu bar

commands.

...then, from the menu

an underlined letter of a

command name to activate it.

Using Shortcut Keys to Activate Tools

Shortcut keys are mapped to most of the tools used in Avid 3D, and pressing a key activates a specific tool. Once the key is pressed, the mouse pointer changes shape to identify the active tool. Any further actions you perform with the mouse are then related to that tool. For example, pressing the Z key activates the zoom tool so that holding down the left mouse button zooms in and out of the scene, and holding down the middle mouse button pans back and forth.

You can move back and forth between different tools quickly by using these shortcut keys. Only one tool can be active at a time.

Chapter 3 The Avid 3D Interface

Tools can be activated in one of two modes:

• Sticky—you do not need to hold the key down to keep the tool active.

• Temporary (or supra)—you must keep the key held down for the tool to

remain active.

Sticky-key Mode

You can activate a tool in this mode by quickly pressing and releasing its supra key. The tool remains active until you choose another tool or press another supra key to perform a different operation. Pressing a key a second time deactivates the tool.

Temporary (Supra) Mode

You can activate a tool in temporary, or supra, mode by holding down its key for longer than a quarter of a second. When you hold down a key and drag the mouse, the tool is switched off after you release the key. For example, when you release the O key after holding it down and dragging the mouse, you deactivate the orbit tool.

Example: Activating Basic Tools

Follow these steps for an example of how to activate and work with the commonly used camera manipulation tools (pan and zoom, orbit, dolly).

1. Start Avid 3D and load a scene.

2. In a User view, press and hold the letter O key while dragging with the left mouse button to orbit your scene. When you release the O key, Avid 3D reverts to the tool you were using before.

3. Quickly press and release the P key. This activates the pan tool in sticky mode.

4. Left-click and drag to pan your scene, hold down the middle mouse button to zoom in, and hold down the right mouse button to zoom out.

Notice that when you release the mouse button you are still in zoom and pan mode. This is because the tool was activated as sticky: if you quickly press and release the key, the tool is activated and remains that way until you select another tool.

5. To deactivate the pan tool, press the P key again or press Esc.

6. Quickly press and release the D key. This activates the dolly tool:

- The left mouse button lets you dolly (zoom in and out) at normal speed.

- The middle mouse button lets you dolly slowly.

- The right mouse button lets dolly quickly. For information on other camera-manipulation tools, see “Navigating in

Viewports” on page 71.

7. To activate another tool, press any key or choose a tool from the control bar. For example, you can switch to selection mode by pressing the S key or by clicking the Select button in the control bar.

Keeping Track of the Active Tool

You will often move back and forth between tools as you work. Here are a few ways to keep track of the tool you are working with:

• There are often visual cues within a viewport to indicate the current tool. An SRT manipulator appears in the viewport when you are in transformation mode, object wireframes change color to indicate the active selection tool, and so on.

Accessing Commands and Tools

• When dragging and dropping items from the library, a status bar appears in the active viewport and provides information appropriate to the location of your mouse pointer.

• In most cases, the mouse pointer changes to indicate the active tool. For example, when the orbit tool is active, the pointer turns into an orbit icon.

• The status bar at the bottom of the interface displays which operation is mapped to each of the mouse buttons. Always check the status bar for the current tool status.

Repeating Commands

You can repeat the last command in general, as well as repeat the last command from a specific menu button. For example, this lets you apply an operation to the selected object, then select a different object and apply the same operation again without digging through menus and submenus.

Chapter 3 The Avid 3D Interface

To repeat the last command:

t Choose Edit > Repeat command name from the menu bar.

The name of the menu item indicates which command will be repeated. Certain categories of command cannot be repeated:

- Selection commands. This allows you to apply a command to selected

- Interactive manipulation, for example, using the transform tools (V,

- Viewing commands, such as toggling the display of points in a viewport.

- Playback and timeline commands, such as changing frames.

- Camera navigation and viewing commands, such as orbiting,

- Parameter changes made in a property editor. When the last command can’t be repeated, Edit > Repeat will repeat the

previous command instead.

elements, then select other elements and repeat the command.

C, X) or the Move Point tool (M).

zooming, and framing.

Undoing and Redoing Edits

You can undo most edits made from the Avid 3D interface, such as scaling an object or deleting a rig.

To undo an edit:

t Choose Edit > Undo from the menu bar, click the Undo button in the

control bar, or press Ctrl+Z. You can continue to undo actions as far back as the system memory can recall.

Undo does not work on changes in viewport manipulations such as orbit or zoom.

To redo an edit:

t Choose Edit > Redo from the menu bar, click the Redo button in the

control bar, or press Ctrl+Y. You can invoke one redo command for each undo action.

Viewing Your Work in 3D Space

This section provides some background for those who are not familiar with 3D animation. In particular, it introduces the notion of coordinate systems and distance units. The four viewports are where you view and manipulate the scene elements in 3D space.

Coordinate Systems

Coordinate systems allow any point in three-dimensional space to be represented by a triplet of numbers (X, Y, Z).

Cartesian Coordinates

One essential concept that a first-time user of 3D computer graphics should understand is the notion of working within a virtual three-dimensional space using a two-dimensional user interface.

To represent pictorial reality, 3D computer software uses the classical Euclidean/Cartesian mathematical representation of space. To represent the geometry of an object, the software uses the Cartesian coordinate system based on three perpendicular axes, X, Y, and Z, intersecting at one point. This reference point is called the origin. You can find it by looking at the center of the grid in any of the 3D windows.

Viewing Your Work in 3D Space

XYZ Axes

To remember the direction of the X, Y, and Z axes, you can use the “righthand” rule: hold up your right hand so that your palm is facing you, then extend your thumb to the right, hold your index finger up, and point your middle finger towards you. Your thumb is pointing in positive X, your index finger in positive Y, and your middle finger in positive Z. The opposite directions represent negative X, Y, and Z.

Chapter 3 The Avid 3D Interface

A small icon representing the three axes and their directions is shown in the corner of each viewport in the camera, geometry, and spotlight views. The icon’s three axes are represented by color-coded vectors: red for X, green for Y, and blue for Z.

XYZ Coordinates

An easy way to remember the color coding is RGB = XYZ. This mnemonic is repeated throughout Avid 3D: object centers, visual cues for transformations, and so on.

With the Cartesian coordinate system, you can locate any point in space using three coordinates. Positions are measured from a point called the origin, which is (0, 0, 0). For example, if X = +2, Y = +1, Z = +3, a point would be located to the right of, above, and in front of the origin.

Location = (2, 1, 3)

Z=3

Y=1

Origin

X=2

XZ, XY, YZ Planes

Since you are working with a two-dimensional interface, spatial planes are used to locate points in three-dimensional space.

The perpendicular axes extend as spatial planes: XZ, XY, and YZ. In the viewports, these planes correspond to three of the parallel projection windows: Top, Front, and Right.

Viewing Your Work in 3D Space

Imagine that the XZ, XY, and YZ planes are folded together like the top, front, and right side of a box.

To p

Right

Front

This helps you keep a sense of orientation when you are working within the parallel projection windows.

Global and Local Coordinate Systems

The location of an object in 3D space is defined by a point called its center. This location can be described in more than one way or according to more than one frame of reference.

For example, the global position is expressed in relation to the scene’s origin. The local position is expressed in terms of the center of the object’s parent.

Chapter 3 The Avid 3D Interface

Scene origin

Distance Units

Throughout Avid 3D, lengths are measured in distance units. How big is a distance unit? It is an arbitrary, relative value that can be anything you want: one foot, 10 cm, or any other system of measure.

Parent

Object and its center

Viewports

However, it is generally recommended that you avoid making your objects too big, too small, or too far from the scene origin. This is because rounding errors can accumulate in mathematical calculations, resulting in imprecisions or even jittering in object positions.

As a general rule of thumb, an entire rig should not fit within 1 or 2 units, nor exceed 1000 units.

The viewing area of the interface contains windows, called viewports, where you can view and work on your scene. Each viewport can display different types of views. You can display up to four different views in the viewers.

Viewports can have different geometry views (top, front, right, and user) and display types (shaded, wireframe, texture, hidden line, etc.).

A viewport’s menu bar contains a set of controls that allow you to perform various functions such as changing views, choosing display types, and resizing the viewport.

Viewing Your Work in 3D Space

Views menu

Provides a variety of

specialized ways in which to

view your scene—see page 66.

Letter Identifier button

Identifies the viewport and,

when selected, alternates

between displaying and hiding

(muting) viewport contents.

Identifying Viewports by Letter

A letter (A, B, C, or D) appears in the upper-left corner of each viewport to simplify the way in which they are referenced. A refers to the upper-left viewport, B is the upper-right, C is the lower-left, and D is the lower-right viewport.

Display Types menu Specifies how visible items in the viewports are displayed—see page 68.

Resize button Resizes viewports to fullscreen, horizontal, or vertical layouts—see page 64.

Muting and Soloing Viewports

When a viewport is muted, it is prevented from displaying its contents. Muting a viewport’s neighbors helps speed up its refresh rate.

To mute or solo viewports, do one of the following:

t To solo (view just one viewport), left-click on its letter. Left-click a

second time to redisplay all viewports.

t To mute a viewport, middle-click on its letter. Middle-click a second time

to redisplay the viewport.

t Right-click a viewport’s letter to display a menu with mute and

solo commands.

Chapter 3 The Avid 3D Interface

Changing the Viewport Color

By default, a viewport background appears in gray. You can modify it to display in black or white.

To change the viewport color:

1. Click the Display Options button in the Tools and Options panel.

2. Click the appropriate Background Colors button.

Resizing Viewports

There are two ways to resize viewports: interactively set them to any size, or use the sizing button to set specific sizes.

To resize a viewport interactively:

1. Position the mouse pointer at an intersection of the viewports. You can either place the pointer where the four viewports meet or where two viewports meet.

The pointer becomes an arrow indicating in which direction you can resize the viewports.

Viewing Your Work in 3D Space

2. Drag the viewports to whatever size you want. They change size in relation to each other.

3. To reset the viewports back to equal sizes, middle-click at the viewport intersection.

Resizing Viewports Using Set Sizes

The sizing button in the upper-right corner of each viewport resizes it so that the viewport fills the entire screen (full view), a horizontal half-view (landscape), or vertical half-view (portrait).

You can easily toggle between these views and reduce the viewport to its original size (quarter-view) at any time.

To toggle between a quarter-view (the four viewports) and full view:

t Click the sizing button.

To toggle between a quarter-view and a landscape view (horizontal):

t Middle-click the sizing button.

To toggle between a quarter-view and a portrait view (vertical):

t Ctrl+middle-click the sizing button.

You cannot toggle directly between the landscape and portrait views.

You can also right-click the sizing button to display a pop-up menu that includes the following commands:

• Maximize: displays the viewport in full view.

• Horizontal: displays the viewport in landscape view.

• Ver ti ca l: displays the viewport in portrait view.

• Reset Size: displays all viewports in quarter-view.

• Reset All: resets all viewports to their default set of views (i.e., Camera,

Right, Front, Top).

Chapter 3 The Avid 3D Interface

Displaying the Viewport Grid

When you translate objects in the 3D or camera views, the viewport grid provides a visual frame of reference. In the orthogonal views, translation is restricted to take place within the plane of the displayed grid. The viewport grid is not rendered.

To toggle the viewport grid display, do one of the following:

t To toggle the grid in the viewport your mouse pointer is in, press the G key.

t To toggle the grid in all viewports displaying a camera view, click the

Show/Hide Grid button in the Display Options panel.

Viewport Views

Camera Views

Viewpoints

There are many ways to view and edit your scene in the viewports.

Camera views let you display your scene in a viewport from the point of view of a particular camera.

Selecting a camera from a viewport’s views menu switches the viewpoint to that of a “real” camera in your scene. All other views such as User, Top, Front, and Right are not associated to an actual camera.

You can also choose to display the viewpoint of any spotlight in the scene.

Viewpoints show you the geometry of objects in a scene. You can also choose different display types to change the visual appearance of the objects seen in viewpoints (see “Display Types” on page 68).

Viewing Your Work in 3D Space

Top, Front, and Right Views

The top, front, and right views are parallel projection views, called such because the object’s projection lines do not converge in these views. Because of this, the distance between an object and the camera has no influence on the scale of the object. If one object is close to the camera, and an identical object is farther away, both appear to be the same size.

The top, front, and right views are orthographic, which orients the camera so it is perpendicular (orthogonal) to specific planes:

• The top view faces the XZ plane.

• The front view faces the XY plane.

• The right view faces the YZ plane.

To p

Front Right

User

The user view is a user-defined viewpoint that shows objects in a scene from a virtual camera’s point of view. This view can be either perspective or orthographic.

• In the perspective view, objects appear to converge toward a central vanishing point, and objects closer to the camera appear larger than those farther away.

• In the orthographic view, objects remain in parallel projection with the view being perpendicular (orthogonal) to the XY plane in camera space.

Chapter 3 The Avid 3D Interface

The user point of view can be placed at any position and at any angle within the global 3D coordinate system. You can orbit, dolly, zoom, and pan in this view.

Spotlight

Spotlight views let you select from a list of spotlights available in the scene. Selecting a spotlight from this list switches the point of view in the active viewport relative to the chosen spotlight. The point of view is set according to the direction of the light cone defined for the chosen spotlight.

Display Types

There are several different ways in which you can display objects in a viewport. By default, all objects are displayed in wireframe mode. Some display types provide less detail but are less computationally intensive than others—and this speeds up your screen refresh.

To set the display type for a specific viewport:

Click the Display Type menu to choose a display type from its menu.

Outputting Avid 3D Views to an Avid Mojo

Here are some examples of several of the available display types. For more information on each display type, refer to the Online Help (Help > Avid 3D Help) for the Viewport topic.

Wireframe

Shaded

Hidden Line Constant (flat-shaded)

Te xt u re d

OpenGL

Outputting Avid 3D Views to an Avid Mojo

Avid Mojo™ is a portable Digital Nonlinear Accelerator that allows you to output hardware and software rendered effects from Avid 3D to a monitor in real-time.

When you have an Avid Mojo connected to your Avid 3D workstation, you can output content from Avid 3D to a monitor using the Mojo to accelerate the display of effects. You can choose a view to output from the Mojo Options tab in the tools and display panel.

You can also output to the Mojo from the flipbook and after rendering—see

“Loading Animation in the Flipbook” on page 334 and “Rendering Your Scene” on page 383.

Chapter 3 The Avid 3D Interface

To output Avid 3D views to a monitor:

1. Click the Options button in the tools and options panel, then click the Mojo Options button in the toolbar that appears to open the Time

property editor.

2. Choose the Monitor Type to which you’re outputting content. This can be either NTSC or PAL.

3. Choose an Avid 3D view to output via the Mojo by setting the View Output to one of the following:

- Disabled: nothing is output to the monitor.

- 3D View A: the display in viewport A is output to the monitor.

- 3D View B: the display in viewport B is output to the monitor.

- 3D View C: the display in viewport C is output to the monitor.

- 3D View D: the display in viewport D is output to the monitor.

- 3D Auto A/B/C/D: the viewport that has focus is output to the

- Render View: outputs the rendered image from the render preview

monitor. Click a viewport to give it focus.

or, the render view when rendering an image to disk. The image/frame is not displayed on the monitor until the last tile

is rendered.

-The FX View option is not implemented in Avid 3D.

- Image Clip View: the image clip view, as seen in the Texture Clip

Viewer, is output to the monitor.

Configuring Avid 3D to Output to an Avid Mojo

The following procedure explains how you can configure Avid 3D to output to a Mojo.

If you have installed other Avid products you may already have a Mojo driver installed. You must ensure that the most recent driver has been installed.

The driver files for Mojo are called Flamethrower.inf and Flamethrower.sys. They are located in the

Application\bin

subdirectory of the installation path.

Navigating in Viewports

To update your Mojo driver:

1. Close all running sessions of Avid 3D.

2. From the Windows task bar, choose Start > Control Panel > System.

3. On the Hardware tab, click the Device Manager button. In the device manager, expand the Sound, video & game controllers node.

4. Double-click Avid Technology Mojo to open its Properties dialog box and switch to the Driver tab.

5. Click the Update Driver button.

6. From the Hardware Update Wizard, choose Install from a list or specific location and click Next.

7. Choose Don’t Search. I will choose the driver to install. Then click Next and choose the latest driver.

If no drivers are listed, click Have Disk. Then Browse to the

Application\bin subdirectory of the installation path, choose Flamethrower.inf, and click OK.

When you first launch Avid 3D with Mojo support, it may request that you update your firmware. Simply follow the instructions to perform the update. Once the firmware is updated, you’ll need to power the Mojo off and on again and restart Avid 3D for the changes to take effect.

If Avid 3D is installed on the same machine as other applications that support Mojo output (such as Avid XpressPro), make sure that those programs use the same version of the Mojo driver and firmware as Avid 3D. Programs requiring different versions of the Mojo driver cannot co-exist peacefully on the same machine.

Navigating in Viewports

A set of viewport navigation controls in the control bar and their corresponding shortcut keys let you change the way in which you view your scene. You can use these controls and keys to zoom in to and out of a scene, frame objects within a viewport, and orbit, track, and dolly the scene.

Camera buttons in the control bar

Chapter 3 The Avid 3D Interface

Framing Objects in Viewports

Framing commands let you instantly zoom in to or out from selected objects in viewport geometry views. You can frame objects in two ways: framing selected objects or framing all visible objects in one or all viewports.

To frame all visible objects in a viewport:

t Position the mouse pointer over the viewport and press A.

To frame all visible objects in all viewports:

t Press Shift+A or click the Frame All Objects In All Viewports button on

the control bar.

To frame all selected objects in a viewport:

t Position the mouse pointer over the viewport and press F.

To frame all selected objects in all viewports:

t Press Shift+F or click the Frame Selected Object In All Viewports

button on the control bar.

Changing the Viewpoint

You can zoom in to and out of your scene or pan in all 3D views using the zoom controls.

Panning and Zooming

To pan and zoom using the camera pan tool:

Click the Camera Pan Tool button on the control bar, or press the P supra key. Then do any of the following:

t Press the left mouse button and drag to pan. t Press the middle button to zoom in. t Press the right button to zoom out. t Click the Camera Pan Tool button or press P again to deactivate pan

and zoom mode.

Navigating in Viewports

To pan and zoom using the camera zoom tool:

Choose the Camera Zoom Tool button on the control bar, or press the Z supra key. Then do any of the following:

t Press the left mouse button and drag to zoom in or out. t Press the middle button and drag to pan. t Click the Camera Zoom Tool button or press Z again to deactivate

zoom mode.

By default, Avid 3D zooms into or out from the center of the view.

Orbiting

Dollying and Rolling

Zooming in or out changes the view angle setting of the camera, the same as when you zoom with a real camera. Use the dolly tool if you don’t want to change the view angle.

Orbiting is only possible in the perspective views. Orbiting rotates a camera, spotlight, or user viewpoint around its point of interest. This lets you study your scene’s overall “look” in any angle in any view.

To orbit:

t Click the Camera Orbit Tool button on the control bar, or press the O

supra key while in User view.

You can dolly toward the camera interest in a perspective view or toward the center of the viewport in an orthogonal view. Rolling is only possible in the perspective views.

To dolly:

Click the Camera Dolly Tool button on the control bar, or press the D supra key. Then do any of the following:

t Press the left mouse button and drag to dolly. t Press the middle button to dolly slowly. t Press the right button to dolly quickly.

Chapter 3 The Avid 3D Interface

t Click the Camera Dolly Tool button or press D again to deactivate

To roll the camera about its Z axis:

Click the Camera Roll Tool button on the control panel or press the L supra key, then do any of the following:

t Press the left mouse button and drag to roll. t Press the middle button to roll slowly. t Press the right button to roll quickly. t Click the Camera Roll Tool button or press L again to deactivate

Resetting Coordinates

You can reset the camera and other viewport views so that their global point of origin (X = 0, Y = 0, Z = 0) is in the center of the viewport.

To reset the camera and view coordinates:

dolly mode.

roll mode.

t Click the Reset Camera button on the control bar, or position the mouse

pointer over the viewport and press the R key.

Hiding and Unhiding Objects

You can quickly hide and unhide selected objects in the viewports using the Display Options panel or the H shortcut key. This is a quick way to set the viewport visibility of a selected element.

Hiding objects eliminates their visibility both in the viewports and in the rendered output.

To hide and redisplay selected objects in the viewports:

1. Do one of the following: t In any viewport, select the object you want to temporarily hide,

and press H.

Display Filters

Hiding and Unhiding Objects

t From the Display Options panel, click the Show/Hide Selected

Objects button.

The selected object is hidden in all geometric views but remains visible in the explorer (an H will appear on the icon of the hidden node). Hidden elements are not rendered in the render region nor do they appear in the final output.

2. Pressing H or clicking the Show/Hide Selected Objects button again

redisplays the hidden object. If you selected another element or modified the scene after you hid the

object, pressing H or choosing View > Hide/Unhide Selection again has no effect on the hidden element. In this situation, the hidden object can only be redisplayed by selecting its node in the explorer and pressing H or clicking the Toggle Visibility of Selected Objects button again.

To unhide all hidden objects in the viewports:

t From the Display Options panel, click the Show All Objects button.

In addition to hiding or displaying individual objects, you can use display filters to hide or display different types of scene elements, such as lights, cameras, curves, control objects, and particles.

To display or hide different types of elements in the viewport:

t Toggle the various Display Filter buttons in the Display Options panel.

Lights

Cameras

Curves and Motion Paths

Control Objects and Rig Handles

Particles

Chapter 3 The Avid 3D Interface

The Library Panel

The library panel is found on the right side of the Avid 3D interface. It is divided into tabs that contain libraries of objects, rigs, clips, particles, and other elements that can be used as building blocks for Avid 3D scenes.

Elements such as objects, models, and rigs can be added to a scene simply by dragging an element’s thumbnail into a viewport. Elements such as materials, textures, still images, and video clips are added to an object by dragging their thumbnails onto an object in the viewport.

For more information about using the elements in the library panel, see “Using

the Library Panel” on page 98.

Sample Projects library

Scene explorer—see

next section on page 76.

The Scene Explorer

The explorer displays the contents of your scene as a list of nodes that expand from the top root. You normally use the explorer as an adjunct while working in Avid 3D to find or select elements. For example, the scene explorer is a useful tool to help you select hidden elements in a scene. You can also rename elements using the scene explorer.

Object library Model library

Digimation

Model Bank

Material and Fx library

Still Images library

Video library

To see properties of those selected scene elements, use the multi-purpose editor, as described in “The Multi-Purpose Editor” on page 79.

To open the scene explorer:

t In the library panel, click the Scene Explorer tab.

The Scene Explorer

If the panel is too short and a scroll bar appears on the side, you can see the rest of the contents by either scrolling with the scroll bar or panning by clicking and dragging up and down in an empty area.

Click the Scene Explorer tab in the library panel to open the scene explorer.

Click an item to display

those types of elements in

the tree panel below.

Click an item to select it.

Selected items are highlighted.

Rename the selected item by

pressing F2 and entering a

new name.

Selecting Scene Elements in the Scene Explorer

Selecting elements in the explorer is quite straightforward. In particular, you can select any element, even if it is unselectable or hidden in the 3D views.

• To select a scene element, simply click on its name in the explorer. Ctrl+click to multi-select individual nodes.

• To select a range of elements, click on the first element’s name in the range, then Shift+click on the last element’s name in the range. These two elements, plus all the elements between them, become selected.

Renaming Scene Elements

You can rename elements in your scene using the explorer. You can rename lights, cameras, and geometric objects.

Chapter 3 The Avid 3D Interface

To rename scene elements:

t Select the element you want to rename in the scene explorer and press F2.

Then type a new name for the element.

The Tools and Options Panel

The Tools and Options panel is where you can access many tools used for different tasks in a scene, such as transforming elements, animating, or deforming objects. As well, you can access a number of options to set up your scene, such as for the display in the viewports or output options to determine how to render your scene.

Animation

Transform tools

tools

Text tools

Deformation

tools

Particle

tools

Options

Display options

• Transform Tools panel: Contains tools that let you translate, rotate, and

scale objects in your scene. It also includes a number of mode buttons that let you specify how objects are transformed.

For more information, see “Transforming Objects” on page 117.

• Animation Tools panel: Contains tools that let you animate objects in

different ways, such as by setting keyframes, putting objects on paths, constraining them, or using math presets.

For more information, see Chapter 10 “Animating in Avid 3D” on page 261.

• Text Tools pane l : Contains tools that let you create and edit text.

For more information, see Chapter 7 “Working with Text and Logos” on

page 173.

• Deformation Tools panel: Contains tools that let you deform objects in many different ways.

For more information, see Chapter 6 “Modifying Object Geometry” on

page 139.

• Particle Tools panel: Contains tools that let you create and apply particles, forces, and obstacles in your scene.

For more information, see Chapter 11 “Particles” on page 341.

• Display Options panel: Contains tools that let you determine what’s displayed or hidden in the viewport.

For more information, see “Hiding and Unhiding Objects” on page 74 and

“Viewports” on page 62.

• Options panel: Contains tools that let you set up preferences for different aspects of working in Avid 3D, from rendering and time properties to data management and the function curve editor.

For more information on each option, see the Online Help.

The Multi-Purpose Editor

The multi-purpose editor lets you edit properties of any type of scene element. You can also open the profile and function curve editors from here. The multipurpose editor appears as a floating window. You can resize the window by dragging its borders, and move it around the interface by clicking and dragging on its title bar.

To open the multi-purpose editor:

1. Select an element in a 3D view or in the scene explorer.

2. Click the Multi-Purpose Editor button on the control bar.

3. Click the tab that corresponds to the properties you want to edit (or editor that you want to use).

4. Click a node in the tree panel on the left, and its property editor appears in the panel on the right.

See “Modifying Properties in Property Editors” on page 80 for information in general about editing properties.

Chapter 3 The Avid 3D Interface

Material and Fx

properties

Geometry and

Deform properties

Click element name

in the tree to open its

property editor in the

panel on the right.

Texture clip

viewer

Profile

editor

Function curve

editor

The following is a summary of the properties and editors available in the multi-purpose editor.

• Geometry and Deform properties—see “Basic Scene Elements” on

page 100 and “Deforming Objects” on page 140.

• Material and Fx properties—see “Materials” on page 238, “Textures”

on page 245, as well as “Attaching Sprites and Images to Particles” on page 374 for using sprites with particles.

• Texture clip viewer—see “Textures” on page 245.

• Profile editor—see “Working with Profiles” on page 162.

• Function curve editor—see “Editing Function Curves” on page 285.

Modifying Properties in Property Editors

Property editors are found throughout Avid 3D—for instance, you can access property editors from some buttons in the tools and options panel, where they are used to view and change project, scene, and render settings. However, you will most likely use property editors to define and modify a scene’s various elements. You can find elements’ property editors in the multi-purpose editor.

You can also modify an object’s properties using the on-screen parameters—see

“Modifying On-screen Parameters” on page 88 for more information.

To open an element’s property editor:

1. Select the element in a 3D view or in the scene explorer.

2. Open the multi-purpose button by clicking the Multi-Purpose Editor button in the control bar.

See the previous section, “The Multi-Purpose Editor”, for information in general about the multi-purpose editor.

Anatomy of a Property Editor

Parameter Set headers

Click the arrow to expand and

collapse the property set.

Property-page controls

For viewing and setting

parameter values for sets

of grouped properties.

Modifying Properties in Property Editors

roperty Page tabs

Switch between sets of grouped parameters within a property set.

Chapter 3 The Avid 3D Interface

Property Page Controls

Color box

Opens color editors from which

you can pick or define the colors

you want to use. See “Defining

Color Properties” on page 92 for

Let you enter values for the

parameters. See “Entering

page 83 for more information.

Shows status of animatable

parameters (whether or not the

parameter is animated). You can also

set and remove keys by clicking this

button. See “Keyframe Animation” on

page 277 for more information.

more information.

Values in a Text Box” on

Animation button

Not all of the options described above are available in every property editor.

Changing Values Using Sliders

To change values using sliders, do one of the following:

Sliders

Let you change values by dragging the bar or arrow in the slider. “Changing

Values Using Sliders” on page 82 for more

information.Text boxes

Check box

Toggles the option so that it’s active or inactive. A check mark appears in the box when it’s active.

Drop-down lists

Let you select one option from several. Click the arrow beside the list to open its menu.

t Drag a slider to the right to raise the value or to the left to lower the value

in the text box.

t Drag a slider to the right or left while pressing the Shift key to make

finer adjustments.

t Drag a slider to the right or left while pressing the Ctrl key to change the

value of all the sliders in a color-control group simultaneously.

t Drag with the middle mouse button to have the scene update only when

you release the mouse button instead of refreshing continuously as you drag. This is especially useful when setting values on parameters that may take a long time to update.

When you resize a property editor so that there is not enough room to display or use a slider effectively, the slider becomes an input box. When you enlarge the property editor, the input box becomes a slider again.

Entering Values in a Text Box

There are many ways to enter information in a text box. You can enter information the conventional way by using your keyboard. For numeric input, you can also use gestural movements and key combinations to increase or decrease the parameter values.

Modifying Properties in Property Editors

Sliders become input boxes at small sizes.

Sliders at larger sizes.

To move from one text box to the next one in the same property editor, press the Tab key. To move back to the previous text box, press Shift+Tab.

To enter information by typing:

Move the mouse pointer inside the text box and click. The pointer shape becomes a text cursor (flashing vertical bar). Any existing text is selected and is overwritten as soon as you begin typing.

If you click in the text box a second time, the text is deselected and the cursor is placed where you clicked. You can now:

• Use the left- and right-arrow keys on the keyboard to move the cursor to the appropriate place in the text box.

• Drag the cursor over the part of the contents you want to replace. The selected characters are highlighted. Now type in the text you want.

• Press Shift+left- or right-arrow key to select characters that are to the left or right of the cursor. You can delete or replace these characters.

• Double-click to select a word or value so that you can replace it completely with the text that you type.

• Right-click to open a pop-up menu and choose the command to Undo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, or Select All the contents of the text box.

Chapter 3 The Avid 3D Interface

• Delete characters to the left of the cursor using the Backspace key, or delete characters to the right of the cursor using the Delete key.

• To cancel text box input, press the Esc key.

If you have problems entering decimal values, open the Windows Control Panel and make sure that the Regional Settings are set to English (United States).

To enter information by gestural input (scrubbing):

t Click and drag the mouse pointer in a circular motion over a text box that

supports numeric values. This is known as scrubbing. To increase the value, scrub in a clockwise direction; to decrease the value, scrub in a counterclockwise direction.

- Press the Shift key while scrubbing to increment or decrement values

by a factor of 0.1.

- Press the Ctrl key while scrubbing to increment or decrement values

by a factor of 10.

To enter information by increments, do one of the following:

t Click in the numeric text field and press the square bracket keys ([) and (])

to increment and decrement values as follows:

Press this... To do this...

] Increment by 1

[ Decrement by 1

Ctrl+] Increment by 10

Ctrl+[ Decrement by 10

Shift+] Increment by 0.1

Shift+[ Decrement by 0.1

Modifying Properties in Property Editors

t Click in the numeric text field and press the arrow keys to increment or

decrement values as follows:

Press this... To do this...

Ctrl+right-arrow Increment by 10

Ctrl+left-arrow Decrement by 10

Shift+Ctrl+right-arrow Increment by 0.1

Shift+Ctrl+left-arrow Decrement by 0.1

Relative Input Using Math Operations

If you have a mouse wheel, click in the numeric text field, then roll the wheel forward to increment the value or backward to decrement the value.

All text boxes allow you to input relative values by means of four basic math operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division), as well as other operators such as linear and random.

To input relative values:

1. Click in a text box to select the value it contains.

2. Enter the number to add, subtract, divide, or multiply.

3. Enter the symbol for the math operator ( + – * / ). You can use only one math operator per text box.

4. Press Enter.

For example, if the selected value in the text box is 10 and you replace this value by 5+ and press Enter, the result is 15 because you added 5 to the existing value.

When you have multiple elements of similar parameter values, anything you enter in a text box is applied to all these parameters:

Chapter 3 The Avid 3D Interface

Operator Results

value

value+

value-

value*

value/

l or L(min, max)

r or R

r(x) or r(-x)

Sets all selected element properties to that value. For example, entering an X-axis rotation value of 5 sets all selected objects’ rotational values to 5. This is also known as absolute input (see the following illustration).

Increments all the selected elements by that value. For example, entering 2+ in an X-axis translation parameter shifts all selected objects by 2 distance units. Math operations are known as relative input.

Decrements all the selected elements by that value.

Multiplies all the selected elements by that value.

Divides all the selected elements by that value.

Creates a linear range through the selection, according to the original selection order. For example, L(4,8) when applied to the X-axis translation parameter of a group of three cubes causes each object to move 4, 6, and 8 distance units along the X axis, respectively.

Creates a random value for each selected element, between 0 and 1.

Creates a random value for each selected element between 0 and the value for (x). If r is followed by (–x), a random value between 0 and the negative value is inserted.

r(min, max)

Creates a random value for each selected element within the specified range.

g(mean, var)

Creates a random value following a normal distribution among the selected elements.

The following illustrations describe the different ways in which elements can be transformed using text box input. For illustrative purposes, the example of translation is used, but the concepts apply to any parameter:

Absolute Input

Entering a numeric value in an XYZ text box repositions all selected objects to the specified position on their X,Y, or Z axes.

This example: Translation: Y = 3 (spheres all repositioned to 3 on the Y axis)

Relative Input

Entering (value)+ or (value)– in an XYZ text box increases/decreases the relative value of each selected object. You can also enter (value)* and (value)/ to multiply and divide the relative value.

This example: Translation: Y = 3+ (Y value of each selected sphere increased by three distance units)

Random Input

Entering a value of R(min,max) in an XYZ text box randomly repositions each selected object anywhere between the specified minimum and maximum values.

Modifying Properties in Property Editors

This example: Translation: Y = R(0,6) (spheres randomly repositioned between 0 and 6 on the Y axis)

Linear Range

Entering a value of L(min,max) in an XYZ text box repositions each selected object on a linear path between the specified minimum and maximum values. The first selected object receives the minimum value and last selected object receives the maximum value.

This example: Translation: Y = L(0,6) (spheres repositioned equally on a linear range between 0 and 6 on the Y axis)

Chapter 3 The Avid 3D Interface

Modifying On-screen Parameters

In addition to marking, editing, and animating parameter values in a property editor, you can display parameters directly in viewport B and do all these tasks on screen.

On-screen parameters are displayed for the selected object on a semitransparent menu in the upper-right corner of viewport B. For most objects, only their Transform parameters appear on-screen; however other objects, especially rigs, also have other parameters that can be displayed on-screen.

Displaying On-screen Parameters

To display on-screen parameters in viewport B:

1. Select an object, and its on-screen parameters appear in the upper-right corner of viewport B.

If you multi-select objects, only the parameters for the first object you selected are displayed on-screen.

On-screen parameters are displayed for the selected rig in a semi-transparent menu in viewport B.

Modifying On-screen Parameters

2. Click the arrow beside the parameter set name (in this case, Transform) to open up the menu of parameters available for that set.

Click arrow beside parameter set name to open menu that displays the set’s parameters.

Some objects have on-screen parameters other than the Transform parameters. You can find out which objects these are by clicking the

Scene Explorer tab in the library panel and selecting Objects > w. On-screen Params.

To set the size of the font for on-screen parameters:

1. Click the Display Options tab in the tools and options panel.

2. Select a font size from the On-screen Parameter buttons: small (sm), medium (M), or large (L).

Chapter 3 The Avid 3D Interface

Modifying and Animating the On-screen Parameter Values

You can easily modify the on-screen parameters, as well as animate them. Before you modify or key parameter values, you should mark them. Marking parameters lets Avid 3D know that you want to modify or key only those parameters.

All marked parameters’ values are modified when you drag the mouse or are keyed when you click the keyframe button in the animation controls. For general information on setting keys, see “Setting Keys” on page 278.

Marked parameters

are displayed in yellow.

To mark parameters, do one of the following:

t Click the parameter name: it turns yellow to indicate that it’s marked.

t Press Shift+click to mark multiple parameters. t Press Ctrl+click to toggle the marked state of the parameters.

To edit parameter values:

Click and drag on a parameter name or its value to modify the value:

• Drag to the left to decrease the value, and drag to the right to increase it.

• Press Ctrl while you drag for coarse control.

• Press Shift while you drag for fine control.

• Press Ctrl+Shift while you drag for very precise control.

• Press Alt while you drag to extend beyond the range of the parameter’s slider in its property editor (if the slider range is smaller than its total range).

Modifying On-screen Parameters

• Double-click on a numeric value to edit it using the keyboard. The current value is highlighted, so you can type in a new value. Only the parameter you click on is affected even if multiple parameters are marked.

Double-click the value, then type in a new one.

To animate parameter values, do one of the following:

t Click on the parameter’s animation button to set or remove a key for the

corresponding parameter.

t Right-click on an animation button to open the animation menu for the

corresponding parameter. From this menu, you can set or remove keys, copy and paste keys between parameters, or move between keys. See

“Keyframe Animation” on page 277 for more information.

The color of the animation box beside the parameter indicates the following information:

Empty: the parameter is not animated.

Blue: the parameter is animated by

something other than keys (such as a math preset).

Red: the parameter has a key at the current frame.

Yellow: the parameter is animated and the value has been modified but is not yet keyed.

Green: the parameter is animated and the current value is the interpolation between keys.

Chapter 3 The Avid 3D Interface

Defining Color Properties

There are a number of standard ways of defining color properties, for textures, materials, and lighting.

Defining Colors with Sliders

To define a color using the color sliders:

1. Select the color model that best suits your needs. Below the color box, you can click on the color model button to toggle between RGB, HLS, and HSV.

2. Do one of the following to set the color: t Click and drag the sliders to change the strength of each channel

independently, or type a numerical value directly in the text box beside the sliders.

Color box

t To move all three sliders at once, hold the Ctrl key down while

dragging the color sliders.

t For fine-tuning a single color value, hold down the Shift key while

dragging the color sliders.

You can quickly copy a color by clicking a color box and dragging and dropping its “color chip” to another color box in the same property page or another one. This is especially useful when you want to match ambient or diffuse colors among objects.

As you use the color sliders, you will notice that each slider immediately updates to show you a gradient of the color you have selected. The slider shows you what color will result if you move the slider to a new position.

The specific channel corresponding to a slider depends on the color channel you selected; for example, if you selected RGB, the sliders correspond to the red, green, and blue channels. The values range between 0 and 1.

Color

model

Color sliders

Defining Color Properties

When you are defining materials, you can type values greater than 1 to compensate for transparency and reflectivity.

Defining Colors with the Color Editors

When defining or choosing colors, or to choose one from a viewport, you can use one of the two color editors. In the full color editor, you can create and modify colors for your materials and lights. This can be useful for creating specific palettes to apply consistently to a group of materials. You can also use the color picker to pick a color displayed in any viewport, including the Image Clip editor.

To select a color using the mini color editor:

1. Click the color box next to the color sliders in a property editor.

2. The mini color editor (below) opens:

Color box

Color spectrum

Current color box

Color preview box

Color picker copies a

color from anywhere

on the screen.

To select a color:

Slider bar

Changes color model.

Opens the full color editor.

t Click in the color spectrum. That color then appears in the color preview

box (and in the color box of the property editor), while the current color remains in the current color box to use as a reference.

Chapter 3 The Avid 3D Interface

To edit a color:

t Use the slider bar at the right or enter a numeric value in the text boxes

below it. You can also change the color model from RGB to HLS to HSV by clicking the > button.

To pick a color, do one of the following:

t Click the color picker button (the eye dropper) and click anywhere on the

screen. The color picker takes the color you see on the screen rather than the true color of the objects. This tool can be especially useful when trying to match a color in a viewport containing a flipbook or the Image Clip editor.

t Click on the browse (...) button to open the full color editor, where you

can fine-tune and create custom colors.

3. Close the color editor to use the color you created.

To fine-tune a color using the full color editor:

1. In a property editor, click the color box beside the color sliders to open the mini color editor.

2. In the mini color editor, click the browse (...) button. The full color editor opens.

Color area

Color views

Current

and Preview

color boxes

Slider bar

Color picker

Defining Color Properties

To select a color:

t Click in the color area. You can define the color area by selecting a color

view mode. Each mode offers a variety of spectrums and hues. Once a color is selected, the color appears in the preview color box, while the previous color remains in the current color box to use as a reference.

To modify a color:

t Use the slider bar at the right of the color editor or enter a numeric value

in any one of the RGB, HSV, or CMYK fields. As a color is modified, its corresponding values are updated.

To pick a color:

t Use the color picker as described on page 94.

Chapter 3 The Avid 3D Interface

Chapter 4

Avid 3D Basics

No matter what you plan to create in Avid 3D, the basic processes and building blocks are the same. The library panel contains most of the raw material you will use to create scenes, which you can then manipulate using the processes described in this chapter.

Chapter 4 Avid 3D Basics

Using the Library Panel

The library panel is where you find objects, textures, image and video clips, camera effects, and more—most of the raw material you will be using to create scenes in Avid 3D.

Getting content into your scene is simply a matter of dragging an item from a library into a viewport or onto a node in the multi-purpose editor. However, the type of content you want to use and how you want to apply it determines how you should drag and drop. The following is a general guide to Avid 3D’s drag and drop rules:

• To add objects, scenes, rigs, and environment effects, drag an item onto an empty spot in a viewport.

• To add materials and textures to objects, drag an item onto the object.

• To add light or camera effects, do one of the following:

t Drag an item onto a specific light or camera. t Drag an item into a viewport. The effect is added to all applicable

lights, or to the active camera.

• Some rigs use placeholder objects intended for objects you can add later. Drag an item onto the placeholder to replace it.

When dragging and dropping items from the library, a status bar appears in the active viewport and provides information appropriate to the location of your mouse pointer.

You can also drag and drop files from a Windows explorer or Web browser into Avid 3D.

Using the Library Panel

• Sample Projects Library: Contains preset scenes that you can drag and

drop directly into a viewport. If you load a sample scene onto an existing scene, you are prompted to save or cancel your existing scene. You cannot merge the scenes together.

• Object Library: Contains preset elements that you can drag and drop

directly into a viewport. This includes static and animated objects, lights, cameras, object rigs, environments, particle systems, text, and curves.

• Model Library and Digimation

object models that you can drag and drop directly into a viewport.

The Digimation Model Bank is available only if you selected to install it when you installed Avid 3D.

• Material and Fx Library: Contains preset elements that you can drag

and drop onto an appropriate object (objects, particles, lights, or cameras) or into a scene (environment maps). Most presets only work with specific targets. For example, you can drag and drop materials only onto a 3D object in a viewport, or drag and drop particle types only onto particles in a viewport.

• Still Images Library: Contains 2D images and textures that you can drag

and drop onto a 3D object.

• Video Library: Contains video and audio clips that you can drag and

drop onto an object (video) or in the scene (audio).

Model Bank™: Contains various 3D

Chapter 4 Avid 3D Basics

Basic Scene Elements

Objects

There are several different types of objects available for building Avid 3D scenes. While many of them are the objects that will appear in your final output, most will not—like a boom microphone or a wind machine on a sound stage, these objects remain invisible to the audience but are necessary to create a convincing and compelling scene.

Geometric Objects

Geometric objects are objects that can be modified by changing parameters or manipulating the components (points or polygons) that make them up. By default, most geometric objects are visible when the scene is rendered. There are several different types of geometric objects in Avid 3D.

Polygon Meshes

Polygon meshes are quilts of polygons joined at their edges and points.

100

A polygon mesh sphere

Curves

Curves are one-dimensional objects that have points but no thickness. They are not renderable, but can be used to modify extruded and revolved objects, create paths for objects to move along, and so on.

A simple curve

Avid 3D User’s Guide

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual

Copyright and Disclaimer

Contents

Using This Guide

Symbols and Conventions

If You Need Help

Accessing the Online Library

How to Order Documentation

Avid Educational Services

Getting Started

Starting Avid 3D

Starting with the Windows Start Menu

Starting from the Avid 3D Shortcut

Starting from the Command Line

Avid 3D Startup Options

Creating the First Project

Exiting Avid 3D

Managing Projects and Scenes

Types of Projects and Scenes

Fixed-Camera Scenes

Free-Camera Scenes

Projects

The Project Manager

The Project Structure

Creating a New Project

Opening an Existing Project

Maintaining Project Lists

Managing Invalid Projects

Setting a Default Project

Deleting Projects

Scenes

Referenced Files in Saved Scenes

Importing Scenes

Creating Scenes

Opening Scenes

Setting a Scene’s Resolution

Deleting Scenes

Saving Scenes

Backing Up and Recovering Your Work

Autosaving Scene Files

Backing Up Saved Scenes

Recovering Scene Files

The Avid 3D Interface

Overview of the Avid 3D Interface

Lower Interface Controls

Control Bar

Accessing Commands and Tools

Using Access and Shortcut Keys

Using Shortcut Keys to Activate Tools

Keeping Track of the Active Tool

Repeating Commands

Undoing and Redoing Edits

Viewing Your Work in 3D Space

Coordinate Systems

Distance Units

Viewports

Viewport Views

Display Types

Outputting Avid 3D Views to an Avid Mojo

Configuring Avid 3D to Output to an Avid Mojo

Navigating in Viewports

Framing Objects in Viewports

Changing the Viewpoint

Resetting Coordinates

Hiding and Unhiding Objects

Display Filters

The Library Panel

The Scene Explorer

Selecting Scene Elements in the Scene Explorer

Renaming Scene Elements

The Tools and Options Panel

The Multi-Purpose Editor

Modifying Properties in Property Editors

Anatomy of a Property Editor

Changing Values Using Sliders

Entering Values in a Text Box

Modifying On-screen Parameters