Zaxwerks PROMODELER USER MANUAL

The Zaxwerks 3D Invigorator
ProAnimator / ProModeler
version 3.0
User Guide
Zaxwerks 3D Invigorator - ProAnimator / ProModeler - User Guide 1
Zaxwerks Inc. 5724 Camellia Ave. Temple City, CA 91780 (626) 309-9102 phone (626) 309-9142 fax http://www.zaxwerks.com
Sales: sales@zaxwerks.com Tech Support: support@zaxwerks.com
© 1996 - 2003 Zaxwerks Inc. All rights reserved.
This manual, as well as the software described in it, is furnished under license and may only be used or copied in accordance with the terms of such license. The information in this manual is furnished for informational use only, is subject to change without notice, and does not represent product specifications or commitment on the part of Zaxwerks. Zaxwerks assumes no responsibility or liability for any error or inaccuracies that may appear in this document.
The Zaxwerks 3D Invigorator is a trademark of Zaxwerks Inc. After Effects, Illustrator and Photoshop are trade­marks of Adobe Systems Inc. FreeHand is a trademark of Macromedia Inc. Apple and Macintosh are regis­tered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. Windows 2000 and Windows XP are registered trademarks of Microsoft, Inc. OpenGL is a trademark of Silicon Graphics Inc. All other product names or trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Zaxwerks 3D Invigorator - ProAnimator / ProModeler - User Guide2

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
BASIC CONCEPTS
Modeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Surface Set-Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Scene Set-Up & Lighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Rendering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
ANIMATION TUTORIALS
ProAnimator Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Creating An Animation in Five Clicks . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Changing The Text In An Animation . . . . . . . . . 30
Changing The Speed Of An Animation . . . . . . . 31
Changing The Camera’s View
Of The Animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Rendering An Animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Rendering A Single Frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Saving A Single Frame Rendering . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Rendering The Movie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Rendering Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Changing The Timing And Speed
Of An Animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
What is A Pose? What Is A Transition? . . . . . . 38
Creating A New Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Creating The 3D Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Adding An Animation Preset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Changing The Track Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Moving Splice Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Adding More Hold Time To
The Beginning Pose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Changing The Position Of A Segment
Without Changing Its Length . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Slowing Down The Motion Of A Transition . . . 43 Resetting An Animation Back
To A Saved Preset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Increasing The Length Of
An Entire Animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Setting The Loop Points For
The Work Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Shortening The Length Of
An Entire Animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Selecting Segments That Are
Difficult To Click On . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Changing Object Motion During Transitions . . . . . . 49
Changing The Curve Of A Motion Path . . . . . . . 50
Changing The Direction Of
The Arch In The Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Controlling When Objects Start To Move . . . . . 52
Controlling The Order Of Objects
As They Cascade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
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Adding Start Ease And End Ease
For A Professional Touch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Changing The Positions Of Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Moving Objects To New Positions . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Spreading Objects Apart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Bunching Objects To A Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Making Objects Spin As They Move . . . . . . . . . 63
Randomizing Object Positions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Shuffling Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
ANIMATION CONTROLS REFERENCE
Easy/Advanced Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Track Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Add Camera Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Move Selected Objects To Track... . . . . . . . . . . .70
Delete Selected Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Select All Segments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Object Animations Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Make Object Pose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Save Preset... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Rename Preset... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Delete Preset... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Append Preset... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Last Applied Preset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Object Animations Preset List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Object Animation TRY Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Camera Animations Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Make Camera Pose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Save Preset... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Rename Preset... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Delete Preset... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Append Preset... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Last Applied Preset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Camera Animations Preset List . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Camera Animation TRY Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Animation Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Current Time Marker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Current Time Readout (The GOTO Field) . . . . . . . . 78
Project Start Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Project Duration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Frame Rate Popup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Motion Blur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Shutter Angle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Animation Playback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Play Work Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Work Area Start And End Markers . . . . . . . . . . 82
Jump To Beginning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Back One Frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Play Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Stop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Forward One Frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Jump To End Of Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Loop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Loop With Hold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Zaxwerks 3D Invigorator - ProAnimator / ProModeler - User Guide4
Animation Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Animation Poses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Pose Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Animation Transitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Path Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Primary vs. Secondary Selections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Pose Positioning Controls For Objects . . . . . . . . . . 89
Advantages Of Using The Pose Controls . . . . . . . . . 90
Easy Controls For Poses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Bunch/Spread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Randomize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Shuffle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Local Center Rotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Move . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Advanced Controls For Poses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Start At Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Advanced Move Controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Local Center Rotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Common Center Rotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Distribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Horizontal Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Vertical Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100
Circle X, Y, Z . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Square . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Pose Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Timing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Pose Action Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Title Roll (Up/Down) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Title Crawl (Left/Right) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Pitch X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Spin Y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Roll Z . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Free Tumble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Pose Action Presets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Pose Start / End Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
What Is A Tweak? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Reset Tweaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Reset Pose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Reset All . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Transition Controls For Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Easy Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Ease - Start & End . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Cascade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Cascade Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Birth Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Reverse Birth Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Random Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Selection Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Reverse Selection Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Top To Bottom Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Bottom To Top Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Left To Right Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Right To Left Order. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Arch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
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Arch Direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Advanced Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Timing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Cascade Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Cascade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Ease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Ease Amount . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Start Gaps & End Gaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Clump Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Transition Presets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Keyframe-Based vs. Generated Paths . . . . . . . . . . 121
Start/End Smoothing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Advanced Arch Amount . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Arch Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Same For All . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Even Spread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Reverse Spread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Two Point Spread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Three Point Spread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Random Spread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Advanced Arch Direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Direction Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Same For All . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Even Spread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Reverse Spread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Two Point Spread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Three Point Spread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Random Spread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Arch Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Overshoot Start/End . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Flatten Start/End . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Tw ist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Path Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Timing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Path Action Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Pitch X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Spin Y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Roll Z . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Free Tumble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Follow 2D/3D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Follow 3D With Roll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Face Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Face Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Grouping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Pose Grouping And Transition Grouping . . . . 137
The Effect Of Grouping On Timing . . . . . . . . . 138
Groups And Hard Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
When To Use A Hard Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Group Text By (Para/Line/Word/Char) . . . . . 141
Make Independent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Animation On/Off . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Add To Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Rename Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
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Select/Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Select All . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Pose Controls For Cameras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Transition Controls For Cameras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Camera Timing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Start Ease / End Ease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Ease Amount . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Camera Paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Start Smoothing / End Smoothing . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
MODELING, SURFACING, & LIGHTING
Basic Tutorials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Creating And Working With 3D Text . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Applying Object Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Changing The Depth Of An Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Coloring Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Coloring Objects: Method 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Coloring Objects: Method 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Coloring Objects: Method 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Editing 3D Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
How To Set The Lighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Using Lighting Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
How To Set The Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Saving A View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Think Like A Photographer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
How To Render An Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
How To Get The Background To Drop Out . . . . . . 173
Advanced Tutorials
How To Create a 3D Logo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
How To Make Objects Invisible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Moving 3D Objects - Part 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
How To Reset 3D Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Moving 3D Objects - Part 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Camera Shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Camera Shortcuts Exercise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Adjusting The Thickness of Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
How To Apply An Edge Profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
How To Apply A Single Material To An Object . . . 193 How To Add A Second Material To An Object . . . 195 How To Split A Profile To Fine Tune
Material Placement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
How To Create An Object Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Coloring The Other Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
How To Make Lights Cast Shadows . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
How To Move Lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
How To Save A Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
Additional Tipes When Working With
Illustrator Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
MODELING, SURFACING, & LIGHTING
Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
The Start Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Create 3D Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Open An Illustrator File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
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Create A New Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Open Existing Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Create 3D Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Text Entry Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Setting The Block Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Font Popup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Leading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Spacing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Kerning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Width Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Height Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Baseline Shift . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Justification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Create Whitespace Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Cleaning Up Problems With Font Models . . . . 216
Open Illustrator Artwork . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Show All Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
Open By Layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
Open As Layer Cycling Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Use Illustrator Colors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Dismantle Incoming Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
Move To Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
The INVIGORATOR SET-UP WINDOW . . . . . . . . 227
Scene Preview Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
Toolbar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
The CAMERA CONTROLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .229
Camera Mode Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
Camera Manipulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
Camera Tumble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
Camera Roll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .231
Camera Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
Camera Dolly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
Camera Manipulation Shortcut Keys . . . . . . . 233
Zoom Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
Small Camera Tab Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
Views Popup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
Lens Popup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
Antialiasing Popup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Super Fast Final Rendering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
Resolution Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
Pixel Aspect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
Alpha Channel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Grids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
The LIGHTING CONTROLS
Light Mode Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
Light Manipulation In The Scene Window . . . . . . . 242
Lighting Manipulator Ball . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
The Lights List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
Turn On This Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
Disable All Shadows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
Zaxwerks 3D Invigorator - ProAnimator / ProModeler - User Guide8
Light Editor Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
Light Name Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
Light Color Picker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
Light Color Eyedropper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Light Intensity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Shadow Casting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
Shadow Darkness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
Shadow Softness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
Light Preview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
Light Commands Popup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
Save Light To Bin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
Lights Bin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
Lights Swatch/Library Popup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
Apply Swatch To Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
Duplicate Light Swatch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
Delete Selected Swatches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Load Light Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Append Light Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
Save Bin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
Clear Bin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
Lighting Styles Bin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
Lighting Styles Swatch/Library Popup . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Save Lighting Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Apply Lighting Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Duplicate Lighting Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
Delete Selected Lighting Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
Load Lighting Style Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
Append Lighting Style Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
Save Bin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
Clear Bin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
The OBJECT CONTROLS
Object Mode Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
Object Manipulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
Object Nudging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
Object Tumble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Object Roll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
Object Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Object Dolly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
Drag Using Object’s Axes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
Object Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
Selecting Objects
Selection Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Primary And Secondary Selections . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Adding To And Removing From Selections . . . . . . 272
Drag Selecting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
Select All . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
Deselect All . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
Using Manipulation Tools For Selecting . . . . . . . . 274
Small Object Tab Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .274
Object List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Bold Object Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Italic Object Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
Bullet In The Object List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
Zaxwerks 3D Invigorator - ProAnimator / ProModeler - User Guide 9
Reset Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
Make Invisible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
Delete Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
Duplicate Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
The Object Popup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
User Prefs Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
Clear Objects Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
Clear Scene Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
Large Object Tab Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .281
Object Name Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
Reload Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Replace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
File Name Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
Object Faceting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
Draft Quality vs. Best Quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
Generate Model Parts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
Front Faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
Back Faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
Outside Edges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
Hole Edges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
Depth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
Spike Buster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
New Looks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
Spike Buster And Edge Offsets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
Unbustable Spikes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
Edge Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
Outside Edges vs. Hole Edges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
Edge Profile Popup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
Edge Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
Edge Offset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
Use Same Profile for Hole Edges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300
Use Same Material for Hole Edges . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
Use Same Scale for Hole Edges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
CUSTOM EDGES
Custom Edge Profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
How To Create A Custom Edge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
Each Layer Becomes A Single Edge . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
Where Do Custom Edges Appear In The Menu? . . 304
Setting The Scale Of A Custom Edge . . . . . . . . . . . 305
What Types Of Paths Can Edges Be? . . . . . . . . . . . 306
Crossing The Y Axis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
Crossing The X Axis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
Editing A Profile While The Project Is Open . . . . . 308
Importance Of The Starting Point For Mapping . . 309
How To Tell Where The Seam Will Be . . . . . . . . . . 311
Edge Profile Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
The OBJECT STATS DIALOGUE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
MESHING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
Zaxwerks 3D Invigorator - ProAnimator / ProModeler - User Guide10
IMPORTING 3D MODELS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
EXPORTING 3D MODELS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
Exporting All, Selected, Or Visible Objects . . . . . . 321
Baking Transformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
Random Seed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
Exporting Layer Cycling Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
Combining Sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
Using Cycling Objects Inside ElectricImage . . . . . 336
Using Cycling Objects Inside Other Programs . . . 339
LAYER CYCLING OBJECTS
What Is A Layer Cycling Object? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
Understanding Layer Cycling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
Example Uses For This Technique . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
How To Prep The Vector File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
How To Make A Layer Cycling Object . . . . . . . . . . 328
The Layer Cycling Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
The Frame Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
Total Frames Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
Frame Counter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
The Playback Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
Start Frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
Show Before Start Frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
Change Every . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
Sequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Play Once . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Play Once And Hold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Loop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Ping-Pong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Randomize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
Zaxwerks 3D Invigorator - ProAnimator / ProModeler - User Guide 11
MATERIALS
Materials Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
Materials Bin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .342
Moving And Rearranging Swatches . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
Selecting Swatches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
Materials Tab Swatch/Library menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
Duplicate Selected Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
Select All Unused . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
Delete Selected Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
Load Material Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
Append Material Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
Save Bin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
Clear Bin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
Material Editor Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
Loading A Material Into The Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
Loading By Drag and Drop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
Loading By Double Clicking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
Material Name Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
Material Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .351
Eyedropper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352
TEXTURE MAPPING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352
Picking A Texture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
Sizing and Positioning The Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
Map Enabler Checkbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
Image Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
Decal Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
Highlight Sharpness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
Highlight Brightness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
Bumpiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
Making Better Bump Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362
Transparency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
Transparency Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
Reflectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
Reflection Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366
Highlights And Reflections By Surface Type . . . . . . . . 367
Polished Jewelry and Stone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367
Glass and Vinyl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367
Chrome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368
Plastics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368
Polished Wood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
Satins/Metals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
Paper/Cloth/Rough Cut Stone/Unfinished Wood . 370
How The Color Channels In A Map Are Used . . . . . . . 370
Channel Usage by Map Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
Material Commands Popup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
New Material . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
Duplicate Material . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
Save Material To Bin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
Clear Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
OBJECT STYLES
Object Styles Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
Applying Object Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
Naming Object Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
Adding Notes To An Object Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
Update Object Style Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
Object Styles Swatch/Library Popup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
Save Object Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
Apply Object Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
Unlink And Remove Object Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
Duplicate Object Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
Select All Unused . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
Delete Selected Object Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
Load Object Style Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
Append Object Style Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
Save Bin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
Clear Bin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385
Moving Object Style Swatches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385
MATERIAL SET-UP & ASSIGNMENT
Material Set-Up button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
Material Assignment window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
Material Set-Up Toolbar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
Zaxwerks 3D Invigorator - ProAnimator / ProModeler - User Guide12
Display splits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
Split tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
Grabber hand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390
Dolly Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
Zoom Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
Palette Commands Popup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
Clear All Splits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
Fit Edge Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
Swap Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
Delete Selected Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
Material Palette . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
Palette Checkbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
USER PREFERENCES
Shadow Quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396
Duplication Offset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
Hard Shading Angle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
Save Project Data As . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
Show Floor Grid In Preview Windows . . . . . . . . . . 400
Floor Grid Y Offset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
OpenGL Texture Previews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
Save Current Material As Default . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
Save All Settings As Default . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
Restore To Factory Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
SPECIAL TOPICS
Sliders Have Continuous Updates . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
How Do Materials Work? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
Understanding Invigorator Vector Shape Objects 413
Creating Spheres And Other Basic Shapes . . . . . . 417
Creating Grids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420
Preparing Your Vector Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422
How To Edit An Illustrator File And Get The
Invigorator To Use The Changes . . . . . . . . . . . 427
Using Clip Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430
Overlapping Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
The Holes In Objects Are Filling In . . . . . . . . . . . . 432
Spikes On Smooth Curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433
Spike On Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434
Using Scanned Artwork to Create Models . . . . . . . 435
Working With Objects Outside The View
Of The Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
Seeing Chrome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438
Making Project Files Smaller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
Making Projects Render Faster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
TROUBLE SHOOTING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442
KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445
APPENDIX: The Edge Profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
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Introduction

This user guide covers the ProAnimator and the ProModeler software.
The ProModeler is used for creating 3D models and rendering still (single) images. The ProAnimator is used for creating 3D models, animating them and rendering movies. The two programs are very similar. If you took the ProModeler and added an animation window you would have the ProAnimator.
This user guide is divided into four major sections. The first section is a series of tutorials on how to create animations with the ProAnimator.
The second section breaks down and explains the animation capabilities, feature by feature.
The third section is a series of tutorials on text creation, logo creation, surface coloring, manipulating the objects, moving the camera, setting up lights and finally rendering. These features are the same in both the ProModeler and the ProAnimator. Since these features are nearly identical in both programs, the word ProAnimator is used to talk about the software. However if you have the ProModeler just understand that we are talking about your program too. When there are differences in the way the two programs work, these differences will be noted in the text.
The fourth section breaks down and explains each feature for modeling, surface coloring, object and camera manipulation, and lighting.
For further assistance we have additional resources on our Web site: www.Zaxwerks.com. These include a User Forum, Troubleshooting page, and a list of Frequently Asked Questions.
Have loads of fun with your new program! The Invigorator ROCKS!
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Installation Instructions

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System Requirements

System Requirements - MACINTOSH
- G3 Power Mac (G4 recommended)
- Mac OS 9.1, 10.1 or 10.2.6.
- Apple’s OpenGL system extension
- QuickTime 5 or 6.1
- Color monitor capable of displaying at least 1024 x 768 in Millions of colors
- 128 MB RAM, (256 MB recommended)
- 100MB unused hard-disk space
- CD ROM drive
Software specifications subject to change without notice. Software used under license. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Refer to the Zaxwerks End User License for more information.
System Requirements - WINDOWS
- Intel Pentium III or 4 processor
- Windows 2000 or Windows XP Pro or Home Edition
- OpenGL system .dll file
- QuickTime 5 or 6.1
- Color monitor capable of displaying at least 1024 x 768 in True color
- 128 MB RAM (256 MB recommended)
- 100MB unused hard-disk space
- CD ROM drive
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Installing the Software

The Invigorator does not use an automatic installer. You only need to do one step to install the software.
If you are installing from a CD...
1- Find the ProAnimator (or ProModeler) folder on the CD and drag it into the Applications folder on your main hard drive.
If you are installing from a downloaded file...
1- Unstuff or Unzip the download, then drag the ProAnimator (or ProModeler) folder into the Applications folder on your main hard drive.
TROUBLESHOOTING TIP! The ProAnimator/ProModeler folder contains many files and folders. DO NOT touch the contents of the main folder. Drag ONLY the ProAnimator/ProModeler folder to the Applications folder and all these other files and folders will be moved to the Applications folder too.
You are now ready to launch the program and create your first Invigorator project. Open the Applications folder, then open the ProAnimator or ProModeler folder, and double click on the program icon.
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Fill in all fields then click the OK button.

Entering An Authorization Code For The First Time

The first time you launch the software it will ask you to enter some information. Type your Name and Organization, and type the Authorization Code exactly as it was given to you. Then press the OK button.
A Temporary Code looks like this: A1234-B1234. A Permanent Code looks like this: IPMS30-A1234-B1234-C1234 A Temporary Code lasts for 30 days to give you time to contact Zaxwerks and register the software. Once registered, Zaxwerks will give you a permanent authorization code. (See the next section for infor-
mation on how to enter a permanent code.)
If you already have a Permanent Code there is no need to enter the Temporary Code first. Type the Permanent Code when you see the Authorization window and you’ll be ready to go.
TROUBLESHOOTING TIP ! On some Windows systems you may have trouble typing into the Authorization Window. If this is the case, open a program such as NotePad and type the information there. Then copy and paste the information, one line at a time, into the Authorization window.
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Demo Mode

If you don’t have either a Temporary or a Permanent Authoriza­tion Code you can run the program in Demo Mode by clicking the DEMO button at the bottom of the authorization window. Demo mode adds a watermark to the renderings and also limits the program in some ways, but other than that most everything works. Demo mode lets you get an idea of how the program runs so you can see how fast and easy it is.

Entering A Permanent Authorization Code

(If this is the first time you have run the software see the previous section titled: Entering An Authorization Code For The First Time.)
If you have been running the software using a Temporary Authori­zation Code, double click on the program icon to launch it. You will see a message window saying how many days you have left to run the program. At the bottom of this message window will be a “Register” button. Click the “Register” button then enter your Permanent Authorization Code.
A Permanent Code looks like this: IPAS30-A1234-B1234-C1234
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How To Get A Permanent Authorization Code

A Permanent Authorization code is sent to you directly from Zaxwerks. Contact Zaxwerks in one of the following ways:
Register by email: register@zaxwerks.com Register online: www.zaxwerks.com/Register_English.html Register by phone: 1-800-549-0250
You will be asked for your Temporary Authorization Code and your contact information so you can receive notices about bug fixes and updates.
Click this link on the Zaxwerks Home page to
get to the registration page.
If you bought the program directly from Zaxwerks you will have received a green Invoice/Receipt with the Permanent codes printed on stickers at the bottom.
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Basic Concepts

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BASIC CONCEPTS
The Invigorator creates its own models and images. It does not process existing footage to give it a “3D effect”. You create models that have depth and size, arrange them in space, and then take pictures of them.
The Invigorator is a true 3D program, but it has differences that make it unique from any other 3D program. There is a tremen­dous amount of technology and workflow design packed into this program, in order to make it easier to learn and faster to use.
If you are new to creating 3D graphics here is a short overview of the steps involved:

Modeling

The Invigorator creates models out of Adobe Illustrator files and fonts installed on your computer. Models can be modified using the controls in the Object Tab. A selection of over 100 preset edge profiles come built into the program or you can make your own. You can also import models created in other programs.
DEFINITIONS
Modeling
The creation of the objects and adjustment of their shape.
Surface Set-Up
The paint job that is applied to the surface of the objects. Often called “Surfacing”.
Scene Set-Up
The positioning of the objects and lights within the 3D scene and the positioning of the camera which views the scene and takes the picture.
Animation
Moving the objects or camera over time.
Rendering
Creation of the final 3D image or movie. “Taking the picture”.
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Surface Set-Up

Animation

The Invigorator has a completely unique way of handling surfaces. Up to six different materials can be applied to each object and those materials can be used in a variety of ways. Once you try it you will see how the Invigorator has finally given artists the tools to create a new generation of 3D title and logo graphics. Graphics like you have never seen before.

Scene Set-Up And Lighting

Setting up a 3D scene has been streamlined to make it easier for 2D graphic artists to make the jump to 3D. A scene can have as many objects as you need and objects or groups of objects can be rotated and positioned indepen­dently. Up to six lights can be used, and once you get your lights perfect they can be saved and reused in future projects.
Object manipulation within the 3D scene is done in a way that’s completely new. Single and multiple objects can be manipulated with speed and fluidity. There are a full compliment of short cut keys. Even nudge keys are supported.
Animation is created in a new way that is visual rather than technical. Feedback is continuous so you can watch the animation as you edit it. There is no need to stop and render a preview.

Rendering

The rendering engine is designed for the rigors of profes­sional production. It creates beautiful images of any resolution with excellent antialiasing, image mapping, soft shadows, transparencies for glass and chrome effects. Images and movies come with alpha channels for composit­ing without the need to key the source footage.
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Animation
Tutorials
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ProAnimator Introduction

Hello and welcome to the world of the Invigorator ProAnimator!
The ProAnimator is different than any other animation program. Other animation programs make you fiddle with things like keyframes and velocity curves. The more objects you are animat­ing the more keyframes you have to fiddle with. Projects can get very complicated very quickly.
The ProAnimator, on the other hand creates animations in a new and unique way. The creation of an animation is more like directing a movie. The user is freed to create and design rather than be forced into the roll as technician. Start to finish is only a few steps and animating one object or 50 is the same amount of work.
There are several ways to create your animation. The first we’ll look at is how to use a preset to make the entire animation in just a few clicks.
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Beginning Tutorials Creating An Animation In Five Clicks
Our first project will show you how fast it is to create an anima­tion from start to finish using the presets supplied with the software.
TROUBLESHOOTING TIP: You must have installed the program properly for the factory presets to be present. If the TRY button doesn’t do anything or you don’t see any presets in the menus when doing the following project, you must quit and reinstall the program following the installa­tion instructions.
1- Double click the ProAnimator icon to launch the program.
2- When you see four large buttons click the “Create 3D Text” button.
3- Type the words News Update. Then click the OK button. The flat text will be turned into 3D models automatically. You will now see many pictures of Object Styles on the right side of the main window. An Object Style is a snapshot of all the settings for creating an object’s “Look”.
Type the words that will become 3D.
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4- Click on the top right Object Style (the blue and white one). Hold your mouse button down and then drag to the left. As you drag you will see a dotted rectangle moving along with the mouse cursor. When the tip of the mouse is over one of the text letters let up on the mouse button.
You will see that all of your letters have turned blue and white. This “click down - hold - drag to position - and let up” procedure is called “Drag and Drop”. Drag and Drop can be done with many things inside the ProAnimator.
Below the main window is another window which may be partially hidden if your monitor isn’t big enough to hold them both. Click once on the lower window to bring it to the front. This window is called the Animation window.
5- At the top of the Animation window find the first red button labled “TRY”. It is next to the button labled “Object Animations”. Click it once.
Watch as an animation is constructed before your eyes. The timeline will get several colored bars in “Object Track 1”, the objects will jump to new positions, and the animation will play back over and over.
That’s it. You’ve just created a complete 3D animation, and did the whole thing in five mouse clicks!
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Drag and Drop an Object Style to color the letters.
Click TRY to auto-create an animation.
The colored bars represent the animation.
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Click the Stop button to halt playback of the animation.
To experiment with other animations click the “TRY” button again. Each time you click TRY a new animation will be con­structed using the text you typed.
Stop the playback of your animation by clicking the Stop button and continue on to the next exercise.
Changing The Text In An Animation
Once you have created an animation you can change the text without having to redo any other work.
1- Stop the animation if you haven’t already done so.
2- Click on the main Set-Up window (the large top window) to bring it to the front, then double click on one of the letters. This will open the same text window where you first typed the words, News Update.
3- Erase the words “News Update.” In their place type “Evening News”. Then click the OK button. If you get a message asking if you want to modify the objects, click “Modify”. In the 3D window you will see the letters change.
The gray Play button only plays the area
between the green and red markers.
4- In the Animation window click the gray Play button to play the new animation. Notice that the animation is the same even though the text is different.
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Changing The Speed Of An Animation
Changing the speed of an animation makes it run faster or slower. As a general rule the faster an animation, the more punch it has. While the slower an animation, the more grand it appears.
PREPARATION: Look at the blue bars in the Time Line. If there is only one light blue bar then you can go to the next step. If not, click the TRY button again and see if this new animation has only one light blue bar. If not, click the TRY button again and again until the program picks an animation with only one light blue bar. Note that there will be three blue bars total. One light bar between two dark blue bars.
To make an animation move faster all you need to do is shorten the length of the Transition segment. A shorter segment means less time, a longer segment means more time.
1- Position the mouse cursor over the right end of the Transition segment (the light blue bar). When you do this you will see the cursor turn into a left-right slider. Click down and drag the end of the Transition to the left, making it shorter. Release the mouse button when the Transition segment is half the length it was. Play back the animation and you’ll see your objects are now moving faster.
Start with an animation having two dark blue bars and a
light one in the middle.
Drag the end of the Transition segment to the left to
speed things up.
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Drag the end of the Transition segment to the right to
slow things down.
2- Next, drag the right end of the segment to make it shorter by half and you’ll see the objects moving even faster. You can also drag the right end of the segment all the way to the right and you will see the objects moving slower.
See how easy it is to adjust the timing of an animation? The 3D window will give you real time feedback so you can adjust the timing while watching the animation play. And notice that you are doing this for eleven letters without touching a single key­frame!
Changing The Camera’s View Of The Animation
The motion of the objects and the viewpoint of the camera are independent from each other. Once an animation is created you can move the camera to any position and view the animation from that new position.
1- Keep the animation playing. Click on the SetUp window, the window at the top, to bring it to the front. Find the row of tools below the 3D preview window. These are the tools that let you change the position of the camera, lights and objects.
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2- Click on the Camera button to make it blue (it may already be blue).
3- Next click on the Tumble tool (first tool in the group of five tool buttons).
4- Now you can click the mouse in the 3D preview window and drag left/right or up/down. As you drag, the camera will change position. You can tell that it is the camera moving because the floor and all of the objects move together. You won’t see the camera itself because it is what you are looking through.
Let up on your mouse button to watch the animation play back from a different viewpoint.
The other three tools move the camera in different ways. Take a moment to experiment with them to see what they do.
Tumble -Makes the camera orbit around the objects Roll -Makes the camera tilt side to side Track -Moves the camera left/right and up/down Dolly -Pushes the camera closer to the objects or pulls
it further away.
Select the camera and the Tumble tool.
The Roll tool.
The Track tool.
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The Dolly tool.
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A draft quality rendering.
Chapter 2 Rendering an Animation
Now that you have an animation it’s time to render it and save the movie as a file which you can bring into your video editor, compositor or other program.
The 3D window that the animation is created in only shows you a draft mode view. Draft mode has no antialiasing, no motion blur, no shadows, and no reflectivity. Only solid surface colors. That’s because all of these things take extra time to render and the 3D window tries to do things in real time.
There are two ways of seeing what the final image will look like: rendering a single frame of the animation; or rendering the entire animation.
Rendering A Single Frame
Single frame rendering is done to check what the final movie will look like without having to render the entire movie. When you render a single frame all of the rendering features are turned on, so you will see the antialiasing, motion blur, textures and reflec­tions that are usually turned off when doing previews.
A final quality rendering.
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1- To render a single frame click the Render Frame button. The current frame is rendered and will appear in a window. You can leave this window open and do another rendering. You can also save the image in this window to a file if you want to keep it. (See
Saving A Single Frame Rendering.)
By moving the Time Marker to different places in the animation and rendering single frames you can do spot checks to see how the animation is going to look. Once all of these spot checks look good move on to rendering the whole movie.
Saving A Single Frame Rendering
After a single frame rendering is done is will appear in its own window. When you close this window, the rendering will be erased from memory. To save one of these pictures do the following:
- Click on the image to bring it in front of all the other windows.
- Use the File> Save Picture... command. You will be given a file dialogue where you can name the image and choose the format to save it in.
If the Alpha channel checkbox was turned ON during the render­ing, you will be saving the Alpha channel into the same file as the RGB image. This enables you to open the file in Photoshop or other image editing programs that accept Alpha channels and get perfect antialiasing by loading the Alpha channel as a selection.
Click the Render Frame button to render a final quality
image at the current time.
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Click the Render button to render the whole movie or part
of the move, depending on how the render options are set.
Rendering The Movie
To render the final movie click the Render button. This will render the movie based on the options set on the camera tab.
After clicking the Render button you will see a file dialogue where you can name the movie and choose where to save it. After clicking the Save button you will then see the QuickTime Compression Settings window. Choose the compressor that gives you the best results for the editing or compositing system you will be taking the movie to.
In most cases you will want to save your ProAnimator movie with as little compression as possible. That way you will be able to mix it with other footage in your editor or compositor. You will probably also want to keep the alpha channel so the background of the movie will be removed without you having to “key it out”.
There are two compressors you can use that fullfill both of these requirements. One is the Animation compressor, the other is the TGA compressor. Both of these compressors are standard QuickTime options. There may be others that will work with your specific editing hardware. Once you have selected either one of these compressors you should put the Quality slider at “Best”, and set the color depth menu to “Millions of Colors +”. The “+” sign means you get the Alpha channel as part of the movie file.
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Rendering Options
The rendering options are seen on the camera tab. These options tell the program what part of the animation you are going to render, what size you will be rendering it at and what the quality of the rendering should be.
(See the section on Rendering Options later in this User Guide for explanations of these options.)
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Render with or
without an Alpha
Channel.
The camera tab contains the rendering options.
Render the whole
movie or part of
the movie.
Choose the size
for the final
rendering.
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Chapter 3 Changing The Timing And Speed Of Parts Of An Animation
Oftentimes the preset animations will get close to what you want but you may still need to make some adjust­ments to the timing in order for it to be perfect. Next we will look at how to change the timing of an animation to better fit the requirements of a project.
What Is A Pose? What Is A Transition?
The first step in knowing how to change an animation is to understand a little about how an animation is put together. Animation is the movement of objects over time. To show time the ProAnimator has a Time Line. When you look at the Time Line you can see that time runs from left to right. It starts at Time = 0 and goes to Time = 10 seconds.
An animation is shown on the Time Line as a series of light blue and dark blue rectangles. The dark blue rect­angles are called Pose segments and the light blue rect­angles are called Transition segments.
Pose Segments
The Time Line
Transition Segments
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A Pose is a snapshot of the position of your objects in space. A pose is very similar to a keyframe, but a single pose cound contain hundreds of keyframes. A Transition is the movement of objects from one Pose to the next. A Transition segment must always have a Pose segment on either side of it. The simplest animation would be three segments: Pose-Transition-Pose. There is no limit to how long an animation can be. You can add segment after segment for a very long and elaborate series of movements.
The length of each segment shows you how long it lasts. The length of a Pose shows you how long the objects will sit at that one position. The length of a Transition shows you how long it will take for the objects to move between two Poses.
If you did the first tutorial you were introduced to changing the length of a Transition segment. There is more than one way to do it so let’s look at this in more detail.
Creating A New Scene
If you are continuing from the last tutorial look under the File menu and pick the New Scene command. When it asks if you’d like to save the current scene click No.
If you are just starting, launch the program and click the New Scene button.
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Creating The 3D Text
Look under the Object menu and choose the “Create 3D Text” command.
When you see the text window, type “Moving along” then click the OK button.
Adding An Animation Preset
1- Go to the Animation window and click on the Object Anima­tions popup menu. Find the preset called “Angle Slide”. Choose it. You will see the animation start to play.
During the next series of instructions do NOT stop the playback of the animation. The ProAnimator let’s you keep the animation playing while you make changes.
Look at the Time Line. You can see that a single animation track has been created. This track contains a starting pose, then a transition segment, then an ending pose. To the left of the segments are the words “Object Track 1” this is a name to identify this track.
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Changing The Track Name
1- Double click on the track name. You will see that it becomes highlighted. Type the words “Moving along” to rename the track. After typing click the Return or Enter key on your keyboard, this turns off the editing of the name so you won’t accidentally change it.
(NOTE: if you accidentally clicked and removed the highlight from the name, click and drag over the words to select them again, then type “Moving along.”)
Moving Splice Points
As the animation plays watch the yellow time marker. When the time marker is at the beginning of the animation the 3D objects are positioned below the lower left corner of the preview win­dow. Notice that they stay there for a bit before the letters begin to move. The movement of the letters happens when the time marker is over the light blue Transition segment. Once the time marker gets over the end pose, the letters stop moving and they hold until the end of the final pose is reached.
Move the mouse cursor so it is over the place where the first pose and the transition touch each other. This is called a “Splice Point”. When the cursor is over a splice point you will see that it changes to the Splice Point Editor. Once the cursor changes it means you will be able to change the position of the splice point without moving the other end of the segment.
Double click the name to change it.
When positioned over a Splice Point the cursor will
change and you can then drag the Splice Point.
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Drag on a Splice Point to change the length of the segments.
Adding More Hold Time To The Beginning Pose
1- With the cursor over the first splice point click down and drag the splice point until it lines up with the 2 second mark on the Time Line. Then release the mouse button.
The animation will now hold for 2 seconds at the beginning, then all the letters will quickly move into position before holding again at the end.
Why do the letters now move so quickly? It’s because moving the splice point made the transition segment become much shorter, meaning the letters have less time to move the same distance, so they have to move faster.
Changing The Position Of A Segment Without Changing Its Length
In the previous step you changed the length of a segment by moving its splice point. If you drag on the center of a segment, instead of its splice point, you can change where the pose or transition happens on the Time Line.
1- Click on the center of the transition segment, hold your mouse button down, and drag to the left. You will see that the transition segment sticks to your mouse cursor and moves left as you drag.
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2- Drag left until the segment stops at the left end of the Time Line, then release your mouse button.
You will now see that there is no pause at the beginning. As soon as the time marker gets to time “zero” the letters immediately begin to move. Once they reach their final position they hold there until the time marker reaches the end of the final pose.
What happened to the starting pose? If you look closely you will see that it is still there, but it’s only one frame long. Remember, a transition always has to have a pose on either side, even if the pose is just one frame long.
Slowing Down The Motion Of A Transition
The speed that the letters move is related to the length of the transition segment. The longer the transition, the slower the movement.
1- Do this: Drag the splice point at the right end of the transition all the way to the right. Make sure the cursor changes before you click and drag, otherwise you may not get the desired result.
What happened to the speed of the letters? The transition segment is now 4 seconds long so it takes the letters 4 seconds to move from their starting pose to their ending pose. This makes the letters all move much more slowly than before.
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Drag on the center of a segment to change
the position without changing its length.
Drag the right end of the Transition all the way to the right.
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Reselect a preset from the popup menu to erase your changes.
Resetting An Animation Back To A Saved Preset
If you change an animation and want to restore it back to the saved version all you have to do is to select the animation preset from the menu again.
Click on the Object Animations popup menu. Find the preset called “Angle Slide”. Choose it. This will erase the existing animation and reapply the preset animation to the objects.
TROUBLESHOOTING TIP: If nothing happens, click on the Track’s name so it becomes dark. This tells the program which track you want to apply the preset to.
Increasing The Length Of An Entire Animation
Sometimes you have an animation that you need to make shorter. Other times you have an animation that needs to take up more time. In both of these cases you must scale the duration of the whole animation. Not just change a single segment, but affect all of the pose and transition segments at one time. Here’s how you do it...
1- If the animation is playing, click the Stop button.
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2- Click once on the starting pose to select it. You will see a red dotted line surrounding the pose segment.
3- Next, hold down the Shift key on your keyboard. Keep holding it down.
4- Now click your mouse once on the end pose. Let up on the Shift key after having clicked on the end pose.
You will now see that there are dotted lines surrounding all of the segments on this track. This means that all segments have been selected. Shift-clicking is a very fast way to select all segments that lie between two points. To scale the length of all the selected segments do the following...
5- Hold down the Option (Alt) key on your keyboard. Position the mouse cursor over the end of the last segment. This should be at the 4 second mark. Click and hold down on your mouse button, then drag to the right. You will see the segments grow longer as you drag. Drag until the right end of the last segment is under the 8 second mark. Release the mouse button.
6- Click the gray play button. You will see that the objects now move much more slowly than before. You should also see that the animation doesn’t play all the way through to the end. Once the time marker gets to 4 seconds it jumps back to the beginning and starts over. To make it play all the way through you will need to adjust the end loop point for the work area. (See next step.)
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Shift Click between two points to select multiple segments.
Hold the Option (Alt) key and drag the end to the
8 second mark.
2
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Work Area
Start Marker
Drag the end marker to set the end of the loop.
Play Work
Area Button
Loop
Button
Work Area
End Marker
Setting The Loop Points For The Work Area
The Work Area is the portion of the animation that is played when the gray “Play Work Area” arrow is pushed. If the black Play arrow is pushed the animation plays all the way through from the beginning to very end. But if the Play Work Area arrow is pushed the animation starts playing at the green arrow and stops when it gets to the red arrow. Additionally, if the Loop button is turned on, the animation will play over and over until you click the square Stop button.
The little green and red arrows in the Time Line set the beginning and ending of the Work Area. Between the green and red arrows the timeline is dark gray. This is to let you easily see the work area. Playing only the work area lets you see part of your anima­tion without having to watch other parts that you may not be interested in.
In the last step you made the animation 8 seconds long but only the first 4 seconds is playing back. This is because the red arrow that marks the end of the work area loop is still sitting at 4 seconds. To set the end marker to be able to see the entire animation, position the mouse cursor over the end marker, (the red marker) click down and drag to the right until the marker is at the 8 second mark. Now you can click the Play Work Area button and watch the animation all the way through.
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Shortening The Length Of An Entire Animation
You can shorten an entire animation the same way that you made it longer.
1- Shift-click to select all segments. (Click on the beginning pose, hold down the shift key then click on the end pose.) You will see dotted lines surrounding all of the segments indicating that the whole animation is selected.
2- Next, hold down the Option (Alt) key on your keyboard. Position the mouse cursor over the end of the last segment. When the mouse is in the correct position you will see the cursor change from an arrow to the splice point editor.
3- Click and hold down on your mouse button, then drag to the left. You will see all of the segments grow shorter as you drag. Drag until the right end of the last segment is under the 2 second mark. Release the mouse button and the Option (Alt) key.
Click the Play Work Area button. You will now see the objects moving much more quickly.
You will also see that after the objects stop moving, the anima­tion sits still for quite a while. This is because the the time marker must reach the red end marker before it can loop back to the beginning. To remove the pause, drag the red end marker to the 2 second mark. Now the animation will loop the first two seconds over and over.
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With all segments selected, hold down the Option
(Alt) key and drag the end to the left.
Drag the end marker to the 2 second mark
to play back only the first two seconds.
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1
Click the left arrow key on your keyboard to
move the selection from Position 3 to 2 to 1.
Hold down the Shift key as you click the
arrow keys to add to a selection.
2
3
Selecting Segments That Are Difficult To Click On
When segments are made very short it is sometimes difficult to click on them. The ProAnimator has a way to select segments without clicking on them.
1- Don’t hold down any other key. Click on the last segment to the right. This segment is large so it will be easy to click on. With one segment selected you can use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move the selection to the right or left.
2- On your keyboard, click the left arrow key once. You will see the red selection dots move to the transition. Click the left arrow key again and you will see the dots surrounding the thin segment that is the first pose.
If you hold down the Shift key while arrowing left and right you can extend the selection. For instance, now that the start segment is selected, hold down the Shift key and click the right arrow two times. You should now see the dotted selection lines surrounding the entire animation.
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Chapter 4 Changing Object Motion During Transitions
There are a great many ways you can change the motion of your objects during an animation. When a Transition segment is selected, and the animation is not playing, the paths that the objects move along are shown as red lines in the 3D window, and the controls for the selected transition are shown at the bottom of the animation window.
IMPORTANT! Before you continue with this next section you should
1- Create a New Scene, 2- Create 3D text of the word “Transitions”, and then 3- Add the object animation called Angle Slide.
If you don’t know how to do these things please follow the instructions at the beginning of Chapter 2.
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The motion paths of the Angle Slide animation.
When you select a transition in the Time Line the
motion paths will be displayed in the 3D window.
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The Arch Slider.
An Arch of 10 gives the paths a slight curve.
Changing The Curve Of A Motion Path
1- When you play the Angle Slide animation you can see that the letters are moving along a straight path. Stop the playback and click on the transition segment to select it. When a transition is selected you can see the paths that objects move along as red lines with red dots on them.
At the bottom right end of the animation window you will see a slider titled “Arch”. When this slider is set to 0 there is no arch or curve in the path. The objects move from their starting pose to their ending pose in a straight line. The Arch slider enables you to curve the path making it look more interesting.
2- Drag the Arch slider to 10 then release the mouse. The paths will now curve upward a little. Drag the Arch slider to 25. See how the paths are now curved quite a bit. Click the gray play arrow to start the animation playing and see how the letters now look like they are dropping into their final position instead of sliding up into position.
3- Drag the Arch slider to 50. Now the letters look like they are dropping into place from the top of the screen. Most likely you can see the letters lifting up before they fall down, but the lifting is happening offscreen. Only the light colored area in the middle of the preview window will be rendered in the final movie. Anything that is happening in the dark gray area won’t be seen.
An Arch of 50 gives the paths an extreme curve.
4- Set the Arch slider to 20, before you go to the next tutorial.
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Changing The Direction Of The Arch In The Path
Up to this point the Arch of the path has been up and over, as if the letters are riding over the top of a hill. We can change this direction. Find the Arch Direction knob located to the right of the Arch slider. See how the arrow on the knob is pointing up.
1- Drag the Arch Direction knob so it is pointing down. Play the animation if it has stopped. See how the letters now swoop up from the bottom of the screen. This has quite a different look than the when the animation was dropping in from the top.
2- Drag the Arch Direction knob so it is pointing to the right, then increase the Arch slider to 50. Now the letters are moving off in the distance before turning and traveling right toward the camera. This is a very cool multi-overlapping look and is very difficult to get with any other software.
3- Often a little change can make a lot of difference. Instead of setting the Arch Direction arrow to the right, which would be the 3 o’clock position on the face of a clock, try setting it to the 2 o’clock or 4 o’clock positions. Experiment with different posi­tions and see the effect.
4- When you are done experimenting stop the animation and pick the Angle Slide preset from the Object Animations popup menu. This will reset the animation to its original form.
The Arch Direction control will make
objects swoop down, or to the side.
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Controlling When Objects Start To Move
In the Angle Slide animation notice how each letter flies on screen a little bit later than the one next to it. The secret is the “Cascade” slider. The Cascade slider controls the timing of objects as they move along their motion path.
1- Stop the animation. Select the transition segment if it’s not already selected. For the Angle Slide animation you’ll see that Cascade is set to 9. Drag the slider so that Cascade reads 0. Play the animation and you will see that now all the objects are moving together. When Cascade is at 0 all objects start moving at exactly the same time.
2- Set the Cascade slider to 20. Now you will see that there is space between each letter. Each letter waits a little bit before it starts to move. This creates a spread-out cascade of letters.
3- Set the Cascade slider to 50 . Now you will see that there is quite a bit of space between the letters. You still get the cascad­ing effect but the spacing is so large that each letter now looks like it is moving on its own.
4- Set the Cascade slider to 100. This is the top end of the range and it means that each letter completely finishes its move before the next letter starts to move. In other words the first letter moves to its end position before the second letter starts to move.
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Then the second letter goes to its final position before the third letter begins to move. This pattern continues until all the letters reach their final position.
One thing to notice is that as you increase the amount of Cascade, the letters move faster . This is because part of the time a letter has to complete its move, is being spent waiting for its turn to go. So once the letter starts moving it has to move faster to get to the final position.
5- Set the Cascade slider back to 9, and start playing the anima­tion if it has stopped.
Controlling The Order Of Objects As They Cascade
If you look at the Angle Slide animation as it plays you will see that the last letter of the word comes on screen first, then the next to last letter, and so on. The final letter to appear on screen is the first letter of the word. The feature that controls the order of the letters as they begin to move is called the Cascade Order.
1- The Cascade Order popup menu is located to the right of the Cascade slider. It is currently set to “Right to Left”. Click on it and choose “Birth Order”. Let the animation continue to play while you make this change The animation will now play with the “T” first followed by the “r” and then the rest of the letters in sequence. Birth Order means the order that the letters were created in.
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The “Selection Order” option lets you choose the exact order
that objects will fly onto the screen.
2- From the Cascade Order popup, choose the Random option. Now the letters build on in random order. This is a very cool look. You can change the order of the random sequence by picking the Random option again. In other words if you don’t like the cascade order that the Random option picked for you, you can choose the Random option again and again until the cascade order is more to your liking. For instance, if you wanted the T in the word Transitions to be the very first letter that flies on, you can pick the Random option over and over until T happens to be picked as the first letter in the order.
The other options fit various other purposes. Top to Bottom, Left to Right, and the others tell you what they do. There is one other Cascade Order option that is very useful. This is the option called Selection Order. What the Selection Order option does is it lets you pick the letters one by one in the order that you want them to move. Let’s do this so you can see what this can be used for.
3- Stop the animation. Click on the Transition segment to select it, then click on the yellow Time Marker and drag it left or right until you can see all the letters on the screen.
4- The selecting must be done in the 3D Scene preview window. Click once on this window. Select the Selection Tool icon. (This is the icon next to the Magnifying glass icon.) Click somewhere in the 3D window but don’t click on an object. This will deselect everything. You should not see any red or green selection boxes surrounding letters.
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5- Now let’s decide which letters we want to fly on first. Say that you want the word to build on from the ends towards the middle. Select the T by clicking once on the letter. If you select it you will see a red wire box around the letter. If you don’t see the wire box try clicking on the letter again.
6- Next hold down the Shift key on your keyboard and click once on the “s” at the end of the word Transitions. If you selected it you will see a green wire box around the “s”. If there is a red wire box around the “s” then you forgot to hold the Shift key down. Go to the top of this page and start over.
7- Next select the “r” then the “n” and so on back and forth working toward the middle. Be sure to pay attention as you are selecting. You might not click on a letter. If you don’t the wire box does not appear. Or you may accidentally click on a letter that was already selected. If you do this the wire box will disap­pear so you will have to select that letter again.
8- Once you have all of the letters selected go to the Animation window and choose “Selection Order” from the Cascade Order popup menu. This locks the selection order into the program’s memory. Now play the animation. You will see the letters cas­cade onto the screen in the order that you selected them!
Hold down the Shift key then select the objects
in the order you want them to move.
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By the way you don’t need to select every letter. Sometimes you just want a few main letters to come on first and the order really doesn’t matter for the rest of the letters. If this is the case just select the main letters and leave the rest unselected. The letters that were selected will appear at the beginning and the letters that were unselected will follow in birth order.
Adding Start Ease And End Ease For A Professional Touch
Real life objects accelerate when they start to move and deceler­ate when they slow to a stop. Think of a car. When a car begins to move it speeds up over a few seconds until it gets to full speed. It doesn’t just go from sitting still to full speed in an instant. It takes several seconds for it to get going.
The same thing happens when you stop a car. If you are going 40 and you step on the brake the car does not stop instantly. It takes it a few seconds to slow down first and then it stops.
Start Ease and End Ease are both applied using this slider.
Start Ease and End Ease are animation terms that mean the speeding up at the beginning of a movement and the slowing down at the end of a movement. Start Ease and End Ease are one of the little things that makes your work look really good. With­out this feature letters tend to bang into place. With this feature the letters will settle into place. As a general rule the more Ease you use, the heavier the objects will appear.
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Find the Ease slider next to the Cascade control. Notice that it has two slider arrows. The light arrow on the left controls Start Ease, the acceleration of objects as they begin to move. The dark arrow on the right controls End Ease, the slowing down of objects as they near their final pose.
1- Drag the End Ease (dark) arrow to the left so it reads 60. Play the animation and you will see that the letters now settle into position very nicely. By setting this control to 60 you told the program to keep the letters at a constant speed for the first 60% of the transition, and then slow down over the last 40%.
Since the letters begin offscreen there is no need to add Start Ease. You only need to add Ease when you see the letters start or stop while on screen, in the live area that will be rendered.
Dragging the End Ease arrow to 60 makes the objects
slow down over the last 40% of the animation.
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Chapter 5 Changing The Positions Of Objects
Poses are the positions of your objects. An animation is created by placing objects in different positions at different times, and then having the program move the objects from one Pose to the next. We saw in the last section how to change the way that objects move between two poses. Now we will learn how to put the objects into those poses.
IMPORTANT! Before you continue with this next section you should:
1- Create a New Scene, 2- Create 3D text of the word “Positions”, and then
3- Add the object animation preset called CrashZoom. If you don’t know how to do these things read the instructions at the beginning of Chapter 3.
If you followed the IMPORTANT step above you will now be looking at an animation of the word Positions. Notice how the starting Pose has the letters positioned behind the camera so that the first you see of them is when they appear to crash through the screen from behind. The middle Pose has the words come to a rest in the center of the screen, and the final Pose is once again behind the camera as the word flies past the camera and out of view.
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Moving Objects To New Positions
The Move control is one of the tools you will use the most. When you are setting up an animation and placing objects into their positions the tendency is to want to drag the objects in the 3D window. This is the old way of doing it. In fact, in most 3D programs this is the only way you have of positioning objects, but in the ProAnimator we call this Tweaking.
Tweaking is the very last method you should use to position objects. It is the technique you use when you can’t get the Pose controls to do exactly what you want. One advantage of using the Pose controls is that you will be able to save your animations as presets and apply them to any other group of objects, so you should get used to using these controls as quickly as possible.
(For more information about Tweaks see the section called “What is a Tweak?” later in this guide.)
We will use the Move controls to make the objects fly to a differ­ent place on the screen. As you play the animation you can see that the second Pose is responsible for the position of the objects at the center of the screen.
Stop the animation playback (by clicking your spacebar), and click on the second Pose to select it. You will see the controls for this Pose appear at the bottom of the Animation window. There are two parts to the Move controller; a set of direction click­points, and a slider to set the amount of distance to move.
Zaxwerks 3D Invigorator - ProAnimator / ProModeler - User Guide
The Move controls.
Dragging objects in the 3D window is called Tweaking- you
should NOT tweak objects if you can avoid it.
The Distance slider.
Direction Buttons.
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1st Pose
By default objects move
forward.
2nd Pose 3rd Pose
Click the UP arrow to move
objects up.
Currently the slider is set to 0 meaning that the objects aren’t being moved anywhere. They are all sitting at their Home posi­tion.
Instead of having the letters fly to the center of the screen let’s have them fly to the top third of the screen. Here’s how you do it.
1- First make sure that the second Pose is selected.
2- Hold down the Shift key on your keyboard and drag the Move slider back and forth a few times between 0 and 500. Notice how the letters come closer to you. This is because the center button on the direction indicator is dark. Click on the UP arrow, and drag the slider until the letters are positioned about a third of the way down from the top of the screen. This should be at about
150.
3- Now play the animation. (Tap your spacebar.) You will see the letters flying to this higher position instead of the center of the screen.
4- Leave the animation playing and double click the center button. Now you will see the letters flying to a far away position. A single click on this button moves the objects forward, and a double click move the objects away.
Double click the center
button to move ojects back.
Click the DOWN arrow to
move objects down.
5- Leave the animation playing and click the DOWN arrow. Now you will see the letters flying to a lower third position.
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Pretty amazing how a single click could reposition all of those letters, changing all of those animation paths, and you never even had to stop the animation to do it! This is something you could never do with the Tweak method, and shows you the second main benefit of using the Pose controls: you can make extremely fast changes.
Spreading Objects Apart
With the word now flying to the lower third of the screen, let’s add some spacing between the letters to give it a different look. The Bunch/Spread slider enables you to quickly spread objects horizontally.
1- Tap your spacebar to stop the playback of the animation. The second Pose should still be selected. If it isn’t, click it so you see the red dotted lines around this Pose segment.
2- Hold down the Shift key and drag the Bunch/Spread slider back and forth a few times. See how the letters bunch together as you drag to the left and spread apart as you drag to the right.
Stop dragging when the letters just about fit the width of the screen. This should be around 85.
Drag to the left to bunch objects together.
Drag to the right to spread them apart.
3- Start the animation playing to see the word flying to this spread position.
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Select the first Pose.
1st Pose
Setting Bunch/Spread to -100 puts all the objects on top of
each other, as you can see in the picture below...
2nd Pose 3rd Pose
Bunching Objects To A Point
The Bunch/Spread slider also enables you to quickly bunch the letters into a clump. This is useful when you want the objects to all fly from a single point. Let’s bunch the letters at the first Pose.
1- Stop the animation. Select the first Pose segment. The controls will update to show you the settings used by the selected Pose.
At the beginning of the animation the objects are off screen which makes it hard to see the adjustments we make to the Pose.
2- Hold down the Shift key and drag the Move slider from its current position of 1000 to a valueof 500. This will bring the objects into view so we can see the effect of the Bunch/Spread slider. When we are done with the Bunching we’ll return the Move slider to its original value.
3- Hold the Shift key down and drag the Bunch/Spread slider to the left until it reads -100. This puts all the letters on top of each other.
4- Set the Move slider back to 1000.
5- Play the animation. Now the letters spread out as they move.
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Making Objects Spin As They Move
You can also make objects spin as they move. There are two ways of doing this. One way is to set the rotations as part of the Poses. The second method is to use something called a Path Action which adds a rotation to the objects during the Transition. We’ll show you how to do the first method here. The second method is discussed in the section on Path Actions.
1- Stop the animation. Select the first Pose segment if it’s not already selected.
2- Drag the Move slider to 500 so you can see what you are doing. (By the way, you can also move the camera to see what you are doing, but then you have to worry about getting the camera back to the same position. It’s much easier to drag the Move slider instead.)
3- Hold down the Shift key and drag the green oval on the Rota­tion control. Watch the letters and stop dragging when they have rotated once around. It may take you a couple of drags to get all the way around. You don’t have to be perfect.
4- Set the Move slider back to 1000.
Drag the green oval to rotate
the letters around the Y axis.
5- Play the animation. Now the letters both spin and spread as they fly into position.
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Watch the letters in the 3D window as you drag the
green oval on the rotation tool.
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1st Pose
Select the 3rd Pose.
2nd Pose 3rd Pose
Randomizing Object Positions
The Randomize slider gives you a quick way to jiggle object positions. The larger the value the more distance the objects are moved away from their original positions. Each time you click on the slider a new random direction is picked so you can click over and over until you get the pattern you want. For instance some­times random positioning places two letters on top of each other. If this happens just click on the slider and a new set of random positions will be calculated.
Let’s randomize the positions of the letters in the final Pose.
1- Stop the animation. Select the last Pose segment. Pose number three. The Pose controls will update to show you the settings used by this Pose.
2- Drag the Move slider from its current value (should be 950) to a value of about 500.
3- Hold the Shift key down and slowly drag the Randomize slider. As you drag you will see the letters jumping further and further away from their original positions. Values around 10 leave the word still read-able, but just a little jumbled. As the values increase the letters get more and more jumbled until you can’t read the word anymore. Set the Randomize slider to 40.
4- Set the Move slider back to 950.
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You may see bits of a letter poking into the screen. If you do, it is because the Randomize feature has accidentally moved an object down in front of the camera. Each time you click on the Random­ize slider arrow a new set of random directions will be picked, so all you have to do is to click on the arrow and you will see the letters jump to new positions. Click on the arrow over and over until you can’t see any letters on screen.
5- Play the animation. Now as the letters fly from their lower third position past the camera they jumble up a bit making the animation more interesting to look at.
Shuffling Objects
Another type of randomizing can be done by shuffling the objects. Shuffling is the process of substituting one object for another object. The Shuffle control does a variety of different types of shuffling. For instance if you choose the Mix 2 option every two letters may or may not get switched for each other. This will produce a word that is almost the same as the original word. As you mix more and more letters together the word becomes more and more unreadable.
A bit of one letter that has been moved in front of the camera.
Click the Randomize arrow until it goes away.
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1- Select the last Pose segment if it’s not already selected.
2- Click on the Shuffle popup menu and choose the Mix It Up option. This causes all of the letters to get shuffled together with no regard to where the objects started. It creates the maximum amount of shuffling.
Choose “Mix It Up” for the maximum amount of shuffling.
Objects that have been both Randomized and Shuffled.
Now as the animation plays you will see that as the letters fly off screen they go to even more random positions giving each letter a life of its own.
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Animation Controls
Reference
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Easy/Advanced Controls

These buttons let you switch between the Easy set of animation controls and the Advanced set. Both sets of controls are seen below the timeline in the “Details” area.
The Easy controls are a subset of the Advanced controls. For instance when in Easy mode you can only control the Arch and the Arch Direction of a path. When in Advanced mode you have the same Arch and Arch Direction controls but you also have other controls for setting things such as the center of the Arch, the Twist in the path, and for making objects overshoot the start or ends of the path.
You don’t have to be a Rocket Scientist to use the Advanced controls, there are just more options for creating more interesting animations. However once you get used to them you’ll find yourself working in Advanced mode with no trouble at all.

Track Commands

The Track Commands popup menu contains commands that affect the tracks on the timeline. Following are the commands and their function.
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Use these buttons to switch between
the Easy or Advanced Controls.
The controls are revealed below the Timeline
in the Details area.
The Track Commands menu.
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Create a camera track when you want to animate the camera.
This command puts objects onto their own track.

Add Camera Track

This command creates a track so you can animate the camera. You are always looking through the camera lens so you don’t need a camera track unless you want to animate the camera. Use this command to create the camera track, then double click on the track to create a Pose, or use the “Make Camera Pose” command. (See Make Camera Pose below.)

Move Selected Objects To Track...

This command can be used in two ways. If you have some objects that are being animated by one track and you want to animate some of them on their own, select them and use this command to move them to a new track.
Say for instance you have the word “Monday” and all the letters are sliding in from the right. But then you decide you want the M to drop down from the top and all the other letters slide in as a second step. To do this select the M and choose Move Selected Objects To Track and then pick the sub item “New Object Track” this will remove the M from the first track and put it on the second track. Now the M can be animated by the new track.
You can also use this command to combine objects that are on two separate tracks. For instance if you import a logo, create some text and want to animate them together, just select the text and move it to the logo’s track.
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Delete Selected Tracks

Use this command to delete a track and all of the objects being controlled by it.

Select All Segments

This command will select all of the Pose and Transition segments for whichever track you select from the submenu. Once selected you can drag the segments left or right in the timeline, or you can click the Delete or Backspace key on your keyboard to delete the segments. Deleting segments will remove the animation from the objects but leave the objects and the track.

Object Animations Menu

The Object Animations popup menu is the control center for managing animation presets. You can save presets, delete and apply presets and also create individual Poses. The following commands are found in the Object Animations menu.

Make Object Pose

When you select this command an Object Pose will be created at the current time. If the Time Marker is already over a Pose segment you will get a message saying you cannot create a Pose here. However, if the Time Marker is over a Transition segment, a new Pose will be created that splits the Transition into two independent Transition segments.
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Save Preset...

Selecting this command will save the animation on the selected track, putting it into the Preset List. Thereafter it will appear in the list as an animation that can be applied to any other objects on a track.
Presets that have been saved will appear in the Animation Presets folder and can be copied to other computers and exchanged with friends. When you are saving presets there are several important points to remember so that the animation will work for other projects. See the section on saving presets for more information about this.

Rename Preset...

This command will let you change the name of a preset. As you click and hold on this command you will see a submenu of presets pop out to the side. Select a preset and a window will open letting you type in a new name.

Delete Preset...

This command will let you delete a preset from the menu. As you click and hold on this command you will see a submenu of presets pop out to the side. Select a preset and it will be deleted.
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Append Preset...

This command will add an animation after the last segment on the selected track. It works on one track at a time. As you click and hold on this command you will see a submenu of animation presets pop out to the side. Select one of these presets and the animation will be added to the track.

Last Applied Preset

When you choose an animation from the presets list, its name will appear here. This is especially helpful if you are using the TRY button. You can click the TRY button over and over and then look at this menu to see the name of the last animation that was applied to your objects.

Object Animations Preset List

The bottom of the Object Animations menu consists of the animation presets. Selecting a preset will erase all animation segments on the selected track, apply the preset at the project Start Time, position the Work Area markers to surround the new animation and start the preview play back.
If you do not want the existing animation segments to be erased, use the Append Preset command.
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Object Animation TRY button

The TRY button will select one of the presets from the Object Animation Presets list and apply it to the objects on the selected track. If an animation already exists on that track it will be erased prior to the new animation being applied. Once applied, the Work Area markers will be adjusted to match the length of the animation, and the animation will begin playing back in the 3D window.
Use the TRY button to get something happening fast.
The TRY button is not a settings randomizer. Picking random settings would give mostly unusable results. The TRY button randomly picks one of the animation presets including those you have made yourself.
By holding down the Option (Alt) key then clicking the TRY button you will get the previous animation selected by the TRY button. If you want to see which animation the TRY button selected, look in the Object Animation menu. (See the Last Applied Preset section above.)

Camera Animations Menu

The Camera Animations menu is the control center for managing camera animation presets. You can save presets, delete and apply presets and also create individual Poses for the camera. The following commands are found in the Camera Animations popup.
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Make Camera Pose

When you select this command a Camera Pose will be created at the current time. If the Time Marker is already over a Pose segment you will get a message saying you cannot create a Pose here. However, if the Time Marker is over a Transition segment, a new Pose will be created that splits the Transition into two independent Transition segments.

Save Preset...

Selecting this command will save the camera animation, and put it into the Preset List. Thereafter it will appear in this list as an animation that can be applied to any other camera.
Presets that have been saved will appear in the Animation Presets folder and can be copied to other computers and exchanged with friends.
Note that a camera is usually set up to look at something specific and sometimes a camera animation saved from one project won’t work for another project. This is because the objects in the new project are in different places. However, once the preset is applied a little adjustment to each camera Pose is often all that is necessary to get the animation to look good again.
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Rename Preset...

This command will let you choose a preset and then change its name. As you click and hold on this command you will see a submenu of presets pop out to the side. Select a preset and a window will open letting you type in a new name.

Delete Preset...

This command will let you delete a preset from the menu. As you click and hold on this command you will see a submenu of presets pop out to the side. Select a preset and it will be deleted.

Append Preset...

This command will add an animation after the last segment on the track. As you click and hold on this command you will see a submenu of animation presets pop out to the side. Select one of these presets and the animation will be added to the track.

Last Applied Preset

When you choose an animation from the presets list, its name will appear here. This is especially helpful if you are using the TRY button. You can click the TRY button over and over and then look at this menu to see the name of the last animation that was applied to the camera.
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Camera Animation Preset List

The bottom of the Camera Animations menu consists of anima­tion presets. Selecting a preset will erase all animation segments on the selected track, apply the preset at the project Start Time, position the Work Area markers to surround the new animation and start the preview play back. If you do not want the existing animation segments to be erased, use the Append Preset com­mand.

Camera Animation TRY button

The TRY button will select one of the presets from the Camera Animation Presets list and apply it to the camera track. If an animation already exists on that track it will be erased prior to the new animation being applied. Once applied, the Work Area markers will be adjusted to match the length of the animation, and the animation will begin playing back in the 3D window.
The TRY button is not a settings randomizer. Picking random settings would give mostly unusable results. The TRY button randomly picks one of the animation presets including those you have made yourself. By holding down the Option (Alt) key then clicking the TRY button you will get the previous animation selected by the TRY button.
If you want to see which animation the TRY button selected, look in the Camera Animation menu. (See the Last Applied Preset section above.)
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When you are learning, it’s best to animate either the camera or the objects. Clicking both TRY buttons is sure to give undesirable results
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Animation Timeline

The Animation Timeline marks the units of time, (either in Time Code or Frames), and shows you the scale of that time. The big mountain and small mountain buttons, located below the tracks, let you zoom in to work on details or zoom out to see the flow of the animation.
When the duration of the animation is longer than can be shown in the visible area of the Timeline, the scroll bar becomes active and you can then scroll left and right to see the hidden Transition and Pose segments.

Current Time Marker

The yellow arrow that moves left and right along the top of the Timeline is the Time Marker. It shows you the current time of the animation. If you drag it, the animation will scrub back and forth in the preview window.

Current Time Readout (the GOTO field)

These numbers tell you the current position of the Time Marker along the Timeline of an animation is playing these numbers will change as the animation progresses through time.
By clicking in this field, you can type a time value and hit <Return> to move the Time Marker to that point in time.
Current Time Readout Current Time Marker
Timeline
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Project Start Time

This field lets you set the Start Time for the project. Usually you will start a project at time zero. However if you have several animations to do for the same project, or you need to coordinate an animation with some existing footage you can use this field to start the time code anywhere you want.
For instance, if you had four 8 second animations to do, you could start one at 00 seconds, one at 10 seconds, one at 20 seconds and the last at 30. This would help you to keep track of which animation you were working on.
HOT TIP! If you create an animation at one time and need to move the whole animation to a new time, use the Select All Segments command in the Track Commands menu. Then you can drag all animation segments at once.

Project Duration

Type into this field the length of time that you want the project to last.
The Start Time field lets you set the beginning
time for the Timeline
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The Duration field lets you set the length of the project.
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Choose the frame rate and whether to make the Timeline
display Frames or Time Code from this menu.

Frame Rate Popup

This popup menu lets you choose the frame rate of the project. Several presets are provided for standard frame rates, and a custom option lets you pick any frame rate you want.
Animations are based on time, not frame rate, so frame rates can be changed at any time with no bad conse­quences. For instance you can create an animation and output it for NTSC video (29.97 fps), then output it for PAL video (25 fps), then output it for film (24 fps) without having to do any other work besides changing this one menu item.

Motion Blur

Motion Blur is turned on with the Motion Blur popup. Motion Blur removes the jerkiness that is sometimes seen in fast anima­tions giving the images a more natural appearance.
Usually a Motion Blur of 8 passes will give you great results. However you may need to increase the number of passes if the motion is very fast and you need a smoother blur.
Motion Blur adds to the rendering time so use as few a number of passes as you can. Motion Blur is applied to single frame render­ings too so if you render a single frame and the blur is very short, you may be able to reduce the number of passes without chang­ing the look of the animation.
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Shutter Angle

This controls how long the blur is. The higher the number the longer the blur. When you have a longer blur you need to use more “passes”, (see Motion Blur above), otherwise the blur won’t look smooth.

Animation Playback

You can think of the animation playback controls like the buttons on a tape recorder or a VCR. The Scene Preview window shows you the animation in real time (or very nearly real time), and the animation playback buttons control what is being shown.

Play Work Area

The button you will use the most is the Play Work Area button. It is the gray play button with little green and red arrows on it. The green and red arrows are a reminder that this button will play back the animation starting at the little green arrow on the timeline and stopping at the little red arrow on the timeline. These arrows are called the Work Area Markers. (See Work Area
Markers next.)
HOT TIP! The shortcut for starting/stopping the playback is to click the Spacebar on your keyboard.
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Work Area Start And End Markers

The little green and red arrows at the top of the Timeline let you set the loop points for playback. This looping area is called the Work Area because you can inspect a small section of your animation over and over.
The ProAnimator lets you make changes to an animation while it is playing, so being able to watch an animation over and over while you make changes is a huge productivity booster. The work area markers work in conjunction with the Play Work Area button. (See above.)

Jump To Beginning

Clicking this button will take you to the beginning of the project.

Back One Frame

Each click of this button will move the current time back one frame.

Play Project

The Play Project button will play through the entire animation timeline for the full duration of the project. This button ignores the Work Area Markers.
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Stop

Once the animation is playing the playback button turns into the Stop button. Click this button to stop the playback, or click the spacebar on your keyboard to stop playback.

Forward One Frame

Each click of this button will move the current time forward one frame.

Jump To End Of Project

Clicking this button will take you to the end of the project.

Loop

When this button is turned on (dark) it will make the animation go back to the beginning and continue playing, once it has reached the end. If the Play Work Area button is down, “the end” will be the red arrow. The Loop button works together with the Play Work Area button to make the animation workspace play over and over

Loop With Hold

This is a special kind of loop that adds a two second pause at the end of each loop. Sometimes a rapid over-and-over loop can get confusing and you need a little time after each loop to think about what you just saw.
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An animation track.
Double click the name to change it.
Command (Control) click the name to select all objects on track.

Animation Tracks

Animation tracks act as the work space for an animation. Time runs from left to right along the timeline. Pose and Transition segments are created on these tracks and moved in time.
Objects live on tracks. When objects are created or imported into the program they are placed onto their own track. By placing Poses and Transitions on the track you get the objects to move around. Objects can be moved from one track to another. If you remove all the objects from a track there is no need to have the track so it is deleted.
Each track has a name at the far left. By double-clicking on the name you can edit it.
If you hold down the Command key (Control on Windows) and click on the track name you will select all objects controlled by that track.
Each track in the ProAnimator can control any number of objects. You assign objects to tracks based on what you want the objects to do. If you have a group of objects that will all move in a similar way, then they should all be assigned to the same track.
In most other animation programs, each object has its own animation track. This means that if you had 50 objects you would have 50 tracks! That is a horribly overcomplicated mess
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of data to manage. The ProAnimator coordinates the motion of many objects at once. The result is that it’s much faster to create animations and much easier to make changes.

Animation Poses

Poses are the dark blue bars that appear on the track. (Dark green for cameras.) A Pose is an encapsulation of the position and orientation of the objects on a track. In other animation programs the closest thing to a Pose would be a keyframe, however a Pose is much more than a keyframe. A Pose contains information about the position of many objects. It also contains information about how the objects got into those positions.
Poses can be saved as their own special kind of presets. This enables you to position a group of objects in a Pose, and save the information as a Pose Preset. Thereafter you can apply the same Pose to any other group of objects with a single click. This is a huge time saver when you have many graphics to do that all share a similar look.
Poses can be lengthened or shortened by dragging on their ends.
Poses can be moved along the Timeline by dragging on their middle.
Before
Drag an end to lengthen/shorten the segment.
Drag the middle to move the segment.
After
If two Poses are touching and you drag on the line where they touch (called the Splice Point) you will lengthen one and shorten the other.
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Dragging a splice point affects both segments.
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Before
After, without Shift key.
If two Poses are touching you can create a Transition between the two by holding down the Shift key and dragging on the Splice Point.
A Pose can be as short as a single frame or the length of the entire animation. When an object is in a Pose it doesn’t have to sit still. If you want to move objects while they are in a Pose you can use a Pose Action.
After, with Shift key.
Hold down the Shift key and drag the splice point between two poses to create a transtion. If you don’t hold down the
Shift key you’ll just move the splice point.
The Pose Actions area is located at
the right end of the Pose controls.

Pose Actions

A Pose Action is a secondary motion that you apply to objects while they are sitting in a Pose. For the most part a Pose is a single position, but Pose Actions allow you to give objects small motions while they are generally in the same position.
Pose Actions include rotations such as tumbles, rolls and wobbles, and larger movements such as title rolls and crawls. Using Pose Actions, a title roll can be made with one Pose and one Pose Action. You just set the speed of the roll and you’re done. There’s no need to set start and end keyframes and do calculations to figure out if the speed is right.
Pose Actions are part of the Pose controls. They do not have their own bar in the Timeline.
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Animation Transitions

Transitions are the light blue bars that appear on the track. (Light green for cameras.) A Transition is an encapsulation of the WAY that objects move from one Pose to the next. A Transition includes information about the shape of the path that objects move along, and the timing for each object.
Say for instance you have an object that starts on the left side of the screen and ends at the right side of the screen. This start and end position would be two Poses. The way that the object gets from the first Pose to the second is the Transition. The object might move in a straight line, or a curved arch. It may face toward the camera as it moves or it may face the direction of the path it is moving along. It may move fast or slow or it may start out fast and end up slow. All of these possibilities are controlled by the Transition.
Just as Poses can have extra motions called Pose Actions, Transitions can have extra motions too. Since an object is moving along a path when these extra motions occur we call these extra motions: Path Actions.
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Light blue bars are Transition segments.
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The Path Action Area is located at the
right end of the Transition controls.
The segment surrounded by a red
dotted line is the primary selection.

Path Actions

Path Actions are the secondary motions that objects do while they are traveling along their paths. This includes motions such as tumbles, rolls, spins and path banking. Without Path Actions objects pretty much face forward while they are moving, so Path Actions are good things to learn about. Path Actions are part of the Transition controls. They do not have their own bar in the Timeline.

Primary vs. Secondary Selections

Once a Pose or a Transition segment is on the timeline you can display its controls by clicking on it to select it. The controls will appear below the animation tracks at the bottom of the animation window.
The controls only show you the settings for one segment at a time. As you click from segment to segment the controls change to reflect whether a Pose segment or a Transition segment is selected.
If there is more than one segment selected only the controls for the segment with the RED dotted lines are shown. This is the primary selection. Segments surrounded with GREEN dotted lines are secondary selections. Their controls are not shown but the segment is still selected and can be moved, scaled, deleted, etc. To make a secondary selection into the primary selection, just click on it.
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Pose Positioning Controls For Objects

Poses are created by either double clicking on the track, or by moving the Time Marker to the proper time and using the Make Object Pose command.
Double click anywhere on the animation track to create a pose.
Although there is more to it, the simplest way to think of a Pose is as a remote control device for handling the positions of objects. A pose contains information about the position of each of the objects that are under its control, plus information on how to re­position those objects should the number of objects change.
As you look over the Pose controls, you will see that there are many tools which you can use to help position objects. Each tool takes the form of a slider, a dial or a menu selection, and when used together can quickly and easily position your objects where you want them.
There are two basic ways to pose objects: manually or automati­cally. Manual posing of objects is done using the tools located under the 3D window to move, rotate and scale the objects. ( See
the section of the manual called “Object Manipulation” for information on how to use these manual tools.)
The other way to pose objects is by using the Pose Positioning Controls. Each slider acts like a remote control designed to do a particular thing. For instance one control arranges objects into a circle, and one control bunches objects into a group.
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Before double click.
After double click.
The Pose Positioning Controls.
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The advantage of using the Pose Controls rather than positioning objects manually is that it makes changes very easy. For instance if you want to increase the size of the circle that the objects are spread around, a single slider will do it. Hand positioning lots of objects by hand is a time-consuming and frustrating experience.

Advantages Of Using The Pose Controls

At first you might wonder why you should use the Pose Controls to simply move objects around. They can easily be grabbed and moved with the regular tools in the 3D window. However, there are five very good reasons to use these tools.
1 - Many of the tools do things that are very time consuming if done by hand.
2 - You can add objects to the track and they will automatically be put into the correct position. If you use the manual tools you will have to move the new objects by hand and fiddle a bit to align them correctly with the other objects.
3 - If you remove objects, the remaining objects are automatically repositioned to close up the gaps.
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4 - Changes are a lot faster to make if you use the Pose controls. Say your objects start on the right, and you need to change them so they start on the left. If you used the Move controller to put those objects at their starting position, changing them to the new position is just one click.
5 - When you use these tools you can reuse the Poses on future projects. If you use the manual tools in the 3D window, each object stores its position as a “Tweak” and the objects in future projects may not go to the same position because they don’t respond to the tweak in the same way. (See the “What Is A
Tweak?” section elsewhere in this guide.)
Following are explanations of the Pose Controls.

Easy Controls For Poses

The Easy Controls are a subset of all the controls. When the Easy button is turned on only five of the controls are shown. You can get to the rest of the controls by clicking the Advanced button.
HOT TIP ! If you hold down the Shift key as you drag a slider, you will see the affect of the slider in real time. If you don’t hold the Shift key down, objects will update their positions only when you let up on the mouse button.
Use these buttons to switch between
the Easy or Advanced Controls.
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Bunch/Spread = 0
Randomize = 0
Shuffle = None
Bunch/Spread = +65
Bunch/Spread = -90
Randomize = 10
Randomize = 40
Shuffle = Mix 2
Shuffle = Mix It Up

Bunch / Spread

This slider will bunch all the characters into a common center point, or spread the characters away from this same center point. This tool is very useful for setting starting poses that are off screen. For instance pulling the objects so they are sitting just below the bottom of the screen and then bunching them together will make them all look like they are flying on screen from some common source. This slider also gives you a superfast way to do animated letter spacing.

Randomize

This slider will move the objects in a random direction away from their starting positions. The slider sets the amount of offset away from the starting point. Each time you click on the slider arrow a different random direction is picked. This enables you to first drag the slider so you can find the amount of offset you want and then click the arrow over and over until the objects are arranged in a way that looks the best to you.

Shuffle

Shuffle exchanges the positions of objects. “Mix 2” exchanges the positions of every two characters. “Mix 3” exchanges the positions of every 3 objects. The same goes for “Mix 4” and 5. “Mix It Up” exchanges the position of all characters at random.
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Since the mixing is random some characters will move and others won’t. In other words some objects change position with them­selves which leaves them in the same spot. Each time the popup is clicked a different random order is chosen, so you can click on the popup (even the same mix value) over and over until you find a mix pattern that you like.
Sometimes shuffling objects doesn’t look good. Shuffling does not take into account the size of the objects being shuffled, so when big objects are exchanged for small objects you get some odd results. When this happens you can either use the Distribution feature, which takes object size into account, and so may fix the spacing, or you can Tweak the objects into position.
(See “What Is A Tweak?” elsewhere in this guide.)
Click here to rotate
the Y axis only.
Click here to rotate
the X axis only.
Y = +50
Y = -50
X= +40
X = -40

Local Center Rotation

There are two different rotation tools. One rotates all the objects about a common center, the other rotates each object about its own center. The Easy controls contains the one that rotates objects around their own centers.
The rotator tool has four places you can click. If you drag on the green oval it makes objects rotate only around the Y axis. The red oval rotates objects only around the X axis. The outer blue circle rotates objects around their Z axis. Clicking on the plus sign at the center of the controller lets you tumble around the X and Y axes at the same time.
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Click here to rotate
the Z axis only.
Click here to tumble X
and Y at the same time.
Z = 20
Z = -20
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The slider
sets
distance.
The arrows
set
direction.
Move = 0

Move

The Move slider and direction controller lets you very quickly move objects along the main axes. The slider sets the distance of the move, and the direction controller lets you choose a direction (up / down / right / left / forward / backward). Click once on any arrow to turn the arrow black indicating that the objects are being moved in that direction. Click the center square once to move in the positive Z direction and double click it to move in the negative Z direction.
If you have a fast computer, hold down on the shift key while dragging the slider to see the object move as you drag.
If you need to move objects in other directions besides the main axes, go to the Advanced controls where the Move controller has a pointer which can be positioned to move the objects in any direction.
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Advanced Controls For Poses

The Advanced Controls are shown when the Advanced button is enabled. The Advanced controls aren’t really that much more advanced than the Easy controls, it’s just that there are more of them so it’s easier to get confused when you are learning to use the program.
However if you take a few minutes and try each one you’ll find that they all make sense and become familiar.
Since the Easy controls are a subset of the Advanced controls you’ll find the same five repeated here.
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Start At Center

The Start At Center feature will move the objects so their com­mon center is at the world origin. For instance say you opened an Illustrator file and the objects it created ended up off to the side a bit. A single click on Start At Center and all of the objects will be moved and centered on the world center point.
It’s usually a good idea to turn on this feature. The camera animation presets were all created for objects that are sitting at the center of the world. If you try a camera preset and it doesn’t look like the letters are where they are supposed to be, try turning on Start At Center and see if that doesn’t fix it.
Start At Center - OFF
Start At Center - ON
Likewise if you are creating object animations and intend on saving them as Presets you should always have this option turned on. This way no matter what objects this preset is applied to, all objects will have a common starting point.
Bunch / Spread
Same function as Easy Controls.
Randomize
Same function as Easy Controls.
Shuffle
Same function as Easy Controls.
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Advanced Move
The slider part of the Advanced Move tool works the same as the easy version. It sets the distance the objects are moved away from their starting point. The direction part of the Move tool, however, is much more flexible. In the Advanced tools the direction controller is a draggable 3D arrow that can be pointed in any direction.
To position the arrow you can either drag the arrow until it is pointing in the direction you want, or click where you want the arrow to point. A single click will move the arrow point forward, while a double click will make it point to the back.
If you have a fast computer, hold down on the shift key while dragging the arrow to move the objects as you drag.

Local Center Rotation

Same function as Easy Controls.
Notice the difference in these pictures. Local Center rotation rotates each object on its own. Common Center rotation rotates everything around one pivot point.
The slider sets
distance.
Before
Local Center Rotation
The arrow sets
After single
click
direction.
After double
click
Common Center Rotation
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Common Center Rotation

This tool rotates all of the objects being controlled by this Pose in one big group. The center of rotation is the average center of all the objects.
The rotator widget has four places you can click. If you drag on the green oval it makes objects rotate only around the Y axis. The red oval rotates objects only around the X axis. The outer blue circle rotates objects around the Z axis. Clicking on the plus sign at the center of the controller lets you tumble around the X and Y axes at the same time.
IMPORTANT POINT Even though this rotation tool rotates objects around a single pivot point, it is using this central pivot only for setting the position of individual objects. When you animate from Pose to Pose you will not see the objects rotating as a group unless you group the objects first.
(See the section on Grouping elsewhere in this guide for more about this.)
Click here to rotate Y axis only.
Click here to rotate
X axis only.
Click here to rotate
Z axis only.
Y Rotation
Click here to
tumble X and Y at
the same time.
Zaxwerks 3D Invigorator - ProAnimator / ProModeler - User Guide98
X Rotation
Z Rotation
X and Y Rotation

Distribute

The Distribution tools will place objects along various shapes. The popup menu lets you select which shape to distribute the objects along, and the sliders let you control various aspects of the distribution.
Here is a list of the distribution shapes and the controls for each shape.
Horizontal Line - Places objects along a horizontal line or lines. Objects will be evenly spaced from one end of the line to the other. Use the Size setting to control the length of this line. Objects are applied to the line in the order they were created.
Size - Sets the length of the line. Making the line longer will increase the spacing between each object.
Number Of Lines - Sets the number of horizontal lines the objects will be distributed along.
Line Spacing - Sets the distance between the two end lines, when there is more than one.
Number of lines = 3
Spacing = 300
Zaxwerks 3D Invigorator - ProAnimator / ProModeler - User Guide
Number of lines = 5
Spacing = 400
99
Number of lines = 3
Spacing = 600
Vertical Line - Places objects along a vertical line or lines.
Objects will be evenly spaced from one end of the line to the other. Use the Size setting to control the length of this line. Objects are applied to the line in the order they were created.
Size - Sets the length of the line. Making the line longer will increase the spacing between each object.
Number Of Lines - Sets the number of vertical lines the objects will be distributed along.
Line Spacing - Sets the distance between the two end lines, when there is more than one.
Number of lines = 5
Spacing = 600
Objects distributed
around an X axis circle.
Circle X - Places objects around a circle where the circle is
wrapped around the X axis, the same way that the wheel of a car rotates around the X axis.
Size - Sets the maximum diameter of the circle. Shape - Flattens the circle into an ellipse. Positive flattening
squishes top to bottom. Negative flattening squishes side to side.
Starting Point - Sets the position around the circle that the first object will be placed.
Zaxwerks 3D Invigorator - ProAnimator / ProModeler - User Guide100
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