Creating Camera Views in 3D
Placing cameras in the scene is not, of course, a modeling technique per se, but it needs to be mentioned here because cameras are so useful in making a successful virtual world.
The different cameras you create in your scene are listed by the virtual browser, usually in the menu that pops up when you right-click in the browser's view port.
Users can navigate within the scene by selecting one Camera view after another; be sure to provide plenty of them and name them descriptively.
Even very large worlds that navigate painfully slowly in the browser can be viewed pleasurably from a series of perspectives.
Use the cameras you create to show off the best views of the scene-to point out unusual perspectives or to provide close-ups of the parts of the scene over which you lavished the most care.
If you leave it to the user to navigate through the scene, you have no control over what he or she will look at.
With a good selection of Camera views, on the other hand, you can control this to a large extent.
Because selecting cameras is simpler than manually navigating with the mouse, and because the browser makes an elegant transition from one camera to another, if you make an interesting and original sequence of views, they will be used.
Virtual reality provides animation support for the virtual worlds you export from MAX.
The following list identifies a fairly wide variety of animation methods that you can use: * Simple transforms (Move, Rotate, and Scale) * Animated hierarchies and inverse kinematics * Coordinate interpolation animation, such as animated modifiers (Bend, Taper, and so on) * Morphing Character Studio animation You can do any kind of animation that does not involve changing the number of vertices.
If the animation requires use of the Modifier stack, you need to turn on the Coordinate Interpolation option when you export the scene.
It is easy to exceed your file size budget quickly when you start using animation, especially with coordinate interpolation.
With this last type of animation, the virtual exporter has to track the position of every vertex over time, requiring the generation of a lot of code in the virtual file.
Simple transform animation, on the other hand, is not nearly so demanding.
Use it whenever possible.
It is useful to think of animation as a moving accent in an otherwise-still virtual world; in the current climate of the Web, a little goes a long way.
The different cameras you create in your scene are listed by the virtual browser, usually in the menu that pops up when you right-click in the browser's view port.
Users can navigate within the scene by selecting one Camera view after another; be sure to provide plenty of them and name them descriptively.
Even very large worlds that navigate painfully slowly in the browser can be viewed pleasurably from a series of perspectives.
Use the cameras you create to show off the best views of the scene-to point out unusual perspectives or to provide close-ups of the parts of the scene over which you lavished the most care.
If you leave it to the user to navigate through the scene, you have no control over what he or she will look at.
With a good selection of Camera views, on the other hand, you can control this to a large extent.
Because selecting cameras is simpler than manually navigating with the mouse, and because the browser makes an elegant transition from one camera to another, if you make an interesting and original sequence of views, they will be used.
Virtual reality provides animation support for the virtual worlds you export from MAX.
The following list identifies a fairly wide variety of animation methods that you can use: * Simple transforms (Move, Rotate, and Scale) * Animated hierarchies and inverse kinematics * Coordinate interpolation animation, such as animated modifiers (Bend, Taper, and so on) * Morphing Character Studio animation You can do any kind of animation that does not involve changing the number of vertices.
If the animation requires use of the Modifier stack, you need to turn on the Coordinate Interpolation option when you export the scene.
It is easy to exceed your file size budget quickly when you start using animation, especially with coordinate interpolation.
With this last type of animation, the virtual exporter has to track the position of every vertex over time, requiring the generation of a lot of code in the virtual file.
Simple transform animation, on the other hand, is not nearly so demanding.
Use it whenever possible.
It is useful to think of animation as a moving accent in an otherwise-still virtual world; in the current climate of the Web, a little goes a long way.