Making a Simple Animation

Of course, just importing a surface into Softimage cannot be considered really helpful. The Do it yourself... section below describes the procedure for creating a simple animation of the model spinning.

By no means is the Do it yourself... section itself sufficient training for a package as complex as Softimage. But the brief steps outlined below introduce the concepts of:

• Basic model transformations: rotation, translation, and scaling
• Scene panning and scene layout
• Lighting with two infinite light sources
• Camera control along a predefined path
• Previewing the animation
• Rendering frames suitable for later recording with the DDR

For further information, the reader is pointed to the Softimage training manuals available in the VMIL and the ITG's extensive collection of Softimage related material in the Softimage User's Site. The collection of printed manuals can be intimidating, but the tutorial Quick Start Guide to Softimage makes for a good, short introduction to the basics. The other manuals flesh out the knowledge gained from that introduction.

Do it yourself...
This section assumes that the model has already been loaded as described in the previous section, and is in the same condition as initially loaded.
Resizing and Centering the Model
1.	Click on the Model menu option in the top right of the Softimage interface.
2.	If the model is not selected (recognized by its white-colored wireframe representation), select it by holding down the spacebar and clicking with the left mouse button on the model's surface.
3.	With the left mouse button, click on the RotZ box on the right-hand side of the interface. Change the value to 90.0. The model should rotate about the Z-axis. Some of the model may disappear temporarily. Press the "a" (for "all") key in each of the projection panes to bring it back into view.
4.	Scale the model to a factor of 0.1 by changing each scaling value to 0.1 in the Scale box on the right hand side of the interface. Or click in the border around the Scale box with the left mouse, the hold down all three mouse buttons and move the mouse to scale across all three dimensions simultaneously.
5.	Type "a" in each of the projection panes again, to fit the rescaled model into each view.
6.	Hold down the "z" (for "zoom") key, and pan the scene around in the Front, Top, and Side views by holding the left mouse button down and moving the mouse. Look for the coordinate system origin, which is defined by the intersection of two slightly darker gray lines. This is where the object should be centered.
7.	Translate the object to the origin. Values of (15.4, -10.1, -15.3) match those used in this example. Translate by manually changing each of the axis values in the Translate box; by selecting an individual axis value and using any of the three mouse buttons to move the model at different rates; or, by selecting all three axes and using the left, middle, and right mouse buttons to free drag, vertically drag, or horizontally drag the model respectively.
8.	If the translation values in step 7 have been entered, the object should now be centered on the origin. Type "a" to recenter each view.
Lights
1.	Zoom out in the Top pane. While the pointer is in the Top pane, hold down the "z" key and hold down the right mouse button until the object appears much smaller.
2.	Click on Light:Define... on the right-hand side of the interface.
3.	Change the type of light to Infinite and accept all of the other defaults.
4.	Move the light to the point (-45, 0, -40) using the Translate methods described above.
5.	Repeat steps 2-4, substituting (45, 0, 40) as the final destination of the second light.
Camera
1.	Select the menu item Get:Primitive...:Circle... from the left-hand side of the interface.
2.	Set the Radius of the circle to be 37.0, and the number of Steps to be 37 as well. A radius of 37.0 surrounds the entire model, and 37 steps makes for a smooth circle at that size. There is nothing magic about the number 37.
3.	Rotate the circle about the X-axis by entering 90o in the RotX box.
4.	In the Right projection pane - the bottom right pane of the four projection panes - pull down the projection menu, and select Schematic. The Schematic view displays a hierarchical representation of all objects in the scene and their relationships.
5.	Select the camera by holding down the spacebar and left-clicking on the camera name in the Schematic view, or select Camera:Select Camera from the menu on the right-hand side of the interface.
6.	Select the Motion menu from the menu bar in the upper right hand corner of the interface.
7.	From the left-hand side of the newly changed interface, select Path:Pick Path.... Left-click on the name of the circle (circle1) in the Schematic view. Accept the defaults in the dialog box that pops up (Start Frame: 1, End Frame: 100).
8.	The camera has now been attached to the circular path around the object. By default the camera points towards the origin - the center of our model.
Action
1.	Press the right-facing triangle in the lower right corner of the interface. The model should appear to be spinning in the Perspective view pane.
2.	To see a larger, shaded version, left-click on the window expansion icon in the upper, right corner of the Perspective view pane and then click on the SHADE menu with the middle mouse button. The Perspective view should now be the only view, and should be centered in the interface.
3.	Click on the right-facing triangle again, and the larger, shaded object should begin to spin.
Rendering Individual Frames
1.	Click on the Matter menu button on the top menu bar of the interface.
2.	Click on the Render menu item on the left-hand side of the reconfigured interface.
3.	Click on the Specify Y toggle button in the Resolution area of the Render Setup dialog box.
4.	Change the resolution to X: 640, Y: 480.
5.	Change the file name to glurigor, and accept all other default values.
6.	Press Render Sequence and wait while Softimage renders all 100 frames. By default all frames are rendered into the Softimage database, located in the ~/Softimage/RENDER_PICTURES directory on the UNIX workstations.
Playing a FlipBook
1.	Return to the Tools menu, and click on the FlipBook menu item on the left-hand side of the interface.
2.	Locate the sequence of images rendered. If following the steps above, these should be in ~/Softimage/RENDER_PICTURES, and should be named glurigor.1, glurigor.2, ..., glurigor.100.
3.	Select any one of the files named glurigor.# by clicking once on the file name. Confirm that the starting and ending frames are 1 and 100 respectively.
4.	Click on OK and wait as the frames load. Softimage will display the name/number of the frame being processed along the bottom of the interface.
5.	The first frame of the animation should appear in the center of the screen. Toggle on loop mode by selecting L from the animation controls in the lower right-hand corner. The background of the L box will change to blue when toggled on.
6.	Press the play arrow in the lower right hand corner. The animation should now be playing in the center of the screen. The animation will loop until all three mouse buttons are pressed simultaneously.
Recording to Videotape
The steps for recording a video are beyond the scope of this technical report. For further information, visit the ITG help pages, especially the Quick Start Guide to the VMIL's Accom DDR.

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