Adobe Director Basics

ADOBE DIRECTOR BASICS
3D: Controlling action
One easy way to achieve this is to send a ray downwards from above the camera or avatar, and detect where this ray
intersects with the ground model beneath it. To see an example of this in action, download and launch the movie
HugTerrain.dir.
The HugTerrain.dir movie move the avatar up and down as it moves over the terrain
Creating a terrain
The HugTerrain.dir movie uses a terrain mesh whose contours are defined by a height map stored in a grayscale image.
For more information on this technique, see “Creating a terrain mesh” on page 176.
An alternative to the solution described here is to use the “Steering with the mouse” on page 221createTerrain()
method of the Physics Engine to create a terrain which will detect collisions with objects. See “Terrains” on page 319
for more details.
Detecting the terrain under the avatar
The HugTerrain() handler below accepts three parameters:
aNode: may be a first-person camera, an avatar, or the group which acts as the parent for the camera or the avatar
aTerrainModel: the model that describes the collision geometry for the terrain
aDirection: ±1, to indicate whether aNode is attempting to move forward or backwards.
The handler creates a temporary transform at the position where aNode can be after moving. It then raises the
transform vertically by an amount greater than the greatest possible change in height on the terrain, and sends a ray
downwards from that point. If the ray intersects with aTerrainModel then aNode can move to the position of the
intersection between the ray and aTerrainModel.
Last updated 8/26/2011
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