Adobe Director Basics

ADOBE DIRECTOR BASICS
3D: Controlling action
The character controller API in Adobe Director provides the following functionalities:
You can control the movement of any character.
You can make your characters interact with rigid bodies.
You can control the interaction between different characters.
You can easily define a character controller by following these steps:
1 First, identify the model for the character controller.
2 Determine the axis to be used for the movement of the controller (upVector). The axis can be:
X-axis, which is vector(1,0,0).
Y-axis, which is vector(0,1,0).
Z-axis, which is vector(0,0,1).
A character controller can be created using the createController method:
controllerRef = createController(controllerName,modelName,controllerType,
upVector,slopelimit)
The controller type can be either #box or #capsule. If #capsule is specified, the bounding sphere of the model
is used as the radius for the controller and the bounding box is used for the capsule height. If #box is specified,
the model’s bounding box is used as the controller’s extents.
The slopelimit, signifies the maximum slope that the character can walk. This is expressed as the cosine of the
desired limit angle. A value of 0 disables this function.
Note: The character controller will automatically be treated as a rigid body by the physics engine.
3 Move the character controller using the move method. When the controller is moved using this method, it also
interacts with the rigid bodies in the world. If a callback has been registered by the controller, then it gets called
during the interaction.
When you need to move the character, specify the displacement vector and the distance:
move(displacement, activegroupsList, minDist, sharpness)
The displacement vector is primarily used to move the controller from the current location. The activegroupList
denotes the list of active collision groups that the controller will interact with while moving. minDist, signifies the
minimum distance the controller must travel. If the distance is lesser than this value, the character doesn’t move.
This is used to stop the recursive motion algorithm when the remaining distance to travel is small.
When the controller is moving on an uneven terrain, to prevent the sudden height changes, the motion can be
smoothened using a feedback filter. The sharpness coefficient, defines the amount of smoothing. A smaller value
promotes better smoothing. (1.0 means no smoothing). Here’s an example:
rigidbody1.collisionsgroup = 1
rigidbody2.collisiongroup = 2
myct.move(vector(1,0,0),[1,2], 0.001,1)
The controller interacts with rigidbody1 and rigidbody2 while moving as they are in the list of active collision
groups. If a callback has been registered for a rigid body-controller interaction, it will be invoked.
Download the movie CharacterController.dir to understand the character controller feature in Director.
You can use the arrow keys to move the controller (the green model), Try moving the controller towards the rigid body
(the yellow model). The rigid body will get displaced.
Last updated 8/26/2011
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