Adobe Director Basics

ADOBE DIRECTOR BASICS
3D basics
With the #keyframePlayer modifier and the #bonesPlayer modifier, you can use a set of motions authored in your
3D-modeling application. For bones animation, each motion contains a list of tracks, and each track contains the
keyframes for a particular bone. A bone is a segment of the skeleton of a model. For example, track 14 of the motion
named Run can be named RtKneeTrack and move a bone named RtKnee. These names are defined in the 3D
modeling application.
Play list: The Keyframe and Bones players manage a queue of motions. The first motion in the play list is the motion
that is currently playing or paused. When that motion finishes playing, it’s removed from the play list and the next
motion begins.
Motions can be added with bonesPlayerOrKeyframePlayer.play("motionName"), which adds the motion to
the top of the list, or bonesPlayerOrKeyframePlayer.queue("motionName"), which adds it to the end of the list.
Using the play method starts the motion immediately. The motion previously at the beginning of the play list is
halted unless autoBlend is turned on. When you use queue(), the motion is added to the end of the play list.
Motions are removed from the play list automatically when they are complete. You can remove them explicitly by
using bonesPlayer.playNext().
Motion blending: If autoblend is TRUE, a motion that is coming to an end blends smoothly into the next motion.
You use the bonesPlayerOrKeyframePlayer.blendTime property to determine how long the blend should be. If
you set bonesPlayerOrKeyframePlayer.autoBlend to FALSE, you can then use
bonesPlayerOrKeyframePlayer.blendFactor to control the blend frame by frame.
Motion mapping: You can create new motions by combining existing motions. For example, a walking motion
could be combined with a shooting motion to produce a walk-and-shoot motion. This is available only with Bones
player animations.
You can add the Keyframe player modifier at runtime to a model created in Director, but you cannot add the Bones
player modifier at runtime. The Bones player modifier is automatically attached to models with bones animation
exported from a 3D-modeling application. Since the required bones information cannot be assigned in Director, it has
to exist before the model is imported into Director.
Physics
The Physics Xtra is a high-performance tool that helps developers create 3D worlds in which objects interact. The Xtra
performs calculations to determine the results of collisions, factoring in object properties such as mass, velocity, and
rotation. Forces can be applied, and objects can be connected to each other with constraints. The constraints available
are 6 degree of freedom joints, linear joints, angular joints, and spring joints.
Additionally, terrains and raycasting are supported. A terrain is similar to a bumpy plane that is finite in two
dimensions and defines an elevation along the third. Raycasting is the mechanism of collision detection with rays.
Raycasting can be done against all types of rigid bodies and terrains.
With this Xtra, developers can focus on game play and user interaction, and not worry about creating a real-time
physics engine with Lingo scripts.
The Physics (dynamiks) Xtra is a fully integrated rigid body physics simulation engine for Adobe® Director®. The
dynamiks Xtra is supported on Windows and MAC platforms.
For a simple demonstration of some of the potential of the Physics Xtra, download the movie Physics.dir and launch it.
Last updated 8/26/2011
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