Slider Maker
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Slider Maker
The SliderMaker plugin associates Tk sliders with control elements, such as nulls, cubes or tetrahedrons, so you can manipulate the scene using slider controls in a relocateable non-Softimage window, instead of finding, selecting and transforming the control elements. SliderMaker is an excellent template for an external process controlling Softimage elements. Full source is in SI_LOCATION/3D/custom/SoftWish/SliderMaker. Once you create a control element and set its constraints you can build sliders for each of the control elements' transformations (for example translation x, rotation y and scaling z). To build a sliders control select Model->Effect -> SlidersControl. The Status Bar will prompt you to pick control elements. Pick as many control elements as you want, and finish picking by pressing the middle mouse button (or whatever the status bar is tells you to press to "End Mode"). Now you have to pick one last model in the scene (this model is called "junk", isn't used for anything). When you are done picking, the Sliders Editor comes up. It lets you
specify the sliders you want to create for each control element along with associated
slider parameters. For example suppose one had constrained the camera interest to a
null named null1. Then, to create a slider for a null1 that changes the Y translation of
null1 from –10 to 20 with a step of 0.1 here is what we would do:
If you are creating sliders for multiple control elements, you can now go on and create
a slider for your next such element. Remember to click on OK for each control element.
On the Window Title Page you can define the title for the sliders (this is the title for the window which contains all the sliders).. The Previous and Next buttons allow you to switch between nulls. To exit the Sliders Editor press the Quit button. Now the created slider controls the Cameras Interest's Y translation (by way of null1). Moving the slider moves the camera interest up and down. If you want to edit the sliders parameters, add new sliders or remove some of the old sliders select Model->Effect -> SlidersControl. Pick new control elements if you want to create sliders for them. If you want to edit, remove or add sliders for existing control elements pick one of these elements. When you quit the editor the sliders get rebuilt.
There is a select button for each control object. They are useful when one is keyframing motion, since the object being keyframed needs to be selected. The buttons do not modify the select mode. If you are in multi-selection mode then clicking a select button adds the corresponding control object to the select list. Once you create sliders they will always be at hand. Just bring the sliders on top of Softimage and use the sliders to adjust your scene. When you save a scene the slider creation script is saved with it, so the sliders will be re-created whenever the scene is re-opened. |
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