Lesson 10
Making a ride

Copyright © 2002 Angel is a Lady. All rights reserved.
Special thanks to Spade_03 without whom this would never have been written.

Making a Ride

The really fun stuff begins.   This lesson will teach you how to bind the avatar to the animations so that it can go for a ride.   It will also teach you to unbind the animations so that the avatar can come out of ride (as required by many 3d worlds).

I HIGHLY recommend you do the animation lesson first before attempting this.  This lesson is fast paced, having a good working knowledge of  placement, sizing, animations will be very helpful.  Also note the placement of this ride is for a ground level of 0y.  If you are uploading to a 3d world with a different ground level you will need to adjust your ride to their ground level.  ALSO remember to adjust your viewpoint, +1.75y above ground level or it will be floating.  EXAMPLE ground level is -1.75 viewpoint should start out at avatar eye sight at 0, ground at 0 viewpoint should be at 1.75y.

Open up spazz window, place a group at 000 (translations XYZ) call group RIDE.  Then place a blue cube at 0, 0.5, 0.   Make a green sphere scale 0.2 Trans -0.5, 1.5, -1.  

Click on viewpoint and add a viewpoint at 0, 1.75, 1.

Viewpoint buttons

Place cube, sphere and viewpoint inside of group.  

For this lesson we need to have a frame of reference so make a yellow cube scaled 10, .1, 10 and place it a 000 trans.  This will act as a sample ground for us, you may wish to name it DELETE ME to remind you to take it out later.

We will use this as our sample ride.  
The box will represent the ride you make, the button is a start button. (This can be eliminated in your ride if you set the animations to click on the ride.  I am using it here because our box is invisible when we stand on it. )

First we want to animate our ride group.  A simple wizard animation is fine.  (If you are unsure how to animate please read animations lesson and possibly deformed nurbs lesson before continuing.)  Start when clicked, rotate about the Y axis, this will make things go around in a circle on the floor. You may wish to take off the looping here too. When finished, check in your browser window.

Browser Button
(not available in older spazz programs)

DON'T PANIC no matter how many times you look it will seem as if the floor is moving in circles.  The reason is we animated the viewpoint to stay with the animations, so it may look a little strange, but it is perfect.  Because we used a wizard we want to get rid of that extra group, it may cause confusion later.  Move the sensor and the animation, into the RIDE group, then move the RIDE group out of the animation wizard group, delete EMPTY animation wizard group.  Your tree should look like the one below.


Tree

If all you need to do is animate a viewpoint, you can stop now.  Unfortunately if you are trying to upload to a 3D virtual world they require the veiw point to BIND  to the animations and UNBIND.  That means you better keep going, and you thought this would be easy huh?

Open up the properties for the TouchSensor: Wizard_Starter.  Add a trigger and click on your tree to select Viewpoint 1.  Click on arrow by trigger node box to see Viewpoint 1 in the window.  Set Trigger Node will... to BIND.  This will hold your viewpoint to the animations when there are other viewpoints present.




 Make a Group at 000 trans, place in RIDE GROUP, call it Group 2.  Make a red sphere scale 0.2 Trans 0.5, 1.5, -1.  Place red sphere in Group 2.  Make a sensor trans 000 place it in Group 2. Go to sensor 2 properties make a trigger for  Group 2.
This will be our stop button.


Trigger for Group 2


Add trigger Viewpoint1 click arrow down till Viewpoint 1 shows in box (This is still sensor 2 box.) Set Trigger Node will to UNBIND.


Trigger for Unbinding Viewpoint 1

When finished, check in your browser window.

Browser Button
(not available in older spazz programs)

Ok to start your animations click the green button.  Pull you back so you can see what is happening.  If you did it right, when the green button is pushed you should not see anything move but the floor.  When the red  button is pushed the floor holds still, and the box and buttons move.


Final tree and example.

Now I guess you make a ride and and put it where the cube is.  Don't forget to remove your floor.