Visual effects & reset?

[Sophie]

I want to change the appearance of my objects over time. It looks like my choices for doing this are one resize method, and several properties I can directly manipulate.

- method: resize
- properties: color, opacity, emissiveColor, specularHighlightColor..

Are there better ways than directly manipulating properties? Is there someplace I can find an explanation of these properties?

Is there a way to "reset" a visual property back to its default, or is it up to me to track the original values and provide a reset myself?

And lastly - for methods such as "roll", is there any way to change the axis for the roll?


Thanks!

[DrJim]

A bit vague, and I assume like your other posting that you are talking about 2.2. But here are some general answers:

1. There are really no other things you can change except textures (which can be interestin). You can expand the object tree and just change sub-objects, however, and also can resize in only one direction (see screenshoot). Note than any change affects everything below that sub-object in the hierarchy. You can also import an .ase object and substitute it for one of the model's parts - but this is pretty difficult.

2. There is no general way to do a reset, however you can change the top objects properties and everything below will be set to the same value.

3. There is no way to change a library object's axis. You can add a dummy object, reposition it where you want and then make it the vehicle for the actual object. When you roll, etc. the dummy, the "real" object will follow accordingly.

[Sophie]

Thanks, DrJim!