Egypt project

I just completed an assignment in Chapter 2 where we had to create an Egyption world with a mummy walking toward the pharaoh until the pharaoh gestures and the mummy falls back.

Creating the methods took me some time, as I kept trying to use the capture pose tool to create the movements, with little success. I struggled with using the mouse tools to move the mummy's legs into walking poses and eventually gave up. Instead I used the built in methods to create the mummy's step method. I had slightly more success when creating the pharaoh's gesture. If anyone has any advice on using these mouse tools, it would be creatly appreciated.

I did have a bit of fun using different camera angles during the program, and learned that some of the movements and poses do not look the same at all from certain angles. While from a side view, the mummy looked to be walking, but when I had the camera swing around to the back while he was still walking, it looked like he was doing some crazy jump in the air. I was able to avoid that by reducing the number of steps the mummy was taking while the camera was moving around to the back.

Wow Freda it's cool that you are trying things out in Alice that have not been discussed in the book yet. In this assignment I kept things simple... for the mummy "step" method I called the mummy to move forward 1 meter in a duration of 5 seconds... while I had him moving (using the do together) I had a loop (2.5 times) for him to "roll" left .025 revolutions and roll right .025 revs. This created a slow wabble looking mummy, and worked quite well.

I did find the movements quite restricting on the pharaoh, Limbs would disappear within the body when I tried a whipping motion so I had to settle for a up/down motion.

Rolando Sustaita

Thank you for the advice Rolando, I didn't think to use the loop. I will have to try that out.

[x2495iiii]

A few tips on using the mouse tools:

When you need to create a pose, first have the object turn and face the camera (I find this makes it easier to get things started)

If you have the first mouse command button selected (Move parts), there are keys you can hold down which are shortcuts to more complex movements

- Holding down shift while dragging the mouse lets you move the object only up and down

- Ctrl lets you rotate the object left and right

- Shift and Ctrl at the same time lets you tumble the object (a combination of turn forwards/ backwards and roll right/left).

getting used to those shortcuts makes everything MUCH easier.

Finally, when you're done with a pose, capture it, turn the entire object around to make sure it looks right from all angles. If it does, congratulations. If it doesn't, simply adjust the subparts to make it look right, then re-capture the pose (you can always delete the incorrect pose, though sometimes poses like that can still be used for other actions, thus saving you work).

NOTE: Though most objects in Alice accept poses just fine, some glitch and deform when poses are set. The ones I know of are EvilNinja and Magician, but there could be more. Be sure and save your world before asking an object to set a pose, as making and capturing a pose doesn't cause bugs, only setting a pose does for these objects.

are you using 2.0 or 2.2? and also if you wanted i will try and make you a walking demo?