Alright! Let’s talk Biped posing and animation. When animating in Alice, it is important to know how the joints work. As with human joints the primary way that joints move are to bend or pivot.  In Alice these joint movements are achieved through the Turn and Roll procedures.  When posing bipeds using the scene editor you have the ability to manipulate these tunes and rolls manually but it is sometimes easier to use one shot procedures to achieve the desired pose.

 

Alice has been built so that the most common way you will want to manipulate biped joints will be the turn procedure.

 

thisJoint turn (Direction), (Amount)

 

•Direction: you can choose from: left, right, forward, and backward.


•Amount: you can choose from the default list of decimal numbers or enter your own custom amount.


 

* The turn amount translates to the number of rotations. A “1” is equal to a full circular turn. While a character may be able to spin around multiple times few parts of the human body can do a full circular turn. A decimal number less than a 1 will be translated into a fractional amount of a full rotation.  For example .5 will translate to a half turn.

 

Roll is less commonly used but will still be important for joints that can turn in all directions such as the neck or the shoulder.

 

thisJoint roll (Direction), (Amount)

 

•Direction: you can choose from: left and right.


•Amount: you can choose from the default list of decimal numbers or enter your own custom amount following the same decimal representation of a percentage of rotation.


 

To determine whether to use turn or roll it is important to understand the current orientation of the joint (forward/backward, up/down, left/right). In Alice each joint has its own orientation that is different than the orientation of the model.  Forward for the shoulder joint is different than forward for the model. In Alice the general rule is that each joint points towards the next joint that it is attached to.  For example forward for the shoulder joint points towards the elbow.

 

View the attached and linked quick references for more tips and tricks as well as a full list of the orientation and most common turn/roll directions and amounts for each joint.