animation with Xara3D

[vernaix]

Hello,

I'm new to this forum, and have just acquired Magix 3D Maker (ie Xara 3D), french version, and started playing with it.
Thanks for all the tutos I've found on the forum; it helped me a lot to learn about X3D functions since the help included with the software itself is actually.... very light !
Now I have a problem with the animation function, for which I did not find any tuto indeed : my questions for instance are (sorry if the words are not right, I have only the french version) :
- in the animation window, use of check in boxes "apply to text","design", "front face only" etc.. ?
- in the animation window, animation style dropdown menu, meaning/use of "step" ("etape" in french wording) ?
- if I go for several pages, say page 1, Ctrl+OK, page 2 : can I apply different design options and/or animation style to page 1 and 2 ?
- If I get say 3 pages, how to delete page 2 otherwise than by using the text editor window, which is a bit cumbersome ?

The best would be for one of you to tell me of a tutorial dealing with that aspect of X3D. Does that exist ?

Thanks in advance for your help

[Soquili]

Hello Vernaix,

Welcome to Talkgraphics.

You can apply different colours and textures to the text, however it seems that only one animation style can be used for all pages.

The attached animation consists of 4 pages and uses the "Step" animation style.

I tried to assign different animation types to individual pages but it did not work. All pages use the most recently assigned animation style.

Click the thumbnail image to see the animation.

[simsmj]

Hello, Vernaix.

Animation style in Xara3D is a global function; whichever style you set is set for the whole file. You cannot daisy-chain different styles in Xara3D except for the Step animation, which behaves as a higher level operation. In fact Step isn't really an animation, it is invoked automatically merely by having more than one page, and simply means that each page will be displayed in turn, whether or not any other animation style is set.

If another animation style is chosen, it will be performed for every page in turn. Some animation styles have parameters that can be amended separately for individual objects. For example, a Swing animation can allow each object to swing through a different angle from other objects, or to swing around a different axis.

Front Face Only means that as an object rotates, it will only rotate 180 degrees before starting again, so you never see the reverse face.

Apply to Text means the animation will apply to the object. You may want some objects to Rotate, but not others. You can also apply animation to the lights in some styles.

I don't know of a quick method to delete any single page.

Mike

[vernaix]

Thanks to both of you for your replies . It is so helpful to have somebody helping to understand where are the actual limits of a software, not trying to discover functions which do not exist !
As it is, X3D achieves a lot of things and I'm sure I'll enjoy it a lot.
Thank you again, I'll not hesitate if I have more questions....