Can't dolly.

[extol]

Has anyone else had a problem of not being able to dolly the camera with w3d models exported from 3dsmax? It will rotate and pan, but not dolly.

[Roofy]

What does your behaviour script look like. Are you using the script from the
library or is this your own script. If it is your own, then I would suggest
either just using the script from the library palette or look at the script
from the library palette to see how it is created so that you can implement it
into your script.

[extol]

Thanks for your reply, Roofy. I am using the 3D Behavior from the library.
But even if I open my model in the editor and manually try to dolyl the camera,
it doesn't do anything. The model is some mountain terrain. Could it be too
complicated?

[Roofy]

Hi,
I do not think the scenery is too complicated becuase either nothing would
work, the system would animate to a craw, or Director would crash. However, I
would not go past 13000 visable polys, meaning the amount of polys that are
visable to the camera. You can check this by double clicking on the 3d member
to veiw the shockwave window, and at the very bottom of the window will show
how many poly's are currently visable.

Another thing I could think of, and this is complicated to explian, is that
maybe scenery scale is too big. What I mean by this is that I think Director's
measure of units are in centimeters, and if you set max to be in meters, then
your scene shockwave is going to be 1000 times bigger then it was in MAX. I am
not saying this is a bad thing, it is just that your translation amounts might
need to be bigger. So instead of the default 5 units of translation, try seeing
if the camare moves with a translation of 100.

[extol]

Okay, I changed it to 100. That did make a difference. But instead of zooming in, it just makes my model disappear starting from the bottom and the rising to the top. Any suggestions?

[Roofy]

If I understand you correctly, it sounds like you translated on the axis of
the Camera's up vector. It is important to undertand what this and the forward
vector means. What this means is that it tells which way the camera or any
other type of node is pointing. For example, although I do not know Max's
settings, in Plasma, the camera's upvector is positive z, and the forward
vector positive Y. On the other hand, Maya's camera upvector is positive Y and
the forward vector is positive z. So, what does this all mean? It means that
lets say you select an object in your 3d app, and you want to move it up 10
units, and lets say the camera's upvector is set to Y, then that means you are
translating the selected object up 10 units on the Y axis or in Director lingo
terms....

myObject.translate(0, 10, 0)

Now with this in mind, what ever the 3d application might be, when exporting,
the upvector and forward vectors are exported to Director as well. So my point
to this lengthy explaination is that just switch the translate axis to the
opposite axis, meaning if you translated on the Y axis then translate it on the
Z axis to move forward, or if you translated on the Z axis then translate it to
the Y axis to move forward.

[extol]

Roofy, you're a genius! That totally did the trick. I realized that I had
exported my model from the FRONT viewport. I tried exporting it from the
PERSPECTIVE viewport and that also worked. Anyway problem solved. Cheers to
you!