After a restful night of sleep (not!), I logged back in, anxious to dive back in to learning the Artiste.
I had a notecard waiting for me with Yummy’s answers to my endless questions. After being so frustrated with the Palette, it turned out that I had put the lines for the moves in the wrong place on the *palettes notecard (What? Me make a mistake? Surely not!), I fixed the notecard and – Voilá! The palette worked as a mover! Woohoo!
When you use the palette as a mover, there are two ways you can generate the information you need for the notecard. You can simply move the palette from point A to point B and then use the built in menu to generate the information. Or you can use the controller method, where you rezz a controller and then generate placeholders for each point. Once you have your moves set up, the controller will generate the information you need for the palette. Both methods work equally well, it’s just a matter of what method you find easier/more comfortable. For my first time, I used the palette method.
As I was working through my route, with Yummy’s help, I asked about the ability to ‘pause’ at a point in the route. When I was working through it, I had to manually add the ‘pause’ times on the *palettes notecard. Since then, I believe, Yummy has added an update which allows you to add those through the palette menu. Progress!
Once you have your route set up, you can test your route. You can run through the whole route, or you can use ‘quicktest.’ QuickTest allows you to quickly run through each move (point A to point B, point B to point C, etc.) to ensure the route is set up the way you want. When I was running through the quick test, it also included the ‘pause’ times, which I wasn’t expecting. I’m not sure if that is something that is still that way, or if that is something Yummy changed. (I can’t find anything in my piles of notes, anyway!)
As I was working through the various steps, I realized that I had certain expectations for the palettes as movers, because of my experiences with other systems. For example, the palette does not come loaded with a default stand animation. The reason for this (I think) is because the palettes can be used for so many different things, not just as an avatar mover. When you use a palette, you specify what you want that palette to do. So, for example, if I want to use the palette as a mover, I have to make sure that the *palette notecard reflects that the palette needs to be moveable (obvious, I know), sittable (because you need to have an avatar sit on it), and animatable (because you will likely want a default stand in it – or at least I did).
(Another note here – when you make the palette sittable, you may have to adjust the position of your avatar. You do this through the palette menu.) Once you sit up your initial palette/mover, you can save the palette as a ‘baseline’ and use it the next time you go to design a mover route. That way, half of the set up is already done and you save yourself a lot of time!
One cool feature of the palette I discovered while working with it was that you can use it to turn/spin. While I am sure you can do this with other systems, it isn’t really something I’d thought about. With the Artiste, using a palette, you can make a move, a stop, a turn, and a none (this all makes sense later, I promise). I did some testing and the max for the turn is 180 degrees. However, you can add several 180 turns in a row, which ends up looking like you are spinning around. It opens up a lot of possibilities, so I’m planning to incorporate some turns into my next routine.
So after all of Yummy’s help, I felt confident enough to try and work on my own to finish setting up my route. After I got it all set up, I tried adding the command to the *autofx notecard in the HUD to make it play. For some reason (another dumb mistake on my part, I am sure), it didn’t work.
However, I felt like I made some real progress on day two, and I’m raring to go for day three!
A Kat and A Mouse 