Tutorial #8: The Artiste Turn

Definition
A turn, using the Artiste mover system, is its own entity. A turn describes the direction that an object or seated avatar will be facing. It has no bearing on the direction of movement of the ob ject or seated-avarar. Movement is always from one marker to the next in a straight line.

Turns are a continuous uinteruppted motion. You do not need to create a turn using several discrete partial turns.

A move takes up its very own line-entry on a notecard to describ it.
A turn ALSO takes up its very own line-entry on a notecard to describe it.

Defining Characteristics
Turns essentially have 2 defining characterictics:

1. Number of degrees to rotate
2. Direction (Clockwise or Counterclockwise

Those are inherent.

Additional Artiste-Added Characteristics:
  1. Duration – the longer the duration, the slower the turn.
  2. Animation for Turn (optional) – SL has turn-animations
that work well
  3. Pause-After-Turn – (optional) this is
number of seconds to rest after a turn just like Duration
  4. Animation for Pause-After-Turns – (optional)

Turn Elimination
Using the marker system (Method #2) the Artiste assumes you want to do a turn after every move. You can instruct it not to turn (as in… do 2 moves in a row) by simply setting the duration of the turn to zero.

Turn Creation
The easiest way to create a turn is to simply
1) Edit a marker and rotate it physically, eyeballing it. Something you are          probably already used to.
 2) You can type in a number of degrees in the Edit-Object tab

You can also click on the marker to bring up a menu and then choose:1) 3)   3) TurnLeft (counter-clockwise) or
4) TurnRight (clockwise)  or
5) Type in a specific number of degrees .

Or

6) Press AutoRotate – and every marker will immediately rotate in the direction of the next marker. A timesaver for the majority of cases. You can of course tweak any of the turn-info after the AutoRotate

Pre-Move and Post-Move
An important distinction is that with Artiste turns, they happen AFTER the move. You might be used to turns happening BEFORE the move.

Our logic is that if you walk down the street, you want to look forward while you are walking and only turn the corner when you get to the actual corner. Not better or worse…just different.

Turn-While-Moving

I also included a special type of turn for visual variety…at your discretion. It is a turn-while-moving, feature. The turn will be gradual over the duration of the move so that the turn is complete when the move ends.

It is an all-or-nothing switch for a given Palette(mover). All turns will behave that way or none will behave that way. In this case you would not have an explicit turn. The turn is embedded and implied.

Adjusting
You can use the marker-menu to adust turn-related information or you can edit the notecard directly that contains the move/turn information.

Relative vs Absolute
FYI: Turns or rotations are “relative” to where the markers prior rotation and are not absolute degrees.

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NOTE: The Controller does NOT serve as an anitial marker and plays no part in defining the route, unlike some other systems you might be familiar with so as not to be confused.

Scale
A reminder that you have control over the size of markers generated by the Controller using the Scale line-entry

Saving Moves and Turns Back Into the Palette

There are 2 ways to save your designed route, unlike the single standard method of Copy and Paste chat-output.

1) DumpMoves –  Pressing the DumpMoves button on the Controller will translate the markers movement and rotations into local owner-only chat so you can then copy and paste it into a notecard in the Palette. This is the standard way. You changes will be permanent after you save the notecard and will surive a Palette Reset. Simply Reset your Palette and then test it tracing your route with the press of one button.

2) UpdatePalett  – We have added as 2nd time-saver method of saving your moves and turns into the Palette. Press the UpdatePalett button and the moves and turns are sent directly tot he Palette. Same results as copying and pasting but without taxing your manual labor.

The only caveat is that your changes are temporary and last as long as the Palette is NOT Reset, else your changes revert back to what was hard-coded for moves prior, if any were at all. This speeds up testing quickly by saving time, allowing you to make several quick minor tweaks and testing them without extra labor and also reduces possible copy/paste errors.

Level of Effort

How Fast and Easy Can You Actually Create a New Route?

1) Press RezMarkers – Choose number of markers to rez
2) Press UpdatePalett
3) Done!

Test your route pressing one button on Palette.

OR

A more practical approach would be:

1) Press RezMarkers  – Choose number of markers to rez
or
1) Press AddMarker – reposition and rerotate each marker
2) Press AutoRotate
3) Adjust specific Durations of  the moves
4) Press UpdatePalett or press DumpMoves & Copy/Paste, save & reset
3) Done!

Test your route pressing one button on Palette.

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I think this is enough to wet your appetite and familiarize yourself enough with the Movement system so that you are not as intimidated by its ‘newness’ or ‘different-ness’.

There are 8 ways to learn or re-learn what has been presented in these tutorials as well as with new material not covered.

Ways to Learn
  1) This Ongoing Tutorial
2) Kat’s Classes – Tailored for new users & users from other systems
3) The Manuals – in-depth coverage
4) Demo Videos & Live Show Videos
5) Friendly User Group
6) BlogSite
7) WebSite
8) One-On-One assistance from me.