3D Behaviors; Text; The 3D World - MACROMEDIA DIRECTOR MX-USING DIRECTOR MX Use Manual

3D behaviors

The Director MX Behavior library includes new 3D-specific behaviors. For more information on
these behaviors, see Chapter 3, "Director MX 3D Tutorial," on page 103.
3D behaviors are divided into four types:
•
Local behaviors are actions that accept triggers only from the sprite to which they're attached.
•
Public behaviors are actions that accept triggers from any sprite.
•
Triggers are behaviors that send signals to a local or public behavior to cause the behavior
to execute.
For example, attaching the Create Box action and Mouse Left trigger behaviors to a sprite
will cause a box to be created in the 3D world each time the sprite is clicked with the left
mouse button.
•
Independent behaviors are behaviors that perform their actions without a trigger.
The Toon behavior, for example, changes a model's rendering style to the toon style.
3D text
You can easily create 3D text in Director MX by performing the following steps:
Create 2D text.
1
Convert the text to 3D by selecting 3D Mode from the Display pop-up menu on the Text tab
2
of the Property inspector.
Set properties of the 3D text using the 3D Text tab to manipulate the specific properties of
3
the 3D text.
You can also manipulate the text cast member with Lingo or a behavior. For more information,
see the Chapter 3, "Director MX 3D Tutorial," on page 103 and "Creating 3D text"
on page 462.

The 3D world

This section provides a brief overview of the contents of 3D cast members. For more detailed
information, see "About the 3D cast member" on page 455.
Each 3D cast member contains a complete 3D world. It can contain models (the objects that
viewers see within the world) that are illuminated by lights and viewed by cameras. A sprite of a
3D cast member represents a specific camera's view into the world. Imagine that the 3D cast
member is a room filled with furniture with cameras pointing in from several windows. A given
sprite using that cast member will display the view from one of those cameras, but the room
itself—the 3D cast member—remains the same regardless of which view is used.
The key difference between 3D cast members and other cast members is that the models within
the 3D world are not independent entities—they're not sprites. They are integral parts of the 3D
cast member sprite.
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