Primitives Tutorial

Introduction

Welcome to the first Lighthouse 3D tutorial dedicated to Shockwave 3D. In here geometry primitives will be explored as well as some important concepts such as models and resources. If you're not familiar with macromedia's Director, and its programming language Lingo, then you should check out one of the many sites dedicated to it. There are plenty, and the best place to start is the Macromedia Web Site.

The first thing you should do to add 3D to your Director or Shockwave movie is to add a Shockwave 3D member to your cast. In order to do this select from the main menu "Insert->Media Element->Shockwave 3D". Give it a name, and place it in the score. You should see a black sprite.

In here you'll be shown how to add geometry primitives to your world, namely boxes, spheres, cylinders and planes. This is a basic tutorial but it involves some important concepts regarding the structure of a 3D cast member.

In order to add geometry to your world first you must create what is known as a Model Resource. However this is not enough. Creating a Model Resource only provides a description of what you want to display. To actually get something on screen you need to create a model based on the model resource.

If you're a Lingo programmer you may think about the relation between a model resource and a model as the relation between a cast member and a sprite. Another way to look at it is as if the model resource is a class and the model an instance.

A model resource defines the properties of the geometry you're going to draw. The model on the other hand contains properties such as its the position in the world. You can create as many models as you want based on a single model resource. If you change the model resource then all the models based on it will change.

There are sections for each of the primitives available in Director 8.5, except the particle system. Particle systems can hardly be classified as primitives so they will be dealt with in a future tutorial. The last section of the tutorial is interactive. It provides you with endless examples of scripts and you can see for yourself the effects of changing each of the settings discussed.

I hope you enjoy the tutorial and if you find any bugs please e-mail me.

Antonio

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