Subtitles of the Movie

Now that we have opened EI's Animator we can get acquainted with 3D space. If you are new to the world of 3D animation, or you would like a simple refresher on basic 3D principles, then this lesson is for you. The first thing we see when Animator opens are four windows. There are three orthographic views and a perspective view of our 3D world. The orthographic views are Top, Front, and Side. A perspective view is our virtual camera's view. Any three-dimensional object like our simple box here has Width, Height, and Depth. It occupies a volume in 3D space as measured in three directions from a center point. The center point is called the Origin. The three directions away from this center point, or the Origin, are called Axes. An object's width is measured on the X-axis; it's height along the Y-axis, and its depth along the Z-axis. I'm going to turn off our box for now and turn on this little widget that I made to show these axes. As you can see where the axes meet is the Origin. If we move along the X-axis we're moving side-to-side; if we move along the Y-axis we're moving up and down; and moving along the Z-axis means we're moving forward or backward. Because the Origin is at the center of the 3D world it has a position value of zero, zero, zero. Let's look at the Front View of our scene. Again, this view is an orthographic view. That means we can only see two dimensions at a time. We see the up and down, or Y-axis, and the left-to-right, or X-axis. We can't view the Z-axis from this view. It's like we're looking at a flat piece of graph paper. Look at the bottom of this Window and you'll see read-outs for coordinates for X, Y, and Z. If I move the cursor away from the Origin up and the right you'll see the values increase for the X and Y fields, but not the Z field. This 2D view of our 3D world can't measure distance along the Z-axis. Now, let's go to the Side View. This shows the height, or the Y-axis, and depth, or the Z-axis, but it doesn't show width. Again, moving from the Origin the values at the bottom start at zero at the Origin and then increase as I move my cursor away, and the Top View works the exact same way; depth and width, but no height. The only Window that shows all three dimensions at once is this Perspective view, which is the Camera View. The three orthographic views, Top, Front, and Side, help you position your objects and set up your scene, but you'll be rendering from a true 3D view with the Camera View here. Let's turn our box back on. I can move it around in any of the flat views like the Top View here, but if I want it to be higher, I have to raise it in the Front or Side Views. These flat, or orthographic views, help me precisely position the model, but when I'm ready to render I'll be using the Camera View here. The thing to keep in mind is that when you move or rotate your 3D object, let's say, a 3D logo, you're moving it in relation to the Origin. The values are measured from here, not from the corners of your Window like a 2D application or some page layout programs. One thing I want to point out now is that some other 3D programs, like CAD applications, may refer to the up and down axis as the Z-axis, and the Y-axis as depth. Electric Image, like most 3D animation programs, measures Y as up. This doesn't affect how you animate at all, but may affect how you import a model from one of these programs. As we'll see, EI has a way to flip the model's 3D axis on import.