Subtitles of the Movie

Let's open another scene. In this scene we have three Ubershape models, two Cubes and a Ground Plane. I'll double-click the first Cube and bring up its Group Info Window. Now let's click on the Shadow tab. The Shadow tab just has a list of check boxes. You tell your model to cast a shadow or not, or let a shadow fall on it or not; that's the Receive Shadow option. Both of our Cubes are set to Cast and Receive Shadows. Let's render a Snapshot. We see that the front Cube is casting a shadow on the back Cube and the floor, and the back Cube casts a shadow on the floor. Let's close that. Back to the Shadow tab, and skip down to where it says: Shadow Object Only. This option will not render the object itself, but it will render the Object Shadow. Now, both Cubes are told to cast Shadows, but the first Cube is a Shadow object only. Let's render another Snapshot. As we can see, we have the second Cube and its shadow on the floor but we also see that the invisible first Cube is still casting a shadow on the second Cube and on the floor Ð pretty neat. Let's close that. Let's see what Generate Shadow Mask does. Let's open another scene. Here we have just a Ground Plane, or a floor, and the Cube; two objects. The floor is black for a reason. Let's look at each object's Info Windows. The Cube is set up to cast a shadow. The Plane is receiving a shadow but it also has Generate Shadow Mask turned On; also, I've told Animator to render with a gray background instead of a black one so that we can see the shadow when it's rendered. Let's do a Snapshot. Now we see the Cube but no floor, but we also see this shadow the Cube is casting. This technique is useful if you're trying to integrate a 3D animation into a live action scene, say, a shot of a room that you have as a background. Your 3D animation will look much more like it's really integrated into your real video footage if it's casting a shadow. The color of the shadow is black because the floor is black. If the floor was red Ð let's change it quickly Ð and do a Snapshot, then our Shadow is red. Cool. The Info tab gives you some basic information about your object: number of Vertices, which are the points of your model where the faces meet. This is a good indicator of how complex your model is, and below that is the amount of volume of 3D space that your model occupies. The Strength tab is where you see a list of your Strength Maps, a texturing technique that defines the specific area where you want a certain effect to take place, like a bend region for a character's elbow. Let's skip over to the Cycling tab. The Cycling tab is for multiple models in a hierarchy. This is called Replacement Animation where one model replaces its previous neighbor in the Project Window for that frame, and the next model replaces that model for the next frame and so on. Now, the Display tab. The Display tab is where you set how you want to view your object in Animator. Your object will still render with the settings you chose in the Shading tab, but how it's displayed in Animator is determined here. Let's open another scene. Probably the most important items in the Display tab are the Display Texture and Shade Texture. This box in our scene has a texture assigned to it, but it won't display the texture in the Animator unless I check it here, and it won't interact with this scene's lights unless I click Shade Texture. OK, that's the Model Group Info Window. These tabs and parameters are common to every model in your scene.