Lesson 1: The Alias Interface

Note: This labeling process can only be applied to tool icons that are on the shelf. The actual tools in the Tool Palette and the menu function icons cannot be edited this way.

Creating lesson shelves

Throughout the lessons in this book, you are asked to use tools from the Tool Palette. To familiarize yourself with how to use the Tool Shelf, you should build a new shelf for each lesson and delete the shelf when you are finished. Since most lessons contain repeated uses of a few specific tools, you will quickly see how the shelf can speed up your workflow as all the necessary tools are at your fingertips.

Later, you will want to make shelves that fit your workflow and emphasize the tools that you use on a regular basis.

Saving and Retrieving Shelf sets

In the option button on the right side of the Shelf window, you will find two options for reading and writing shelves. You may find that you have a favorite shelf setup for modeling that differs from your animation shelf setup. These options let you save Shelf sets.

Tip: Alias ships with several default Shelf sets based on our research into the tools most frequently used by various types of users. Later, you may want to explore these shelf setups as a starting point for creating your own shelves.

Interface Display

So far, the tools in the palette and shelf have been displayed as medium sized icons. There are several alternative display options that let you see these items as either text or icons of varying sizes. You are in control, since the look of the user interface is decided by you. You can also change the look of the palettes by changing their placement and orientation.

Displaying small icons

1. From the Preferences menu, select Interface Interface options -. Click the Show Icon Labels option to turn it on. Click Go.

   Tip: The icons now display labels to help you learn the tool names.

   

2. From the Preferences menu, select Interface Interface options -. Change the Icon Mode to Small. If you don't need the icon labels, turn the labels off. Click Go.

   

   The tool icons in both the shelf and the palette are now shown as small icons. As you become more familiar with the icons, this icon mode lets you see more tools on the screen at one time.

   

   Displaying names only

3. From the Preferences menu, select Interface Interface options -. Change the Icon mode to Text and click Go. The tool icons in both the shelf and the palette are now shown as text buttons.

   

   Tip: Because of the default configuration of the Tool Palette, the yellow arrows indicating pop-up conditions for tools are not visible. You need to expand the palette to see these arrows. To display the tools in pop-up conditions, simply click and hold.

4. From the Preferences menu, select Interface Interface options -. Change the Icon Mode to Medium and click Go. The tool icons are back to their default size.

   While completing the tutorial lessons, you may want to test which icon mode best suits you and your work.

   Reorienting the tools

5. Click the Orient button next to the Option button in the Tool Shelf. This reorients the shelf tabs in a vertical organization similar to the Tool Palette. Use the Scroll bar on the left to scroll between the various shelves.

   

6. Click again on the Orient button to return the shelf to its horizontal orientation.

   Tip: You can position the Tool Shelf and Palette anywhere on the screen using standard Motif window-manipulation techniques. You can have a vertical shelf and a horizontal palette, or you can have both of them vertical. The choice is up to you. Once you position the shelf window in the workspace, you can orient the icons and tabs to suit. As you work, you may want to play with different palette and shelf positions to see which ones you like best.

Hot Keys

To access tools from the keyboard without using either the palette, menu, or shelf, you can assign single or double key hot keys to any of Alias' tools and functions. Though Alias ships with some preset hot keys, you can add your own from the Preferences menu.

1. Click once on the File menu to post this menu. Notice that beside functions such as Save as and Exit, there are keyboard references. If you want to, you can perform these functions by pressing the labeled keys. If the hot key shown is a single hot key, you must first go to the Preferences menu and select Tgl single hotkeys mode to use it. In this mode, you can press a single key to activate a tool or menu function in addition to the normal two key hotkeys.

   Tip: When using single key hotkeys the status bar initially does not let you enter values. To use the status bar, you must either click in it, or press the Tab key to activate it.

   

2. Click away from the menu to close the menu without picking a function.

   Open the Hotkey setup window

3. From the Preferences menu, select Interface Hotkeys / Menus.... Click on some headings to display their list of tools. You can use this window to add or edit the hot key settings using either single hot keys or double hot keys. From this window, you can also hide tools that you don't use from the interface. To do this, click on the corresponding check marks in the Short Menu Display column.

   If you are a new user, we suggest you do not add any hot keys until you are familiar enough with Alias functions to know which tools you may want to access.

   Note: The Learning Alias lessons do not refer to hot keys. If you want to start learning how to use this powerful method of accessing tools, you can set up your hot keys while you are working through these lessons.

Marking Menus

In addition to the shelves and the Tool Palette, Alias includes a special type of menu called a marking menu that gives you fast access to frequently used tools. A marking menu is a floating menu that appears at your cursor when you press the Control and Shift keys in combination with a mouse click.

Note: Marking menus require the use of the Ctrl and Shift keys in a manner that conflicts with the system software's standard use of these keys. You must, therefore, follow the instructions outlined in the Installation Guide to make these keys available for use with the marking menus.

The initial use of marking menus

1. Press the Ctrl and Shift keys, then click and hold anywhere with the left mouse button. A radial marking menu appears with four tools displayed.

   

   The middle and right mouse buttons bring up different marking menu options. Later you can explore which tools are available in these other two menus.

2. Drag down until the Pick Object tool is highlighted, and release the mouse button. The black line helps you track the selection.

   

3. Click on the cube in the workspace to pick it. Its wirelines (called isoparms) turn white to indicate it is picked.

   The fast use of marking menus

4. Press the Ctrl and Shift keys and click drag in an up direction, then quickly release the mouse button. A black line is drawn but no marking menu appears.

   

You have just used the Pick Nothing tool without actually seeing the tool in the workspace. Once you become familiar with the radial position of the marking menu tools, a quick click-drag gives you intuitive access to these functions.

Editing the Marking menu defaults

If you would like to replace one of the marking menu options, you can use the Tool Shelf to create your own marking menu. Please refer to Alias Overview to learn how to customize your marking menus. You can set up menus that contain either 2, 4 or 8 tools. In the case of an 8 tool marking menu, you would drag at angles of 45 degrees to pick the tools.

Deleting objects

Alias includes several Delete functions to remove objects, lights and windows from your workspace. These Delete functions clear the workspace so you can retrieve other wire files.

Delete the cube and the cone

1. Select Pick Object and click on the cube. Use either the Tool Palette, Tool Shelf or marking menus to choose it.
2. From the Delete menu, select Del Active. At the prompt, click Yes to delete the cube.
3. Select Pick Object and click on the cone.
4. Press the Delete key on your keyboard. This evokes the Del active function. At the prompt, click Yes to delete the cube. This is a permanent hot key that you can use to speed up the deleting of objects.

   Delete the remaining objects and view windows

5. From the Delete menu, select Del all. At the prompt, click Yes to delete everything from the scene.

   Tip: Since you are about to open a wire file that contains its own view windows, you needed to delete the existing ones. Had you wanted to delete all the objects and lights, but not the view windows, you'd have chosen Del all objects.

The Project Directories

When you work with Alias, set up project directories to keep project info in one place. Each time you start a new project you should create a new directory. For the duration of these lessons, you will work in an existing project directory called CourseWare.

Open the File Lister

1. From the File menu, select Open. This opens the File Lister.

   

2. Click on the Show List button. You are in the wire directory within the demo project.
3. Click on the diagonal arrow to the left of the word wire. A list of directories is shown within the demo project. These directories contain the various files associated with a project. Directories, folders, and files are created for each Alias project.

   

   Important: These directories should not be deleted or changed because Alias uses them to hold all project files.

   Go to the CourseWare project level

4. Click the diagonal arrow to the left of the word demo. This takes you to the user_data directory where the projects are stored. Click on the name CourseWare to highlight it in white.

   

   Warning: If you do not have a CourseWare project, the CourseWare directory was not loaded with Alias. Consult the installation notes and install this project directory before continuing with the lessons in this guide. Many of these tutorial lessons use supplied files.

   Set the CourseWare project directories

5. With the CourseWare project directory selected, go to the Project menu and select Set Current.

This puts the CourseWare wire directory at the top of the lister so Alias can load and save files to CourseWare, automatically. This is very important when working with the Learning Alias lessons. That is, files must be properly referenced to supporting files.

In your own work, keep all the files associated with a single project together.

Retrieving files

Now that you are in the CourseWare project, you will open an existing wire file. Wire files contain all the geometry, materials and animation information for your Alias models.

Open a file.

Click the L01_Objects icon in the Lister and then click the Open button. This opens the wire file into Alias.

Tip: You could have also double-clicked on the icon to open the file. Another way to open files is to enter the file's name in the Lister command line and then click Open.

Note: For the rest of this guide, the illustrations will focus on the view windows and option boxes. This is because there is no wrong way to set up the user interface. After you customize the UI to suit how you work, the illustrations will still apply.

Window Options

The wire file opens with a standard layout of four view windows. Remember that windows act as objects and can be saved as part of your wire files.

Change the Perspective window

The Perspective window is located at the top right of the screen.

1. Click-drag on the Resize button with the left mouse button at the bottom left of the window. Drag to make the Perspective window bigger on the screen. Sometimes you need a larger window to work with geometrical details.
2. Click-drag on the blank part of the title bar of the window and move it around the screen. Sometimes you need to move a window so that it doesn't conflict with another window or option window.

   

   Find the window's position on the screen.

3. Click the Window Info button (the third from the right on the window's title bar). This lets you set the Positioning and Size of a window.

   

4. Click the "X" box at the top left of the Info window to close it. This is the close box. All Alias windows can be closed in this way.

   Set the Window's size exactly

5. Click on the word Free in the title bar of the Perspective window and drag down to NTSC to size the window accordingly. It is now 645 x 486 pixels. With this menu, you can set your window size to a series of defaults.

   Return to a default four-view window system

6. Click on 645 x 486 and drag down to free: (default). The window is now its original size.
7. From the Layouts menu, select All Windows All (Studio) to return the window to its original position.

Merging files

Next you will import another file "into" the first file, merging them into one file. This can be a useful method of starting with several smaller models that are then brought together into a larger scene.

Import a new file

1. From the File menu, select Import File-. In the Wire Options section of the window, set all option buttons OFF. This ensures that you don't place new windows on top of existing windows and that you don't create a new camera.

   

   Warning: It is a good idea to keep the options set to Off when merging files. In the case of Background, for example, you don't want a new Environment shader to overwrite it.

   Tip: In general, you should only turn on the options that you want to import from the new file. That way, you will not duplicate these entities or override current settings.

2. Click Import File. In the File Lister, click on the file named L01_Objects2, then click Retrieve. This adds five spheres and a light into your existing scene.

   

Changing views

The four view windows display the geometry from several angles. By default, the geometry is seen from the Top, Front, Right and Perspective views. The first three views are orthographic and present a "drafting view" of the geometry. The Perspective view, on the other hand, gives a true "3D" view, showing spatial relations of the model.

There are benefits of using four views to display a model. While the curved surface seems to sit on the ground in the Perspective window, in the Front window it is below the ground level. When positioning objects in 3D space, using several views in combination is the best way of ensuring that you are positioning your objects properly.

Dolly in the Top view

1. Click anywhere in the Top view window to make it active. The border of the window changes to white to show it is active.
2. Select Cameras World Move Camera Dolly from the Tool Palette. Use the middle mouse button to drag it onto your Lesson_One shelf to use later. Click and hold with the left mouse button to dolly into the Top view. Release the mouse button.
3. Next, click and hold with the right mouse button to dolly out.

   

4. Next, click-drag quickly in the Top window at the center of the objects. A view marquee appears. When you release the mouse button, the view changes to the one in the marquee.

   

5. Select Cameras Previous to return the view to its last position.

   Track using various mouse buttons

6. Select Cameras World Move Camera Track. If you want, drag this tool onto the Lesson_One shelf. Click-drag in the Top window. You can track the view in all directions.
7. Click-drag up and down in the Top window with the Right mouse button. Your tracking is restricted to the vertical axis.
8. Click-drag left and right with the middle mouse button. Now tracking is restricted to the horizontal direction.

   Note: Individual mouse buttons affect some functions differently. You may want to try the different mouse buttons later, to see the effect.

   Synchronize the three orthographic views

9. From the DisplayTgls menu, select Window Toggles Window sync.
10. With the Track tool, click-drag in the Front window. Watch how the left/right motion is picked up by the Top window and how the up/down motion is picked up in the Right window.
11. From the DisplayTgls menu, select Window Toggles Window sync to turn the toggle mode off. This toggle mode is very useful when you want to ensure that the orthographic views match up at all times. Its default is Off, so you can change the different views on their own.

    Use the Track/Dolly/Tumble too

12. Click on the title bar of the Perspective window to make it active. Select Cameras World Move Camera Track/dolly/tumble. If you want, drag this tool onto the Lesson_One shelf. This tool combines the capabilities of the three view tools and uses modifier keys to change view modes.
13. Click-drag with the left mouse button. The view tracks so you can see the scene from a different point of view.
14. Press the Ctrl key and click-drag with the left mouse button to tumble in 3D.

    

15. Press the Ctrl key and click-drag left and right with the middle mouse button. The tumbling is restricted to the vertical axis.
16. Press the Ctrl key and click-drag up and down with the right mouse button. The tumbling is restricted to a horizontal axis.
17. Press the Alt key and click-hold the left mouse button to dolly in.
18. Press the Alt key and click-hold the middle mouse button to dolly out.

    Alias offers many ways of changing the camera and orthographic views. You can use this combined tool or the individual Tumble, Dolly and Track tools when you change views. In the next section of this lesson, you will learn how to change views using the icons in the view windows.

    View the Curved surface in the top window

19. Select Pick Object from either the Tool Palette or the Tool Shelf. Click on the curved surface (the biggest rectangle) in the Top window.
20. Select Cameras Look at to focus on the picked surface. Do the same in the Front and Perspective windows.

    Reset all the views

21. Select Cameras Reset view. Click on the Top, Front, Right and Perspective windows to reset them to defaults.

    

The Camera View icons and Viewing Panel

While the Cameras tools are useful, you must interrupt other tool and menu choices to use them. To enable a faster workflow, you can use either the camera tool icons or the Viewing Panel.

The camera tool icons, shown below, are located in the window title bar. Click-drag on the icon to change the view without disturbing the current menu function.

The Viewing Panel enables you to quickly move the camera to preset locations. To display the Viewing Panel, press the Alt and Shift keys.

To move the camera, use the following hot key combinations:

Alt/Shift & left mouse button for Tumble.

Alt/Shift & middle mouse button for Track.

Alt/Shift & right mouse button for Dolly.

Note: For more information, see What's New in Alias and Modeling Window Control Icons in An Introduction to Alias in the Alias Overview Book.

Tumble the Perspective window

1. Click-drag directly on the Tumble icon at the top of the Perspective window. Try to create a view similar to the one shown in the following.

   

   Note: With the view icons, you must drag on the icon. This is different from the Camera tools, where you drag in the window.

   Dolly the Perspective window

2. Now press the Alt/Shift keys and drag in the Perspective window with the right mouse button to Dolly the view until the scene looks like the following:

   

   Change views using various view icons

3. Use these two methods to change views. When using the view icons, try using the three mouse buttons. This shows you how the various mouse buttons constrain the view changes.

   Try to place the scene in the following four views:

   

   

   

   

Throughout the Learning Alias lessons, you will constantly need to change views to work properly with the geometry. You should become familiar with these icons and the Camera tools in order to perform view changes when they are needed.

Picking Objects

A basic skill that you must learn is the ability to pick one or more objects to make them active. This helps you establish which object you want to work with at any given time. Alias includes various Pick tools that offer you a number of picking options.

Pick all the objects in the scene

1. Select Pick Object Types All obj/lights. Now all the objects and lights in the scene are picked. They are highlighted to show they are active.

   

2. Select Pick Nothing. This unpicks all the objects and lights.

   Pick and unpick some objects

3. Select Pick Object. Click on one of the wire lines belonging to one of the spheres to pick it. It becomes highlighted.

   

4. With Pick Object still selected, click on the wire lines of two more spheres. They now are highlighted and added to the selection set.

   

5. With Pick Object still selected, click again on one of the picked spheres with the left mouse button. It is now unpicked or deselected.

   

   Replacing a Pick

6. With Pick Object still selected, click on a different sphere with the middle mouse button.
   
   The new sphere is now picked and the other objects are unpicked. This lets you replace a selection.

   

   Using a pick box

7. With Pick Object still selected, click- drag with the left mouse button to create a pick box around the five spheres and the 3D text. The picked sphere is unpicked, while the other objects are picked.

   

8. Next, click-drag a pick box with the middle mouse button around the five spheres and the 3D text. All the objects are now picked.

   This is because the middle button replaces the old selection, while the left mouse button toggles it.

   

   Remove objects from the pick set

9. Next, click on the five spheres individually with the right mouse button. They are removed from the pick set.

   

   Picking a group and its components

10. With the middle mouse button, click in open space on the working grid. This replaces the pick with nothing.

    Tip: Using the middle mouse button to click in empty space is the same as a Pick Nothing without leaving the Pick Object tool.

11. Select Pick Object. Click on either the number or the letter of the 3D text. The text has been grouped into a single object, and as a result, picked as one.
12. With the middle mouse button, click in open space to again Pick Nothing.
13. Select Pick Component. Now click on one of the wire lines that belong to the front face of the number 3. Only the chosen surface is picked, since it is a component of that text group.

    

14. With the middle mouse button, click in open space to again Pick Nothing.

The SBD Window

Sometimes the modeling windows contain too much visual information and it is hard to discern one object from another. The Scene Block Diagram (or SBD window) offers a graphical inventory of your objects and their hierarchical relationship. Use the SBD window often to supplement the work being done in the modeling windows.

The Advanced SBD window (or ASBD window) offers additional methods of organizing the various elements of a model. The ASBD uses drag functionality for grouping and arranging the inventory of objects, and for the ability to break larger models onto parts that are placed on separate pages. The ASBD window will be used in a later lesson.

Open the SBD window

1. From the Windows menu, select SBD. A window opens with icons representing the pieces of your model.

   

   Change the view in the SBD window

2. With Pick Object selected, click on the 3D text in the modeling window.
3. Click on the SBD window to make it active.
4. Use the Track view icon in the title bar of the SBD view to alter the view. Keep tracking until you come across the picked (active) Text nodes in the SBD window.

   

   The 3D Text is represented by several icons known as dag nodes (Directed Acyclic Graph). The brown nodes represent the positioning, scaling and rotational information about an object. The blue node represents the actual surface geometry. Usually you will use the upper nodes to work with objects, but occasionally you will need to work with the lower nodes.

   In the case of the text, there are three levels to the hierarchy. The top node represents the whole string of text, while the middle node represents the two letters separately. The lower brown nodes represent the positions of the surfaces that make up the text, while the blue nodes represent the actual geometry.

   Swap the Dag node position

5. Click with the left mouse button on the left most view icon in the SBD title bar . This moves the position of the DAG node in the SBD window.
6. Next, click using the right mouse button to move it back.

   Dolly in the SBD window

7. Click-drag on the Dolly icon in the SBD title bar to dolly into the SBD window. Dolly in until you see the text on the dag nodes. Use the Track icon so you can see the sphere dag nodes.

   Pick Objects in the SBD view

8. With Pick Object still selected, click-drag a pick box around two of the sphere nodes with the left mouse button. In the modeling views, the spheres and the 3D text are now picked.

   

9. This time, click-drag a pick box around the two sphere nodes with the middle mouse button. The two objects are picked and the text is unpicked.

   Tip: Many of the same rules that apply for picking objects in the modeling views apply to picking in the SBD view.

10. In the SBD view, click-drag on the track icon to return to the text hierarchy.
11. With Pick Object still selected, click on the node named D with the middle mouse button to pick it alone. In the Perspective window you see that you've picked the letter D separately from the number N3.

    

    Tip: Sometimes you want to work with the pieces of a dag. You can do this in the SBD window using Pick Object or in the modeling views with Pick Component.

    Compress and Expand the node

12. With Pick Object still selected, click on the top node of the text. Since an upper and a lower dag node cannot be picked at the same time, D is unpicked in favor of the N3DText node.
13. From the Object Display menu, select Compress SBD to compress the node into a single icon. This command simplifies your SBD view.

    

14. From the Object Display menu, select Expand SBD to open the lower nodes.

    Dolly out to see more objects

15. Click-drag to the left on the Dolly icon to see more nodes in the SBD window. These nodes represent all entities in the scene. Close the SBD window.

    

16. With Pick Object selected, click in open space with the middle mouse button to pick nothing.

Display Options

The models are currently being displayed as wireframes. Although wireframe models give you visual information about the shape of an object, the wire lines may not let you edit the parts of those objects or see the shapes as they react to light. Alias has various Display options to give you greater control.

Open up the control option window

1. From the ObjectDisplay menu, select Control -. In the Control window, set the Scope to ALL and click the All On button.

   

   Click Go. Now all the objects in the scene display Key Points, Hulls, Edit Points, CVs, and Poly Normals. You will learn what these controls are in upcoming lessons as you use them to edit the surfaces of objects.

   

2. In the Control window, click All Off then click Go. The controls have now been turned off.

   Under Scope, you can set the controls for New Curves, Surfaces and Polygons. The default settings give you controls where they are needed but you will often need to change these settings during a project, depending on how you work.

3. Click the close box to close the Control Window.

   Turn on toggle shade view mode

4. From the DisplayTgls menu, select Shade. After a moment, all four view windows show shaded views of the geometry.

   

5. Use the Tumble view icon to see how the shaded mode works when making view changes. You can model in a shaded view and you can make view changes.
6. From the DisplayTgls menu, select Shade to turn it off.

   Note: In the Shade option box, you can choose to shade only one view window at a time or only the active object. Together, the speed of your machine and the amount of geometry in your model will determine whether or not Shade should be used.

The Multi-lister

The Multi-lister is where shaders and lights are displayed. You will learn about this powerful feature in a later lesson. For now, you can open it and view the shaders and lights as they are shown in this window.

Display the Shader lister

1. From the Windows menu, select Multi-lister Shaders... to open the Multi-lister.

   Shaders are visual representations of material attributes that can be assigned to objects in your scene. Shaders for this model have already been created for all the different pieces of the scene. These shaders will be applied to your objects when the scene is rendered. You will learn more about shaders in upcoming lessons of this book.

   

2. Close the Multi-lister window.

   Display a rendering of the scene

3. From the File menu, select Show Pix. In the File lister, click on the file named L01_RayTrace and click on the Show button.

   The image is a final RayTraced image of the scene that combines the geometry, lights and shaders. You will learn more about rendering in upcoming lessons.

   

4. To close this window, click-drag on the menu icon at the upper left of the window and select Quit. You can also click on the image to close it.

Exiting Alias

You have now seen the basics of the Alias User Interface. You will now learn how to exit from Alias.

Deleting the shelf

1. Click-drag with the middle mouse button on the Lesson_One shelf tab. Drag the black name box onto the Trash can icon. This shelf section is removed from the tool shelf.

   Exit Alias

2. From the File menu, select Exit to leave Alias. Click Yes to the prompt Do you really want to quit?.

   Note: If you had wanted to keep the file, you would have needed to save it. You will learn how to do this in the next lesson.

Conclusion

You have now completed your first lesson. In this lesson you have learned how to:

• launch Alias
• find and use tools and menu functions
• set up and customize the Tool Shelf
• work with marking menus and hot keys
• open and import files
• work with view windows
• change views in view windows
• pick objects
• open and work with the SBD window
• change display options