and each button inside each menu,
so that you know what it is for.
 | This is the MAIN menu for the zF A.
What the buttons are: "Record" will save everything about the current state of the prim. Rotation, position, texture image, texture offset, (etc everything), shape (cube sphere torus etc) Sculpt (sculpt shape etc) color, transparancy. All recorded even if you do not wish to use this, you will have the option to include such things in your animation now or later via the "Rec Setting" (Recording Settings) button. "Help" Should send you here! (It will in the next update!) "Rec Setting" Will take you to the Recoring Settings Menu. "Popup On" Will enable this menu to POP UP and open every time you click Record or say "Pos 0" or any other Pos #. "More": This will take you to the "More" menu. "Finalize" Use this After you are done recording your animation, This will IM you a URL link to a web page just for this prim. You will then be able to add or remove recording settings (Scale/Shape/Position/Rotation/Color/Alpha Transparency/ and or make your animation Attachment Friendly. You will then COPY this code from the webpage into the very same prim that you clicked to get the link to the web page. You will copy paste a different script for each prim you wish to animate. If you are using the "Attachment ok Method" it will give you TWO scripts per prim to copy/paste into that prim, for each prim you are animating. |
  | This is the "Recording Settings" menu. "Sound I/O": This turns on or off the sound effects such as the "Confirmed" voice you hear in the animation creating process. This is not part of your final resulting animation. "AutoKill I/O": This turns on or off the Auto Kill function, which is to automatically remove this script from the prim you are animating after you hit "Finalize" and it has finished IMing you the script(s). This is ON by default. "Shape I/O": This turns on or off the test Playback (via "test 0", "test 1" etc) and Animation scripting of changing shapes or sculpted prims in your animation. This does record everything. Shape (Cube Torus, sphere, cylinder, ring, etc), Sculpt type, Sculpt shape, sculpt stiching type, hollow, hollow shape, trim, path cut, profile cut, taper, sheer, twist, dimple, hole size, radius, revolutions, Every parameter for every shape, including the shape. "Texture I/O": Turns on or off the test Playback (via "test 0", "Test 1" etc) and animation scripting of Textures. This records each and every side of the, texture rotation, texture offset, texture scale, and even the texture itself... for each and every side, of each and every prim your animating, independently. "Color I/O": Turns on or off the test Playback (via "test 0", "Test 1" etc) and animation scripting of Colors for prims. "Alpha I/O": Turns on or off the test Playback (via "test 0", "Test 1" etc) and animation scripting of Alpha aka Transparency for prims in your animation. "Scale I/O": Turns on or off the test Playback (via "test 0", "Test 1" etc) and animation scripting of Scale. This is for having your shape size change, scale up or down during your animation. If you have this feature ON, and also rescale your animation after the fact, outside of the animation doing so itself, it may effect the animation in a negative way, putting things slightly off. However it does try very hard to rescale proportionately to the size of the rest of the object. I am working on this and in the mean time, if you are changing scale in your animation you may want to save a copy of your animated object before you rescale the whole thing. "4 all scripts": A Function to transfer ALL of these on/off settings into ALL of the other prims attached to this one that also have the zFire Animator script inside. So you can set them one time, and save these settings for all prims of your animation. A very useful function. "main menu": Takes you back to the main menu. |
 | This is the "MORE"(options) menu. "Copy into All": Will copy this script into all other attached prims. I recommend that you detach the prims you do not need to animate right now, so that they do not also have this script copied into them. "origonal txt": If you use the "Alpha txt" button, will restore the texture of this prim. "alpha txt": Will change the texture of this prim into a 100% transparent texture, to easily make it invisible for you. "sub-mini-ize": Will shrink this prim down to the scale of <0.01,0.01,0.01> if for some reason you want to hide it by size. "un-sub-mini": Will restore the size/scale of this prim to exactly what it was before you used the "sub-mini-ize" button. However this can only restore up to the scale of <10,10,10>. So if it was a mega prim, it can only be as large as 10^3 now. That is an SL limitation. "Keywords": Takes you to the "Keywords" menu. "reset": Resets this script, all recorded frames, all Record Settings, all keywords, back to default. "main menu": Takes you back to the main menu. |
  | This is the "Keywords" menu. "keywords" Keywords are the different names for each frame of your animation set. This system uses keywords to trigger your animation. By default they are "p0","p1", etc. If you want a set of prims to work together they share the same keywords. If you want completly different animations, such as one animation routine for a fish swimming, another set for the fish jumping, and yet another for the fish eatting, you would most likely use different keywords for the different animation sets. Swimming might be a keyword set like "p#" (aka p0,p1,p2,p3), jumping "j#" and eatting "e3". I used p# and not s# just because I am lazy and that was the default. But "S" might work better being the first letter of swimming, just for your own ease of remembering what that was for later, if you are to dig that deep. "Finalize" Use this After you are done recording your animation, and have selected any options from Rec Settings such as using shape, texture, or scale etc in your animation. This will Instant message you the script for your animation. If you are using the "Fastest Method" it will IM you one script per prim to copy/paste into a blank script, into that prim, for each prim you are animating. If you are using the "Attachment ok Method" it will IM you TWO scripts per prim to copy/paste into that prim, for each prim you are animating. "4 all scripts": A Function to transfer ALL of these on/off settings into ALL of the other prims attached to this one that also have the zFire Animator script inside. So you can set them one time, and save these settings for all prims of your animation. A very useful function. "Done": Closes this menu. "main menu": Takes you back to the main menu. "More": This will take you to the "More" menu. |
 | This is the "Test Position" menu. "Test Position" To test your animation before you finalize it, you can say "test 0" to jump to recorded frame 0, "Test 1" to jump to recorded frame 1, etc. If you Changed shape, scale, texture, color, transparency or more than just position or rotation, you will need to go to "Rec Setting" under the main menu, to turn on those features for testing playback or having the animator code those into your finalized script. This is also a great way to see how everything looks and if you need to RE-record over one of the frames..for example frame 5 looked bad and you don't like how you had it rotated when you recorded it, but frame 0-4 and 6-9 look great, and you do not want to redo everything: Just say "Test 5" if you want it to jump to where frame 5 is, just to look at it, and then move the prims around (rescale or anything else you like) and regardless of you using the test positioning or not, you can just say "pos 5" to RE-record just frame 5. Clearly "pos #" is how you go about recording specific frames. =) "main menu": Takes you back to the main menu. "More": This will take you to the "More" menu. |
 | This is the "4 all scripts" menu. This menu is to confirm your intention to copy all of your settings into all of the other prims if it seems like perhaps you might need the heads up. "Proceed": This will proceed to copy all of your Record Settings into all aother zF Anim scripts in all other linked prims. "main menu": Takes you back to the main menu. "Rec Setting" Will take you to the Recoring Settings Menu. |
