3D Animation in Mama

Animation in Mama is implemented by causing objects on the stage to move around. Object can move, roll, turn. These operations have a duration of certain time, which determines the speed of the movement. Objects can move simultaneously, and moreover, an object can make number of movements simultaneously, which results in a real world object movement simulation.

The 3D space in Mama is always defined in terms of the object in question, and by 3 axes:



An object can move along each of the axes:



The standard method move() is responsible for movement along each of the axes: (1) forward-backward on the blue axis, (2) left-right on the purple axis and (3) upward-downward on the green axis.

An object can also turn or roll with relation to each of the axes:



To make a turn, there are 2 standard methods:

• roll() - this method does turn with regard to the forward axis of the object, i.e. the blue axis
• turn() - this method does turn with regard to the purple axis (upward-downward, figure 2) and with regard to the green axis (left-right, figure 3).

As we can see, an object can move along 3 axes and turn with regard to 3 axes, thus it has 6 degrees of freedom.

Animation of a complex object

Often objects are composed of sub parts, and when the object move or turn, its sub parts move and turn with it. Actually, when given a movement instruction, the object's center point is implementing the instruction. In stage-setting mode, the right window displays a control to select whether to move sub parts with the object (default) or separately.

Click here for the basic animation guide in Mama.