The challenge: Insert an object, and move it from one location to another, using two key frames. The purpose of this challenge is to practice the basics of setting up an animation scene. Here's what I did in Carrara. I don't know how much RDS differs, hopefully one of you will tell the rest of us! 1. Create a new scene, and insert a cube. 2. In the properties tray, use the Motion/Transform options to position the cube at 10,-10, 2.5. 3. I opened up the Sequencer tray at the bottom of the screen. 4. I select the cube from the hierarchy list. 5. I drug the scrubber (that little arrow on the middle bar at the top of the tray) to the end. 6. I clicked the key icon at the left of the tray to make this a key frame. 7. Then, back in the properties tray, I changed the X position to -10 and the Y position to 10. 8. You can test the animation by dragging the scrubber back and forth. When I tried it, the cube moveded back and forth. Yay! 9. Finally, in the Render Room I set the output setting to a 240 x 180 Sequenced Gif (I could get the Animated Gif to work right -- help, anyone?). 10. I used a bit of freeware (UnFREEz from download.com) to combine the sequenced gifs into the animated gif above.

You're a genius, Terri! In RDS we don't have all those trays. But I think it's pretty much the same. I built the ball and the floor. Started at frame 1 with the ball upright and toward the back of the floor. I jumped to the end of the animation and moved the ball forward. I also rolled it using the properties tab. Then press play and viola! it moves. The camera move was achieved by adding a point-at behavior and aiming the camera at the ball. Thanks for the tip on UnFREEz. It's simple and it works, and it's FREE!

The roll is a nice touch, as is the camera pan. I think next I'm going to play with the tweener properties, and see if I can do a "slow in", so the box looks like is skidding, then stopping (slowing down to due to friction). Maybe a bit of rotate. And then I'm going to try the "duplicate with symmetry" in the sequencer tray, so see if I can get it to slide back. Perhaps I should follow your lead and add a floor, that really seems to make your animation look a lot more solid. Or maybe it was the textures. For some reason, although Animated Gif is an available selection, I got a message about it being "write only", and it didn't want to save. Luckily, download.com came to the rescue (it's the first place I look for freeware) with UnFREEz. Not a fancy program, but it did the trick, and it was not a very large program.

Here's my anim . Watch out, it's 500ko ! Two keyframes, but i used a trick : i've put an oscilate tweener, with some dampening, in the z position of the sphere . I've used some motion blur, too . For saving, i've rendered in animated gif, and Carrara saved it in the "Metatemp" directory . Weird ! I hope this bug will be corrected in the patch : i've lost an hour just to figure out how to render the gif file ... litst

I was going to do some bounce, but couldn't figure out how to do it with one keyframe.... Nice -- looks like slow motion.... This is fun! Good idea, Terri!

Here's the cube again, this time with textures, and a bit of rotation. I also changed the tweener from linear to velocity, and then edited that until I got the skid-to-a-stop effect I wanted. Then, just for grins, I moved the hot point off-center so that the motion would be in an arc. Thanks, litst, for the tip about animated gifs. Pretty weird, but, hey, it works.