CompuServe Messages

<<The inserted animation track is not at the same scale as the mesh receiving it. When I change the scale of the mesh receiving the animaiton track, it makes no difference. The inserted track (path) is equally out of proportion with the mesh receiving the animation track, as if I hadn't re-scaled the mesh in the first place.>> When you scale it doesn't change the scale of the path on which it will move. The path defines distances along which the object will move. The scale defines the size of the object as it moves along the path. They are independent of each other. Unfortunately you can't scale a path directly in the Keyframer. The way to have the path itself scaled when you use File Insert is to do the following. For example I want to reduce the path length by 2, i.e. 50% it's original size: 1) Save the mesh and it's path to a file ORIGIN.3DS. 2) Set Drawing Units to Unit = 2. This effectively halves the size of all units used in the file. 3) Load ORIGIN.3DS. You'll see using Track Info that the path is now half it's original size. 4) Set the Drawing Units back to Unit = 1. Save the file as SCALED.3DS. The file SCALES.3DS now contains your object and it's path scaled by 50%. You can now load ORIGIN.3DS or any other file and merge the object and it's path will be at the smaller scale that you wanted. To calculate the Drawing Units setting just do this. If you want to create a path twice as long, i.e. x2 then use the inverse of this number in the Drawing Units, i.e. 1/2. eg. x300% = 1/3 = 0.33, x50% = 1/0.5 = 2, etc. DaviD "sleep three inches above my bed" GouID