Moving Flat Targets
- David Organista (Unlicensed)
- David Avgikos
Once an object is loaded from the library and into the viewport, you can position it exactly where you want it to be. You can move its location around the viewport, rotate it, and scale it up or down. Additionally, you can make its movements automatic as your object goes from point A to point B in the viewport. We will use flat targets to manipulate its position and make it move on its own.
Loading a Flat Target
In the Side Panel, from the library, open the “Flat Targets” folder, open the B-21 folder, and finally, drag and drop the B-21 X target into the viewport.
Positioning the Target
You can move, rotate, and scale objects in the viewport using the transform controls in the Toolbar. To move the target, left-click the move transform icon (shown as four arrows). Once activated, the icon will turn blue and the move transform control will appear on the currently selected object.
The move control can move an object along a single axis (front-to-back, side-to-side, or up-and-down) using the arrows or along two axes (for example front-to-back and side-to-side) using the planar controls.
With the target selected, click and hold the blue arrow pointing upward (the arrow will turn yellow when selected). Drag the arrow to raise the target above the ground a few feet and release the mouse button.
Now move the target left and right using the green arrow.
Try clicking and dragging the blue plane between the red and green arrows. This will allow you to move in two directions at once. In this case, front-to-back and side-to-side.
Use the transform control to position the target to the left side of the screen as shown below.
Automating Movement
You can also give your objects automatic movements across 2 or more different positions in the viewport. We will make our flat target go from the left side of the viewport onto the right side and finally, back to the left (Ping pong).
Make sure the flat target is selected, click on the “Motion” button within the tool bar (under the viewport and side panel). This will make a red ball appear on the selected target, a white path coming from the red ball, and a white cross at the end of the path as shown below.
To add a Waypoint (new position), click on the white cross at the end of the path. Move backwards (“S” key/down-scroll) if you need to see the target on its new position within frame. By default. all objects start with 1 waypoint and adding a waypoint will create a 2nd waypoint.
Before we can automate the left-to-right movement, make sure the new position, Waypoint 2, is selected, then click and drag the green move control arrow towards the right to move the target to the right.
You can toggle between waypoints by clicking on the waypoint arrow found within the control panel.
To make the target face the viewer, click on “Path Follow” in the control panel to turn it off (Default is on).
While having waypoint 2 selected, click and drag the red move control arrow to manually move the target backwards, roughly to the right of Waypoint 1, now represented by the white ball.
You can also adjust the time it takes the target to move from the first waypoint to the next. By default, it takes 3 seconds for an object to travel from the first to the next waypoint.
Since we are going to use a ping pong movement, we can expect the target to take 3 seconds going from left to right, and another 3 seconds going back to the left.
Finally, to make the left-to-right movement automatic, click on “Path Behavior” within the control panel and then click on “Once Ping Pong” to automatize the left-to-right-to-left movement once.
To preview the automatic movement in real time, click on the “Preview” button in the Tool Bar and click on “Selected Object”.
The preview will be displayed on the viewport in real time. Click on the “Stop Preview” at any time to cancel the preview.
Try adding different waypoints and adjusting their positions using the transform controls.