Adding Auto-Rotation to a Single Node

This tutorial demonstrates how to add Auto-Rotation to a single movie.

Introduction

While CubicConnector is normally used to link several nodes together into a tour, it can also be used to add functionality to a single node, for example, adding an Auto-Rotate sprite track.

Step 1 - Import a movie

Drag a QuickTime VR movie into the Layout area.

Step 2 - Move straight to the Movie area

As we will not be adding any hotspots or connections, we can skip these steps. Click the "Movie" tab to move to the movie control area.

(You can click "Assemble/Update Movie" to preview the movie now or after the next step.)

Step 3 - Turn on Auto-Rotate

Click the "Auto-Rotate" checkbox on the left to enable auto-rotation.

(If you didn't click the "Assemble Movie" button before, click it now to see the movie start turning.)

Step 4 - Change the type of rotation (optional)

By default, the movie will start to rotate to the left as soon as it is opened and continue to rotate. If you like, you can use the Type popup menu to change it to only rotate before the user starts manually panning, or to have the movie open statically and then start to rotate after a few seconds.

When a new choice is made from this popup, the movie will update and reset to show the effect of the new behavior.

Step 5 - Choose the speed of rotation (optional)

You can also alter the speed at which the movie rotates. By default the rotation speed is 4. (This can be changed in the Preferences.)

To select a new speed, simply choose it from the popup menu.

Note: when showing movies full-screen, slower rotation speeds may give a better result.

Step 6 - Export the node

With the rotation in place, you can now export the movie. If you are going to use the movie in a web page, choose "Export Single-Nodes..." as this will maintain any FastStart or preview information that may be in the movie.

Alternatively, using "Export Movie..." will treat it as a multinode movie (with one node) for playing back from hard drive or a Director project, etc.

Choose a location for the folder and an HTML template if required, then click Save to export the movie with its rotation track.

This ends the tutorial.

Watch Movie of Tutorial Being Performed  [0:36]

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