By Adam Lavine, President & CEO, Specular International
Welcome to the world of Infini-D!
We designed Infini-D to be both powerful and easy to use, because we believe that technology is not useful unless it is accessible. While not everything in Infini-D is completely obvious, almost everything is intuitive. The tools, buttons, icons and general environment make sense. When you've done something once, you'll remember how to do it the next time.
The most important thing to do when first working with Infini-D is to explore. Click and double click on anything that looks interesting. Hold down the modifier keys (option, control, command) to see if anything new happens. Almost everything in Infini-D is "undo-able." The more you explore Infini-D, the more amazing secrets you will find inside the software. The Infini-D environment is very deep and rich, and only through exploring will you begin to discover everything it can do. I was one of Infini-D's first engineers, and I'm still learning new things the software can do!
With that in mind, here are my 10 favorite beginning Infini-D tips:
1) Hold down the option key when dragging objects to copy them.
A surprising amount of "power" Infini-D users do not know this simple trick. If you hold down the option key when moving an object in one of Infini-D's views, it will make a duplicate of that object. This works for the scale and rotate tools as well, and works for lights and cameras.
2) Hold down the shift key when moving or rotating objects.
Holding down the shift key constrains the rotation or movement to that face of the object. This is very useful, especially in rotation.
3) Hold down the control key when moving objects to change the centerpoint.
Holding down the control key will move an object's centerpoint. This is useful for objects that revolve around a parent object (like moons orbiting a planet.) You can also do this to cameras - this makes it easy to have a camera always point at a location in the world.
4) Subscribe to Illustrator or FreeHand EPS files.
This is more of a feature, but it is so incredibly useful that I must include it in this list. You need System 7 to do this: publish a file from Illustrator or FreeHand. Then, place down an extrude or lathe object, double-click on it, and select "Subscribe To..." under the Edit menu.
5) Useful Workshop tips:
• Double-clicking on the eraser tool erases all points.
• Double-clicking on the circle tool allows you to change the number of points on a circle.
• Double-clicking on the hand tool re-centers your view.
• Double-clicking on the magnifying glass tool brings you back to your default magnification.
• Holding down the command key while drawing toggles between adding points to the existing outline or drawing new objects.
• Holding down the command key with the arrow selected adds new points to an outline.
6) The space key toggles between the currently selected tool and the arrow tool.
This is especially useful when linking objects, because you have to switch between the linking tool and the arrow tool.
7) Holding down the command key with the arrow tool gives you a pop-up menu of all objects under your mouse. This is very useful when you have more than one object occupying the same space.
8) Useful Sequencer tips:
• Holding down the option key when dragging Eventmarks duplicates the Events. (This works for multiple Events).
• Holding down the command key on multiple Events uniformly "stretches" the timing of those events.
• You can link objects in the Sequencer. To do this, select the object's name in the Sequencer, then drag onto the name of the object you want to link it to.
• Dragging the time marker lets you see previews of your animation in real-time!
9) "Use Parent's Surface" saves a lot of time.
When making objects with child objects, such as the legs of the table, using "Use Parent's Surface" for the child objects can save a lot of time. This way, when you change the parent object, all of the children's surfaces change at the same time. By the way, for procedural surfaces such as marbles and woods, this will make the child object look like it was carved out of the same block of material as it's parent.
10) Use black fog to create depth-of-field effects.
This one is not exactly a beginner tip, but it's a great effect. Go to the "Environment" dialog box and check the "Fog" box. By keeping the background color black, you will create the illusion that light drops off towards the back of your scene. By changing the Visibility, you can alter how dramatic your the effect is.
There are my favorite 10 tips for Infini-D. We'll be posting more advanced tips here soon. We hope you continue to enjoy Infini-D!
