LAB REPORT WEEK 4: Blender’s Actuators – A Deeper Look

Objective: My goal was to provide a more detailed analysis of the actuators in Blender in the length of a single class.

Materials:

• Blender

Methods:

• Open Blender
• Open the Logic Editor
• Test each of the actuators

Results:

• Visibility: makes things visible or invisible
  • Visibility check box: (checked) visible OR (unchecked) invisible
  • Occlusion check box: unknown, texts nonspecific
  • Children check box: (checked) affects children of object as well OR (unchecked) affects only this object
• State: changes the object’s state(?)
  • Operation dropdown menu
    • Set State
    • Add State
    • Remove State
    • Change State
  • Three 5×2 celled rectangles
    • stores the various states
• Sound
  • Plays a sound selected by using the OPEN button
• Steering
  • Moves the object using AI
  • Behavior dropdown menu
    • Seek: Actuator object seeks the object set in Target Object
    • Flee: Actuator object flees the object set in Target Object
    • Path Following: Actuator object follows the path of Navigation Mesh in theory
  • Target Object: affects how the different behaviors work
  • Navigation Mesh: object chosen must have a physics type of navigaton mesh
  • Distance: distance at which the actuator object must be from the target object to stop its behavior
  • Velocity: actuator object’s velocity
  • Turn Speed: max speed at which the actuator object can turn
  • Facing Check Box: (checked) automatically faces the target object OR (unchecked) does not automatically face the target object
  • Self Terminated Check Box: (checked) stops the actuator upon reaching the target OR (unchecked) continues the behavior
  • Axis dropdown menu (X,Y,Z,-X,-Y,-Z): the axis used for automatically turning the actuator object [DOES NOT WORK WITHOUT FACING CHECK BOX CHECKED]
  • Visualize: Debug mode
• Scene
  • Affects various parts of the scene in various ways
  • Mode dropdown menu
    • Restart: starts the scene from the beginning
    • Set Scene: sets the current scene
    • Set Camera: sets the camera for viewing from
    • Add Overlay Scene: adds a scene for overlay
    • Add Background Scene: adds a scene for background
    • Remove Scene: removes the current scene
    • Suspend Scene: pauses the current scene
    • Resume Scene: unpauses the current scene

Discussion: This lab, while not complete or all-encompassing, spanned the length of the class. I did not get to go more in depth with the actuators, nor did I get to list them all. I need to get a better control of time management, which is now painfully apparent.