What's new in the 1.1.0 version (March 1st, 2006):
The version 1.1.0 is a free upgrade.
More free upgrades will be released along the year including the universal binary one.

  • Infinite Sliders
We created our own infinite sliders to let you quickly set any value just by dragging the mouse.
Drag the slider to left or right to change the value using a 1 unit step.
Drag the slider holding down the Option key to change the value using a 0.1 unit step.
Drag the slider holding down the Control key to change the value using a 10 units step.
Drag the slider holding down the Command key to snap to a 10 units grid.
Double click the slider to enter the zero value.
Double click holding down the Shift key to enter the zero value to X, Y and Z values.
  • Steppers
The steppers allow to increase the value to 1 point.
Hold down the Option key to increase the value to 0.1 point.
Hold down the Control key to increase the value to 10 points.
  • Resize Proportionally Locks
Activate a lock and get that size change proportionally with the other locked sizes.


  • Anchor Points
As you can see below, we have added the Anchor point fields, sliders, steppers and key frames. The version 1.0.0 has these 3 points fixed to the center of the object (50% of the width, 50% of the height, 50% of the depth), thus when you resize an object, the sizes grow to both the sides of the object, while the anchor point (center) of the object remains on the same position. This could be good in some conditions.
But think about you need to animate a chart and you want that the chart base remains fixed to the ground when the chart changes its height. If you want this, now, you can set the Y Anchor Point to 0% (zero % of the Y side, the height), so when you increase the Y size, the chart grows to the top only, while its Y anchor point remains at the same position, as shown in the picture here below aside.
Here aside we set the anchor points x, y, z, to 0%, so the bottom/left/back corner is placed to the positions 0, 0, 0 chosen. Now if you change the height, the object will grow to the top side only. If you change the widht, the object will grow to the right side only. If you change the depth, the object will grow to the front side only. This feature can be applied on any object, e.g. a 2DText box with X Anchor Point = 0%, so you can quite align to the left side and resize several text objects with different width. The alignment feature will come soon.
  • Multiple Duplication
You can select a sprite then call the menu "Sprite:Duplicate Multiple" to duplicate an object in series using an offset on translations, rotations, sizes... Kinemac will quickly create, in one click only, e.g. 12 beams of a clock just setting total sprites = 12, delta rotation Z = 30.
In the Delay tab you can also apply a delay to each curve animating the object duplicated such a way to create e.g. a "train of stars" moving together. Click on the images here aside to see the movies.
  • Automatic Charts
You can quickly create an animated Chart by dragging a ".txt" Tab-Text file like the one here below (created by Excel).

Kinemac automatically creates and animates a chart like the one here aside (see the movie). The 7 bars represent the rows of the table values.
Kinemac will automatically animate the bars, month by month, changing their hight, and showing the relative month label.
You can set the bars to cubes, cilynders, tubes, your own extruded shapes...
You can apply any color, image or movie texture to the objects.
You can show/hide/move/rearrange the labels in several ways...
  • Paste Sprite Values Options
When pasting the sprite values (with the pop-up menu in the Sprite window) now you will be shown a dialog asking which parameters you want to paste to the selected sprite. It's very useful when you copy the sprite values from a sprite and you want to paste just the animation and not the size or fading or other paramters to a destination sprite. This way you can tranfer e.g. an animation from a cube to e.g. a cylinder keeping size and other parameters.
  • Sprite Lights
With Kinemac you can create movable sprite lights and set keyframes to the source position, the target position, the ambient, diffuse and specular colors, the spot angle and the focus. This means that you can vary all of these light parameters while the animation is playing, as shown in the movie here aside. You can also download the original animation file and open and play it with Kinemac.

In order to move the light you have to keyframe its source positions and/or its target positions. You can also put the light sprite within a folder sprite then animate the folder sprite. This last option is useful when you have to move the light together with other objects, e.g. a 3D spotlight. In this case the light source positions should be set all to e.g. zero, and the target positions should be set to X = 0, Y = 0, Z any positive value.
1) With Kinemac 1.0.0


2) With Kinemac 1.0.1 you can resize a viewport of a sprite camera (here you see the green bounding box and the camera icon because the camera sprite is selected)

3) With Kinemac 1.0.1. Here the camera sprite is not selected. Also we have moved the wieport of the camera a little bit down than the previous picture and we have rotated the logo a little bit.

  • Custom camera viewport
With Kinemac 1.0.0 you were able to create cameras with fixed viewport frame (equal to the Stage window frame) and fixed point of view placed in the center of the Stage. Therefore putting e.g. a spinning logo to the low-right corner of the Stage resulted in a deformed perspective (not central as an user could like to get - see picture 1 here aside).

With Kinemac 1.0.1 (see picture 2 and 3 here aside) you will be able to place the camera viewport origin to any point of the Stage and to resize the camera viewport frame as your wish. This way you can easily get a central perspective of your objects in any point of the Stage.

Also you can set a border and a border-color to the viewport frame. You can use both positive and negative values of border to get a border outside or inside the frame.

a) The GroupA is selected.


b) The GroupB is selected.


b) The RedCube is selected.
   • Select objects and sub-objects
With Kinemac 1.0.1 you can select any object on the Stage window easier than the previous version. You can now select either the object clicked and any of its parent folders. In the sample here below, the object RedCube is nested within the hierarchy: GroupA/GroupB/RedCube

Direct Selection:
On the Stage window, you can quickly select the RedCube object clicking on it holding down the Option key. This way you will always select the clicked object.

Hierarchical Selection:
a) On the Stage window, click on the RedCube object to select the GroupA.
b) When the GroupA is selected (blue borders) you can double click on the object RedCube to select the GroupB.
c) When the GroupB is selected you can double click on the object RedCube to select the RedCube.

Permanent Selection:
Unlikewise the previous version, the selection of objects nested within a group is now permanent. This means that if you select a nested object (e.g. holding down the Option key), then release the mouse button to e.g. change its size in the Inspector panel, you can quite go back to the Stage and drag it without the need to select it again holding down the Option key or walking through the hierarchy.

Deselect:
Press the Escape key or click on the Stage background.

Group Bounding Box:
More than in the previous version, now when you select a sprite group, you will see a dynamic blue bounding box. The selection color of a group is always blue to let you understand that the object selected is a group therefore you can double click on it to select the next object in the group hierarchy.
  • 3D Bezier Paths
With Kinemac 1.0.1 you can create 3D Bezier paths and link any path to any camera (eye or target) on the Stage. The result is that the camera moves smoothly and without discontinuity along that path. See the movie.
• Improved the rendering speed when running in Full Screen.
• Added a "Selection Color" well in the Preferences panel to let you change the color of the bounding box of the selected object in the Stage window.
• Added the Global Ambient Color in the Static Lights panel.
• Added the Focal Lens Key Frame to the Sprite Cameras Panel. Now you can assign key frames to this parameter and change the focal lenght of a camera dinamically, while the animation is playing, to zoom the scene without moving the point of view.
• Added the hot-key "g" to the Stage window to toggle the grid on/off.
• The Inspector panel now reports the name and icon of the selected sprite.
• The Export Movie dialog now properly remembers the last folder you saved the previous movie to. Also it remembers the last "Frame Per Second" value.
• The Export Frame dialog now properly remembers the last folder you saved the previous frames to. Also it remembers the Frame Rate, the Image Format and the From Frame - To Frame values.
• Fixed a bug when changing the End Sprite (field) in the Inspector:Geometry panel and the Start Sprite was different than zero.
• Fixed a bug when deleting a sprite. In the previous version Kinemac didn't really select the next available sprite in the sprite list.
• Fixed a bug when duplicating a sprite with textures.
• Addressed the issue when resizing a pie width and the internal radius is different than zero.
• Addressed the issue when fading the volume of a sprite using QT 7.0.4.
• Addressed the issue when panning the Top View along the X axis.
• The toolbar of the Stage window now shows a sorted buttons list with separator, flexible space...
• When you paste a sprite while a sprite group is selected and expanded, Kinemac will paste the sprite within the sprite group, at the last position.
• Other fixes and improvements.

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