1. The Alice Scene Editor

2. The Alice Virtual World

3. A 3D Virtual Environment
An Alice world is a virtual environment created in 3 dimensions (3D).
The 3D world is a representation of a place (environment) and the objects in that place that have height, width, and depth
A 2D image of a tea party
A tea party in the Alice virtual environment

4. Core Components of an Alice Scene
Alice Virtual Environments or Scenes will always contain:
Sky color and Fog Settings
a ground surface or (which may be textured to represent grass, sand, rocks, or even water)
a single camera that can be moved around the scene
A range of objects can be added

5. The Alice Scene Editor
An Overview

6. Scene Templates
Blank Slates: Empty worlds with pre set ground textures, sky colors and fog settings to mimic different settings
Starter World: Environment containing a range of prop objects pre built to a specific theme
When Alice starts, or File -> New is selected, Alice presents this Dialog Box that allows you to create a blank template for creating a scene (top), or a set of pre-built (more complex) starter worlds for creating new projects. There are other tabs for opening worlds that have already been created.

7. Scene Editor Access
The Scene is visible in the Camera View in the top left of the code editor
Toggles from Code Editor to Scene Editor by clicking the scene editor button
Alice has two editors, the Code Editor, shown here, and the Scene Editor. When Alice starts or opens a project, it will always open in the Code Editor. The Setup Scene button here will open the Alice Scene Editor. In the Code Editor, there is a button that will bring you back to the Code Editor.
If we want can make the point that objects can’t be added through code in Alice so any object you want to use needs to be added in the scene editor
See the lesson on writing code in Alice, the Alice Overview materials, the Code Editor Overview, or the Scene Editor Overview.

8. Scene Editor Overview The scene editor is composed of the: Camera View
Properties Panel
Gallery
Alice contains a set of predefined 3D classes from which models for use in animations are built.

9. What is an Alice 3D Object?

10. Alice Objects 3D models that represent: Characters and Vehicles
People
Animals
Planes
Props and Construction Pieces
Trees
Furniture
Castle Walls
All Alice objects are –elf-centric – in other words, when they move, turn, or roll in a direction, it is based on their orientation, not the viewpoint of the camera or the user.

11. Object Orientation
The white axis points forward, red to the right, green up, blue backward
Objects can move in 6 directions
Up / Down
Left / Right
Forward / Backward
Object can turn in 2 Directions
Objects can Roll in 2 directions
All Alice objects are –self-centric – in other words, when they move, turn, or roll in a direction, it is based on their orientation, not the viewpoint of the camera or the user.

12. Pivot Points
Every object has a pivot point around which it turns and rotates.
The pivot point of an object is different for all objects but is generally at the point the object intersects with the ground 12

13. Internal Joints
Objects usually (not always) have internal joints or skeletons that control subparts of the model. A joint connects the subpart of the body to the rest of the body Joints have a different orientation than the whole object which determines how roll and turn will control them The white axis points forward, red to the right, green up, blue backward 13

14. The Gallery
The Gallery contains the definitions of 3D models for adding objects to a scene.
Each tab displays a different organizational scheme for finding classes in the gallery

15. What is a Class? In Alice, a class defines
A plan for constructing a new object in an Alice scene – how it looks
Actions an object of that class can perform – what it can do

16. Class Hierarchy SubClasses have shared attributes
The skeleton and joints defines how the objects can be animated and impacts the hierarchy at the top
At the bottom of the hierarchy the objects visual appearance is the variation

17. Adding Objects in Alice

18. Add an object to the scene
You can drag and drop or/ double click
Bounding box shows where the object will be positioned when dragging
Double clicked objects will be added at 0,0,0
It is possible to just click on the thumbnail image, and the object will be added to a predefined location in the scene.
It is also possible to copy an object in a scene to create a duplicate by using Alt- mouse click and drag for Windows (Control-mouse click and drag for Mac OS X) an object inthe scene.

19. Naming an Object
Alice provides a default name, but you can enter a different name under the following rules:
All one word, using letters or digits, no spaces
Use camelCase for more than one word, first letter being lowercase.
First letter is letter of the alphabet, no digits
No special characters such as ‘?’
The dialog box will appear whether the thumbnail image is clicked or dragged into the scene. Predefined names are suggestions by Alice. Multiple objects of the same class will be differentiated by numbers at the end of the name (for example queenOfHearts, queenOfHearts2, queenOfHearts3, etc.) unless the user provides more useful names, which we would suggest.
Rule #2, camelCase, is not a rule of the Alice language. camelCase is the convention of writing compound words or phrases with no spaces and an initial lowercase or uppercase letter, with each remaining word element beginning with an uppercase letter:

20. Object tile in object tree Object with default ring handle
Object properties
Whenever an object is added to the scene, the name of that object appears in the object tree, it will generally be the active object in the scene, as shown by the default handle ring which surrounds it in the scene, and that it will be the selected object in the object menu, and its properties will be displayed in the properties panel.

21. Object position Object size
In the object panel, the selected objects x, y, z coordinate location in the scene will be displayed, as well as its size values. The objects position can be changed by manipulating the x (right – left of the object), y (up and down of the object), and z (forward – backward) values, and its size can be changed, almost always proportionally, by changing the width, height, and depth (front to back) values.

22. Positioning an Object in a Scene

23. Position with mouse
You can use the mouse to drag objects around the scene
By default the mouse moves the object on the ground plane and provides a circle around the object that can be used to rotate the objects
You can use the buttons to change the mouse behavior and display different handles for rotation making both roll and turn handles visible, translation to give handles for vertical movement and resize to enable mouse scaling
Fro more details on these options, see the videos on Positioning Objects, Turning Objects, and Scaling Objects.

24. Position with coordinates
For more precise positioning of objects, use the properties panel
Select object name from object menu
Modify the x, y, z values for the objects
Only for moving not for turning or rolling
Clicking and dragging in a 3D environment can be deceiving, particularly when trying to align objects. Using coordinates allow the object to be positioned at a specific location. Understand that the coordinate axes is based on orientation of the Scene (ground). If the camera is looking directly at the center of the ground (0, 0, 0) in other words, the positive x is to the left as seen by the camera, and negative x is to the right as seen by the camera. Positive y is up as seen by the camera, and negative y is down as seen by the camera, positive z is away from the camera, and negative z is toward the camera.

25. Positioning with one-shots
For more precise positioning of objects, use the one-shot menu
Select object name from object menu
Select procedures from one-shot menu
Note: You can also right-click on the object in the Scene.
Clicking and dragging in a 3D environment can be deceiving, particularly when trying to align objects. Selecting a procedure from the one-shots menu gives the user more control in setting up the environment. Also it allows the user to know the relative positions of one object to another when creating animations (to avoid collisions, for example).

26. Manipulating Object Subparts
To access a joint, click on the arrow next to the object’s name in the instance list.
The joint acts as the pivot point for the subpart
Turning and rotating subparts may also turn and rotate other subparts
Turning the left elbow joint will also turn the queen’s forearm, wrist, hand, fingers, etc.

27. The Alice Camera

28. Camera controls There is only one scene camera used in Alice
Different camera views are obtained not by changing to a different camera but by moving the one camera around the scene
The Camera controllers move and turn the camera
Clicking and holding an arrow will manipulate the location of the camera appropriately. Clicking and dragging in the direction of the arrow will speed up the camera movement, and clicking and dragging in between two arrows will combine the camera manipulations.
For more information on Camera Controllers, se the How To video Using Camera Controls to Change Camera Views

29. Camera controls These two controls move the camera forward or backward
This control moves the camera up, down, left or right
These two controls move the camera forward or backward
This control turns the camera forward or backward.
These controls turn the camera to its left or right.
As with any move action in Alice, these arrows change the position of the camera in the scene, but not its orientation

30. What is a Camera Marker
A camera marker is an invisible object that allows you to mark a place for you to reference when wanting to move the camera
It is highly recommended to create a marker when you start a new scene so that if you accidentally move the camera you can return it to the starting place
Add a camera marker in the properties menu
Use the left button to move the cameraa to the selected marker
Use to move the selected marker to the current camera position
It is a good idea to set up a camera marker for the initial camera position when starting to set up a scene. Students will often move the camera around as they are setting up the scene and may get “lost” in the 3D virtual world. This marker serves as a point of reference when this occurs. Markers are also useful for providing more interesting animations with multiple markers providing different viewpoints in the Scene. For more information on Camera Markers, see the How To video, Setting Up and Using Camera Markers

31. Alternative viewpoints
In addition to the active scene camera there are 4 alternative viewpoints
These are not cameras or markers because they can’t be called in the code or accessed in your animations
They are useful when building scenes to help you orient objects to each other
See the How To video Changing and Using Different Camera Views

32. Four Scene Views Top View Side View Front View Layout Scene View
There are camera controllers for each viewpoint. It is also possible to click and drag objects around in the scene view.

33. Important Tips and Tricks

34. Save Often Save the project world every 10 – 20 minutes,
Alice worlds can sometimes become corrupted using a progressive naming convention can help safe guard your world and allow you to load older versions
To do this each time saving the project, use Save As…
name1.a3p, name2.a3p, name3.a3p, etc.
We cannot emphasize how important this is.

35. Undo/Redo
You can always undo or redo work to easily test to see what will happen
Use hotkey command z and command y
Very useful, particularly when the mistake mentioned on the previous slide notes occurs.

36. Return to Default Handle Style
After using rotate, translate, or resize, put the button back to default
This is a common error for beginning Alce users, to select and use a particular handle style for one object, and forget to return to the default handle style when they go to work with another object.

37. Object Manipulation Hot Keys
To move the object vertically
Hold down shift + use mouse
To turn the object horizontally
Windows: Hold down control + use mouse
Mac OS X: Hold down option (alt) + use mouse
These will also work in the Code Editor camera view, which can be convenient, alleviating the need to always switch to the Scene Editor to make minor revisions of a Scene when writing code.

38. Shape Objects and Billboards
Shapes can be used for generic objects
Billboards can be added to scenes and have images applied to them for things like unique backgrounds or directions
3D text can be used for in world text but also as dynamic text that can be manipulated through code