This is Part 1 of a series of video tutorials on how to use Kinemac 3D Animation software for Mac OSX. View Part 2 Here.

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Welcome to this series of tutorial videos that will help you get started using Kinemac. Kinemac is 3D Real Time Animation & Presentation Software for Mac OSX. It allows you to create your own professional 3D animations with the simplicity of a 2D presentation tool. I’ll show you how easy it is to create dramatic 3D animations in Kinemac . . . Let’s get started.

The first step is to create and manipulate objects in Kinemac.

Click the 3D object button on the toolbar to create a new object. Here we’ve created a cube. We can manipulate it on the stage. Hold Control to rotate it on the X and Y axis and hold Option-Control to rotate it on the Z axis. You also have complete control of all the attributes over on the Inspector. Resize the cube by clicking on it, and holding . . . then press the Command key and drag to resize on the X and Y axes. Hold down Command-Option and drag to resize on the Z axis.

Importing is as easy as drag-and-drop. Import images, quartz compositions, audio & video files. Just drag them onto your object to map them to the object. You can also easily import OBJ or 3DS simple files.

It’s just as easy to create a Text object. We can move, rotate and resize this object on the stage just like any other object.

Create scrolling text - set your scroll direction and speed and press the space bar to watch it in real time.

You can import an RTF or RTFD file right into Kinemac. Text can even scroll in 3D on a path

Create a 3D Text object from the 3D button. You can change the colors of all the sides just as easily as you can change the font of the text, or edit the text itself. Apply a texture or an image to the 3D text object. You can apply images, movies, and quartz compositions as text.

Now that you see how easy it is to create & manipulate 2D and 3D objects in Kinemac, let’s start animating them.

In Kinemac, you use simple, yet powerful keyframe animation to create your videos.

Let’s create another cube on the stage. Press Command-4 to open the Inspector, and Command-2 to open the Sprite Window - our main timeline. Group all the windows together, if you’d like, by pressing Command-Control-1. Let’s resize the cube and apply some textures as we saw earlier. Select the cube and press Command-K to create a keyframe in the selected frame. Move and rotate the object where you’d like it. Move the play head further down the ruler view. In addition to Command-K we can set keyframes by using the keyframe buttons on the Geometry Panel. Move the object to another position and rotation.

Command-Left Arrow moves the playhead to the beginning. Now press the space bar to see your animation play back in real time. To speed up or slow down the action, drag the keyframe icon on the ruler earlier or later in time. Double-Click the Sprite on the Ruler to open the Bezier Window, or press Command-3. Move your keyframe forward or backward in time by moving the keyframe icon on top of the grid or move individual attributes by moving their points on the grid. You have further fine control by moving each point’s bezier handle, offering acceleration and easing in and out of motion. Remove Keyframes by option-clicking a keyframe icon on the geometry panel or by dragging the keyframe out of the ruler while holding the Command key.

Objects aren’t the only items you can animate. Kinemac has powerful cameras that can move and zoom around your creation.

Like other powerful 3D motion graphics programs, Kinemac uses cameras to create dynamic three-dimensional animations.

Let’s import an SVG file - an SVG file is a 2D vector illustration. Kinemac will automatically extrude your 2D logo. I can manipulate this logo’s attributes, like its 3D depth. I can manipulate the whole logo or just single letters within the logo by option-clicking on a single object and changing an attribute, such as extrusion or position, even textures and ambient, diffuse and specular colors.

Now we’ll go to 4 Views Mode by pressing the slash key or choosing 4 Views from the Views menu. Add a camera by pressing the camera button on the toolbar. We can see the new camera sprite on the timeline. Display the Camera icons by pressing apostrophe. The view on the top left is the scene from the point of view of the camera. You’ll see as we move the camera in the Top, Left, and Front panes, the point of view of the scene will change.

To animate the camera, Let’s move the playhead to zero and press Command-K to add keyframes. The Keyframes we created are for the eye and target positions. We can also create keyframes by using the keyframe buttons on the inspector panel. And now we’ll move the camera’s point of view.

We’ll move the play head to frame 200, press Command-K to add another keyframe, and move the camera again. We’ll repeat those steps at frames 400, 600, and 800, each time adding keyframes and moving the camera’s point of view. Hold the Command key when dragging the playhead to snap to 10-frame increments. Command-Left Arrow gets us back to the beginning. Press slash to go to 1-View, and press the space bar to play the camera animation in real time. Press slash again to go back to 4-View and see everything moving in real time.

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