MacroSystem Columbus - Manual (Page 20)

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confirm your choice with “Ok” and click on the
“Preview” button.
You will see the hand move along the line. After-
wards you see the toolbar appear again - make
sure that the „Auto direction” function is acti-
vated on the toolbar.
To make the whole thing look more realistic, you
need to make the pointing finger on the hand
appear to trace out the line – to do so you have
to change a few values.
Set the selection button to “Head position”,
then set the “Distance” to 20% and the “Angle”
to 80° so that the hand initially is positioned at a
distance from the finishing point.
Afterwards, set the selection button to “Head
view”, then set a value of 10° for X and 0° for Y
and -60° for Z.
If the entered values do not prove to be very ac-
curate, please feel free to experiment a little with
them.
We should now change the line that is drawn by
the object a little. To do so, in the “Global set-
tings” selection button, select the “Line type”
function. This is where you can change the type,
width and color of the line to ensure, for in-
stance, that the line contrasts better against the
background.
Now look at the “Preview” once again, save
your example (e.g. under the name “Africa”)
in the “Archives” and then close the program
by clicking on the “Edit” menu symbol in the
bottom right corner. Next, close the “Special”
window by clicking on “Ok” so that the scene is
calculated with a length of 10 seconds (default
value). The setting for the “Split at key points”
control in the “Special” menu is irrelevant in this
case, since you have not set any key points other
than the starting and finishing points.
5.2 Changing how the key points look
This example explains another settings feature
– the “look”. You will use a map of Europe and
then change the appearance of the starting and
finishing points. You can change any defined key
point using this method.
Open the “Edit” menu and either select a map of
Europe that you have imported yourself or use a
map of Europe from the image pool. Make sure
that the scene that you want is marked in the
scene bin and then start the Columbus program.
You will see map of Europe displayed, and the
menu area will appear in the foreground.
Now click on the “Default” button again to make
the yellow line appear, and reposition the start-
ing and finishing points over any locations in
any country (e.g. London and Warsaw). Set ad-
ditional way points in order to create a realistic
looking route.
Then select the starting point to activate it
(green), and click on the symbol for the “Look“
menu.
In this menu, you can change the settings for the
starting point. Make sure that the “Object“ func-