Alias Bugs and Errata

Alias Bugs and Errata

These are various bugs encountered while going through the tutorials of Learning Alias.

Lesson 2 : Modeling with Primitives

p66 : "Copy and move the column"
Copy/paste seems to be fairly buggy.
A more stable method is to just use Edit->Duplicate Objects (be sure to reset settings)

Lesson 9 : Shader Basics

It seems like this whole chapter has been lifted from version 6, don't be surprised if you encounter discrepencies in descriptions of interface.

p186 : "Open the Multi-lister window" (repeats throughout chapter)
The menu-selection process is wrong.
should be: Windows->Multi-lister->Shaders
p188 : "Use the arrows to choose the different shaders"
using arrows while holding down Shift will cycle through picking objects in the scene, it will not move between shaders.
p190 : "Change the background color of the shader icon"
this doesn't seem to work

Lesson 10 : Texture Mapping

p202 : "Position the Label on the surface"
before you click on surface placement, you'll want to make sure you are editing the texture info for Stencil#2 -- click the icon for this shader.

Lesson 15 : Keyframe and Motion Path Animation

p279 : "Click on Show to watch the current frame being rendered"
There doesn't seem to be such a button. Perhaps they are referring to Render->Show Render.

Lesson 16: Hierarchical Animation

p295: "From the Animation menu, select Preview... to open the Animation Preview window."
No such menu option exists. Haven't found an alternative.

Character Animation

p338 : "Select Object Mod->Edit assemble to open the Cluster Editor window."
To open the Cluster Editor window, choose Windows->Cluster editor....

Lesson 19: Inverse Kinematics

p352: "Set a keyframe for the skeleton's right leg..."
The first keyframe setting (for frames 1 & 30) should be with the leg in a straight position. Otherwise, you end up with a pretty weird-looking walk.

Lesson 20: Constraints

p361: "From the Edit menu, select Group->Option..."
In addition to changing grouping to Beside, make sure that Preserve Position is checked.