Mirai: Tips

Tips are short 'how-to' tutorials for Mirai users. The [Scene] files (if included) are compressed versions of the actual scene files which you can download and load into Mirai if you want to follow along. Click on the [PDF] button for to read the tutorial. Finally, click on the movie icon to download a movie clip (Quicktime).
Title	Windows	Doc	Movie
Texturing Characters Using Alpha Channel Blending	[Scene]	[PDF]
Learn how to project multiple textures onto a single surface through multiple mappers, blending overlapping areas using information in the painted alpha channels of those images.
Animating with Mirai's Programming Operations	[Scene]	[PDF]
This tutorial will teach you how to incorporate Mirai's programming operations into your scripts.
Picking Up Objects	[Scene]	[PDF]
This tip describes how to use the Copy Transformation operation to make a character pick up an object.
Animating Maps	[Scene]	[PDF]
This tutorial will teach you how to animate a map by loading a series of images over time.
Creating Realistic Eyes	[Scene]	[PDF]
This tip explains how to model and texture realistic looking eyes.
Clouds		[PDF]
This tutorial will teach you how to use Mirai’s particle system to create a basic cloud.
Animating the Camera	[Scene]	[PDF]
This tip shows several techniques for animating Mirai's camera.
Using Soft Deformers	[Scene]	[PDF]
Soft deformers (enabled with Patch Set 3 for Mirai 1.0) enable soft-skin deformers for skins, including the ability to set weight for individual vertices.
Using Displacements with Wires	[Scene]	[PDF]
When you create a polyhedron from a wire, that wire acts as a controller for the shape of the object. By creating and animating displacements on the wire, you can drive the shape of the polyhedron. This tip shows how to animate displacements on a wire to simulate the throwing of a pot.
Using the Call Script Operation	[Scene]	[PDF]
The Call Script operation lets you call one script from another. If you are coordinating a large number of complex subanimations in your script, you may find it useful to animate them in individual scripts, then create a main script which calls those other scripts. This tip shows how to break the animation of a complex machine into different scripts.
Light Attenuation	[Scene]	[PDF]
This tip shows how to set the attenuation values for lights in a scene.
Wire Basics	[Scene]	[PDF]
This tip teaches the basics of sketching wires and using them to generate polyhedral objects.