9

910 Glossary
and choose Controller Types from the list). The
controller names appear beside the tracks to which
they’re assigned.
You can assign different controllers to the tracks,
affecting the way they respond. The Bezier
Controller, assigned by default to all the Position
tracks,letsyoumoveobjectsusingtheSelect
and Move transform tool, and converts those
movements into Bezier splines. You can adjust the
splinesinFunctionCurveeditingmode.
Animation Layers
When you animate a biped or other object, you
canaddlayersofanimationabovetheoriginal
bipedanimation.Thisisapowerfulwayofmaking
global changes to your animation. For example,
when you add a layer and rotate the spine forward
at any frame, a run cycle becomes a crouched run.
The original biped motion is kept intact and can
be viewed by switching b ack to the original layer.
You can view layers individually or as a composite
ofalltheanimationinallthelayers.Layersbehave
lik e a freeform animation; the object can adopt
any position.
Layers used in conjunction with Biped let you
easily adjust raw motion-capture data, which
contains keys at every frame. You do this by adding
a layer and keyframing the biped.
Layer controls for Biped are on the Layers rollout
(page 2–974). For other objects, use the Animation
Laye rs toolbar (page 3–690).
Applied IK
A type of inverse kinematics w here one or more
parts of the IK structure follows another animated
object exactly. After the scene i s set up, Applied
IK generates trans form keys for every object in
the I K chain.
See Animating with Applied IK (page 2–481).
Ar ea Li ghts (ment al ra y Ren derer )
Area lights are a feature of the mental ray renderer.
Instead of emitting light f rom a point source, they
emit light from a broader area around the source.
Area lights create soft-edged shadows. This can
help improve the realism of your rendering.
Scene rendered with area light turned off
Shadows are ray-traced.
Theyellowcubeindicatesthelight’slocation.
Scene rende red wi t h area light turned on, showing soft
shadows
The light in this rendering is a 2D (spot) area light.