IDEAS: Animated figures consist of a series of poses. To change a dino's appearance, you have to make similar changes to all the poses of the dino.

OUTCOMES: At the end of this lesson, you will have created your personal dino who is a representative of a whole "tribe" - all its children and relatives.

WHAT YOU NEED: Dino3.wld should be in your UNIVERSE folder. If not, copy it from the WORLDMAS folder.

Start up ExploreNet and select Dino3.

Getting Started. There are four types of dinosaurs which we've got pre-drawn: T-rex, Bronto(saurus), Tricera(tops) and Raptor. A name like Brontosaurus is too long for our software, so we call 'em Bronto. In fact we can only use seven letters because the different poses of the "walking cycle" are numbered like Bronto1.bmp, Bronto2.bmp, etc. and Windows 3.1 only accepts a total of 8 letters.

If your dinosaur is of the species Tricera, then your dino will look like everyone else who is a Triceratops. You would probably like to have a unique appearance. In fact, nobody knows what color dinos were, so you can color your individual dino any way you want to. There is no reason to believe that they had long red hair, but on the other hand, there is no evidence that they weren't polka-dotted (like a giraffe) or striped (like a zebra.)

Fortunately, ExploreNet was designed so that you can make yourself look different from the other members of your species. There are two ways to do this - the QUICK way and the COMPLETE way. We'll study the Triceratops, as our main example.

The basic walking cycle for Tricera looks like this:

       
       Tricera1                    Tricera2                   Tricera3

       
       Tricera4                    Tricera5                   Tricera6

   
       Tricera7                    Tricera8

QUICK Personal Dinosaurs. The first pose (Tricera1.bmp ) is called the "resting pose" because that's what you see when the critter isn't walking. If your personal dino's name is Mandy, for instance, you can create a copy of Tricera1.bmp, change it a bit, rename it Mandy1.bmp, and put it back in the OBJECTS folder.

Let's say you painted polka dots on Mandy1.bmp so you could tell her from plain old Tricer1.bmp. Now, when Mandy-dinosaur is standing still, she'll have polka dots. But when she's moving, she will still be a generic Tricera.

       
      Mandy1                    Tricera2                  Tricera3, etc.

Give it a try! Change your personal dinosaur by adding a new resting pose, and see how it looks. To do that, follow these instructions:

Use your Paint program (whatever you use in your school); go into the OBJECTS folder inside the DINO4.wld folder, find Tricera1.bmp (if you are of that species), make some changes, and SAVE AS Mandy1.bmp (if your name is Mandy.) Make sure that the FILE SUB-FORMAT is selected as WINDOWS RGB ENCODED.

Warning: Don't use the BLACK color in the upper left corner of the ExploreNet palette, for painting on your dino. That color is TRANSPARENT - it should be used for the background only. If you use that black, you get a hole in your dino when we put it into ExploreNet!

Go into the DINO3.wld file, and replace the line that says

Tricera 8 500 700 700 desert

with a new line that says

Mandy (Tricera) 8 500 700 700 desert

What this means: "Mandy is a new dino, of the species named Tricera. Use the Tricera bitmaps and other information UNLESS we give you special Mandy information."

COMPLETE Personal Dinosaurs. To get a whole walking sequence, you're going to have to mark up all eight poses of your personal critter. That's not hard to do, but it takes time. Make copies of Tricera1..8 and Save As Mandy1 ... Mandy8 (unless your name is Kevin; then call them Kevin1 ... Kevin8, obviously.)


       

     Mandy1                       Mandy2                    Mandy3, etc.

Your Assignment: Customize all 8 poses of your dino. It's best to make each of them similar, because if they're different, it looks strange when they walk.

Extra Project 1: If your school has Animator Pro or another tool that can draw animated sequences, have a try at producing a dino species of your own! Just make them the same size as the existing ones, so they can all fit together in a story.

Extra Project 2: Draw one or two background scenes, complete with caves and mountains and rivers and trees and bushes and whatever you think would be good Raptor (Tricera, Bronto or T-rex) habitat. In a few lessons, you're going to need to be able to hide from predators or prey, so think about backgrounds that blend very well with your dino! You can add exits to your existing scenes, to link to this new scene. Or you can just edit one of the existing scenes to make the habitat for your species.

SAVING YOUR WORK. Did you create a special folder for your own work yet? It should be named WORKjmm (if your initials are JMM). It would be good if the work folder were on the Server computer (usually that's called the F or G drive, but it might be different in your school.)

If you are working in a group, you could give the group a name like the World's Best Dino-makers; then your initials would be 'wbd', I guess.

Make a copy of your dino into your WORK folder. In fact, if you changed the Dino3 world by doing Extra Project 2, you may want to save the new scene you drew, too. Your fellow students in other classes will be destroying the Dino3.wld as they bring in fresh copies from WORLDMAS.

Also, your work group should save your work onto the diskette provided. This way, if the school's computers get messed up (and computers ALWAYS get messed up, just when you need them the most!) you will have a safe backup copy.

FEEDBACK FORM FOR ExploreNet LESSON 3

Coral Springs Middle School - Spring 1996

Student Name:_____________________ Date:____________

1. Please list any problems you had with our lesson worksheets? Did we ask you to do anything that didn't work out as planned? (What page number? What action?)

2. Did the ExploreNet software work correctly? If not, tell us as exactly as possible what you were doing when things went wrong.

3. What did you like best about this lesson?

4. What did you like least about this lesson?

5. What should we add to this lesson to make it better?