Album3D Tutorial Introduction

Album3D imports images with corresponding labels and presents the images as a photo album in 3-D. It also allows the interactive flipping of pages and rotation of the view point, the former by using the left and right arrows, and the latter by using the up and down arrows. The flipping pages have corresponding stereo sound effects.
The key feature of this sample is a state machine used to control and coordinate the animation of the album and the corresponding sound effects. The state machine has five states and is used to control and coordinate four behaviors, including: indexes to the left and right pages of the album (NumberBvrs), the actual center page (GeometryBvr), and the sound effect (SoundBvr). The state machine flows between the different states when specific events occur, and it switches the above four behaviors into new behaviors, accordingly. This is done through the two forms of the "until" method.
The example suggests a systematic way to implement state machines in DirectAnmiation, based on mixed media behaviors. In addition, the approach lends itself to automatic generation of behavior-controlling state machines through visual authoring tools.

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