| ThingMaker Documentation Chapter 3) Introductory Tutorials

| Adding A Thing to the Scene 1. Moving Things from the Gallery to the Scene. Your Gallery should house the three Things you just imported. Now you can turn these separate static Things into a new Thing that's also an interactive Thing. 2. Open the Settings Sheet, if it isn't open already.
Choose Settings from the View Menu. You may want to reposition it so as not to obscure the Scene window. If the Settings Sheet is not expanded, click the Expand Palette Button first.

3. Drag the default.bmp Thing to the Scene.
Click on the Thing labeled default.bmp in the Gallery and drag it to the Scene Window. When you add the Thing to the Scene, it will appear with a dashed line surrounding it. This tells you the Thing has been selected. Check for details about the selected Thing in the Thing's Settings Sheet.

When you de-select the Thing by selecting another Thing, or by clicking elsewhere on the Scene window, the dashed line will no longer surround the Thing, and the Settings Palette will no longer show information for that Thing.

Understanding the Settings Palette: the Importance of States
The Settings Palette is where you manage the transition between States. It's where you set up how your Thing will react in relation to mouse actions on a web page.

The Thing you just added to the Scene contains only one graphic element. Since you have just selected it, the dashed line box should still surround it. Now look at the Settings Palette for that Thing. Notice that there are four Tabs in the Settings Palette: three State Tabs - Default, MouseOver, and MouseClick - and an Information Tab. Currently, the Default Tab is highlighted and is in the foreground. When you drag a Thing to the Scene for the first time, the program automatically puts the Thing into the Default State. (The highlighted Tab tells you where you are.) At this point, if you click on the Tabs for the other two States, MouseOver and MouseClick, you will see that the graphic in the Settings Tray is the same as the one in Default. To change what happens to the Thing in another state, you will need to put a different graphic into the Settings Sheet for that state. When you do this - in this case replace the default.bmp graphic - the Thing you see on the screen will change. It will move between states when you Mouse on and off the Thing.

Now let's try this in the Tutorial.

Tab "I" stands for Information and is not a State. Use the "I" Tab to hold the administrative data for the Thing, such as copyright and ID/Credit Actions.

<--Previous | table of contents | Next -->