Category Archives: Modellus

(Update: Modellus new site is http://modellus.pt)

Thanks to Feel Fine who has given us all their assets from their funny game Sweet Dreams (available on the IPhone) for free, we were able to add a bit more fun for kids learning science subjects through the use of Modellus.

On a technical aspect I don’t think there is much to say because I found things rather easy, the hardest part was retouching the images to fit nicely on Modellus format.
For every animation i use something like this Timeline :

var animationX:Timeline = Timeline {
 repeatCount: Timeline.INDEFINITE
 keyFrames: [
  KeyFrame {
   time: 0s
  },
  KeyFrame {
   time: 1s / fpsPerSecond
   action: function()
   {
     currentFrameIndex = (currentFrameIndex + 1) mod (sizeof frames); // change frame index
     currentImage = frames[currentFrameIndex]; // change currentImage which is bound to an ImageView image property
     if (currentSelectedFramesIndex == (sizeof selectedFrames) - 1)
     { // This is the final frame. I'm just going to stop the animation  animationX.stop(); } } } ] };

You can see the new characters in action on the following video – the animations are actually much smoother than in the video (don’t know why):

If you’re a designer and would like to contribute some of your work: icons, animations, etc to Modellus please contact me (we don’t have the necessary time to create them) – mail is on the about page. Modellus is a free tool, used all around the globe, which aims to aid teaching of science subjects. Please help us shape the future of teaching making it more fun and less abstract. Your work will be credited and will obviously still remain your property.

(Update: Modellus new site is http://modellus.pt)

The new pan and zoom feature allows you to navigate through a larger animation area, tracking the movement of an object that has left the currently visible area or focus on a particular point.

You can zoom with the mouse wheel which zooms the animation to the area where the mouse is or you can pan by dragging the mouse on an empty area.

If you want to quickly zoom to a particular area you can do so by ctr+clicking the area.

Here’s a video demonstrating Pan and Zoom in action . This is not yet the final interface and will be subject to change, namely a small map will be available showing a zoomed out view of all the animation space.