Autodesk Showcase has been helping users make stunning product visualization for years now...and is now in nearly all of the Autodesk Suites. Not only is Showcase in the Suites, it has been consistently given new functionality in relation to the other products in the Autodesk portfolio. Things like Inventor assembly constraints coming into Showcase as behaviors (see this YouTube video).
One of the coolest functionality I have really started taking advantage of are Showcase Triggers. Triggers enable users to associate Behaviors, Environments, Alternatives, etc. to some geometry in Showcase. It's like you are the director in you own little Showcase movie...and, you get to yell action. Lets take a look at a basic example.
Here is an Inventor dataset I dug out of the wayback machine that I thought would be a good test case. This particular dataset has a behavior in it (and FBX from Autodesk Maya). I want to be able to start this bad boy by clicking the 'On' switch...and that is where Triggers come in.
The first thing I wanted to do is find the geometry in the Showcase session that I want to activate the Behavior. With the geometry selected, press B to activate Behaviors and select Create from the Triggers menu bar.
in this case, I preselected the black button to the right of the yellow knob
When creating a new Trigger, you can associate it with many things...here, I simply want to associate it to the existing Behavior.
With the Trigger association in place, and the activating geometry established, we can now test out the Trigger. To run the Trigger graphically, you need to be in Presentation Mode in Showcase (Tab or via the Present menu).
Now, you simply have to click on the geometry in the Showcase environment to start the Trigger.
Note: The tooltip that displays when you hover over the Trigger geometry will reflect whatever you named the Trigger.
Here is a video of the Trigger in action:
There you have it. Showcase Triggers are simple, and simply cool.
-lw
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