Label Widget Help

This widget lets you display a line of text on the monitor. These text labels are particularly useful if you want to create a movie script with descriptive labels which pop up at the correct times. If you want to label particular objects in your 3D scene you should see the Edit Other Objects widget.

Changing Font Attributes

The foreground and background colors of the text window can be set by picking the appropriate item from the colors menu (hold down the right mouse button while over the "colors" field, or click with the left button). The font style can be set from the font menu (the middle field which is titled with the currently chosen font). Fonts can also by toggled through by clicking on the font field with the left button. Similarly the font size can be changed from the menu associated with the rightmost field.

Specifying Text

Whatever text you type into the white text line will become the current label.

Displaying the Text Label

Click on Show Label to display the label on the monitor. You must position and stretch the label box to the correct size (hold down left mouse button) before releasing the left button. After the box has been sized, there is no way to resize it other than to delete it (Hide Label) and then reshow it. If the box you have created is too small, you may not see any text. Actually, the above statement is not quite true. You can resize and reposition the text window by using your standard windows technique for modifying borderless windows. Thus if you have Alt-F7 defined as Move and Alt-F8 as resize, you can put your cursor over the text label, press Alt-F7 and then move the window. You can easily check which control keys you need to use by moving the cursor to the border of a normal window (i.e., one with borders and not a DAVE widget) and holding down the right mouse button. This should pop up a menu. The menu items should describe the equivalent key bindings. Only one label can be displayed at a time.

Label Control Menu

This menu controls how the label will be saved in a movie script for later playback.

Save Label to Script

Choosing this menu item when a label is displayed causes it to be saved to the current movie script. Prior to saving to a script, a script file must be open and you must be in Record Video mode. See the Edit Script (soon to be renamed Create Movie) Help for more information (in the Goodies menu). This text will stayed displayed during playback of the movie script until the point in the script that you pick Hide Label in Script or until a new label is saved. I believe that you should save the label for a given scene immediately after you do a Save Matrix for the scene.

Hide Label in Script

Choose this menu item at the point in the script that you want the previously specified label to disappear. This is not necessary if you want to replace the current label with a new one. In that case just do a second Save Label to Script.