Behaviors - It's Alive!

It's Alive! Behaviors

Behaviors are the heart of It's Alive! You apply behaviors in two ways: through the behavior:add part of the pie menu and through the typographic:render part of the pie menu.

Details on Behaviors:Add submenu –

Cruise – text flies about screen with random adjustments in acceleration (also handles collision response)
Concrete – text will disappear off screen and then progressively fall into place (based upon where the text was when the behavior was applied) from left to right with some elasticity of the ground plane
Cryptographic – each glyph will shift through a series of random characters until eventually settling back into its original value
Explode – after some preset delay, the objects selected will suddenly fly apart in random directions
Fade to Canvas Color – the text will fade from its current color to the color of the canvas (at the time at which the behavior was applied)
Gravity – the text will accelerated towards the bottom of the window and bounce off of it.
Lines – each selected object will be connected by a thin, black line.
Move to Mouse – text will seek to minimize its distance from the mouse
Move Away from Mouse – text will seek to maximize its distance from the mouse (but often get stuck in the corners of the window)
Pull and Fade – expects to be placed on two objects… the first object will receive the Pull renderer type while the second object will receive the Fade behavior. These two objects and behaviors are linked together so that when the Pull text is being actively pulled, the second object fades in… and when the first object is no longer being pulled, the second object fades out.
Rain – text will disappear off screen and then proceed to fall from the top of the screen in a rain like fashion… text that falls off the bottom of the screen wraps around back to the top
Springs – connects selected objects by invisible springs… adjusting or applying a behavior to the just the first element such as cruise or move to mouse will make the results clear
Synonym Shift – (Requires the WordNet library) causes all selected words to shift through their synonyms over time. Since words are assumed to be nouns, this behavior often does not work as you expect unless you set the words to the appropriate part of speech.
Throb – causes the font of selected text to increase and decrease over time in a throbbing manner
Viral – will cause whatever other behaviors exist on the text AT THE LEVEL AT WHICH VIRAL IS APPLIED to be spread to other objects the text contacts
Wave – selected text objects will move vertically in a wave-like manner.

Detail regarding the Behaviors:Remove submenu -
The behavior names that show up in the Remove dialog box may seem unfamiliar. That is because there are many building block behaviors utilized in the creation of the behaviors you actually see on screen. Consequently, to truly REMOVE a behavior you applied, you may need to remove other sub-behaviors it created. The following is a list of some of these basic behaviors and what they are doing:

1DCollisionDetection – Present on all glyphs, this is the algorithm utilized to determine whether a collision has occurred. Typically, you’d want to leave this on so other behaviors can determine whether to respond.
Euler – Created by the behaviors Cruise, Gravity, and Springs, this behavior manages velocity and acceleration and may be what is causing text to move around even after you remove one of the other behaviors.
Gravity – Actually the three behaviors Rain, Concrete and Gravity are all just this same behavior with variant settings.
Viscous Drag – Created by Cruise, Springs, and some Gravity behaviors, this provides a resistance to velocity and thus prevents cruising or falling elements from just increasing velocity without limit.
Pulled Trigger – Utilized by the Pull and Fade, this behavior determines whether some text is being pulled and activates another behavior in response to that action.
Time Trigger – Created by Explode, this prevents the behavior from activating until some specified period of time has passed.

Brief details on Typographic:Renderer submenu –

Default – standard text out
Disintegrate – text which disintegrates over time and re-integrates in response to mouse over (note that this can be applied at different levels in hierarchy)
Erosion – parts of glyphs will erode in response to collisions/intersections with other text… eroded glyphs will fade back in gradually
Lens – glyphs warp in response to proximity of mouse
Particle – glyphs reduced to tiny, processor-consuming particles which swim around within glyph and slow down entire system
Pull – text is distorted by proximity of mouse
Pulse – text throbs in response to time as well as proximity of mouse
Test - non-operative