Custom buttons for control 3d PDF Animate

Question

I am currently using the 3d PDF Animate program distributed by Tetra4d to animate some 3d models that I imported into a pdf.  The only actions that the default buttons provide are Play, PlayAll, Pause, Preivous, Next, First, and Last.  I am trying to create a button that would play specidic steps without having to hit next or previous to get to it, but nothing I try seems to work.  I have no experience in java or javascript so i am basicly just trying to piece things together based on what I see, but as I said, nothing is working.  If anybody has any experience in the program, I would sure appreciate some input.

Answer 1

There are two ways to animate the contents of a 3D annotation - either the keyframe data is stored within the 3D model itself (as a timeline) or JavaScript is used to move each element based on a ticker loop. In both cases there must be a JavaScript controller function attached to the 3D annotation in order for control buttons to work, and when that code is added by a commercial plugin it is usually obfuscated so it cannot be modified.
Aside from inspecting the internal structure of the file, you can tell where the animation comes from by how the inbuilt controls work. Open the properties of the 3D annotation in Acrobat Pro, go to the 3D tab and 'Clear' the embedded script (don't save the file!). Re-activate the 3D scene, and look at the popup toolbar. If there's an embedded timeline, the play/scrub controller on the 3D toolbar will work. If it doesn't, the animation is script-controlled.
With embedded timelines there is usually only one animation (which covers all steps), and the various buttons assigned by the plugin simply refer to start/stop times within that animation - the 'play all' button simply tells the script to ignore all the intermediate markers. If you wanted to play a particular step, you would have to work out the time (in seconds) that the step begins and ends, then add your own code to play through only that range. However, given the code already attached to the annotation cannot be edited or removed without breaking everything, and a 3D annotation cannot have more than one attached script, the only option to make even a minor change would be to write it all again from scratch. That's the disadvantage of using tools like this - they make one thing very easy, but in doing so make it next-to-impossible to change the end result.