This is an "out of the box" tutorial to get you up and running with Hash's Animation Master. If you just installed the software and want to see something happen right away, this is for you, although I recommend reading through the manual first just so you are familiar with terms and techniques.

1) Select "open model" from the File menu. Select the PuttyDude model. This will begin a new project with PuttyDude in it. On my CD, PuttyDude is in the "Data->Models->Actors" heirarchy, and is actually called "Thom.mdl," so if you see the word "Thom" in this tutorial, think "PuttyDude."

2) Open the "Walk.ACT" file. This can be found in the "Data->Actions" heirarchy. This should automatically apply itself to the PuttyDude model since he is the only model present. If there were more it would prompt you for which model you want to apply the action to. This is the tricky part. This only pertains to the action's main window. You haven't actually applied the action to your animation yet. You've merely opened a window in which to work with the action itself, and it needs a model to act on. Get it? You will see a window that looks something like this: 

This is a front view with "QuickShade" turned on. Your window may default to a wireframe representation of PuttyDude. If you want to view the quickshaded view, right-click in the blank space of the window and select "View Mode." From there you can select which type of view you wish to see.

3) Select "New Choreography." This will open up a choreography window with a default camera and one light. It should also default to a "top" view looking down, and you see the visible cone for the camera angle and the radius of the light. From the top view, select "add control point" from the toolbar and you should see a "path" icon for your pointer. Add a spline. You now have a 2-point spline for a path. In the project window under "choreographies" you should now see "Path1" under "Choreography1" in addition to "Shortcut to camera1" and "Shortcut to Light1." If you double click on "Path1" this will open up a window with just the path in it. You can modify the path here or in the choreography window by adding control points to it. A figure eight is a good first path because you can see your model walk from all sides and it can loop over and over.

In this example, we'll use just create a 3-point spline to make a simple curve. 

NOTE: Remember your viewpoint. If you double-click on Path1 to open up a window for it, you will be looking at a front view so you will see a flat line. Select the top view to see the path from above.