|
Start creating an animation by turning on the Auto Key button, setting a current time, and then changing something in your scene. You can change the position, rotation, or scale of an object, or change almost any setting or parameter.
When you make a change, a key storing the new value for the changed parameter is created at the current time. If that key was the first animation key created for the parameter, a second animation key is also created at time 0 to hold the parameter’s original value.
Keys are not created at time 0 until you create at least one key at another time. After that, you can move, delete, and re-create keys at time 0.
Turning Auto Key on has the following effect:
For example, if you have a cylinder that has not been animated yet, it has no keys. If you turn Auto Key on, and at frame 20 you rotate the cylinder 90 degrees about its Y axis, Rotate keys are created at frames 0 and 20. The key at frame 0 stores the original orientation of the cylinder, while the key at frame 20 stores the animated rotation of 90 degrees. When you play the animation, the cylinder rotates 90 degrees about its Y axis over 20 frames.
Just as you can animate at any time by turning Auto Key on, you can also model at any time in your animation without creating animation keys.
The results of changing an object or any other parameters with Auto Key off varies according to whether or not the object or parameters have been animated yet.
If you create a new object, or change an object parameter that has not been animated yet, you can work at any time with Auto Key off. The changes you make are constant through the entire animation.
For example, you might animate an object bouncing around your scene and then decide to create pads for the object to land on. To do that, you drag the time slider to a time when the bouncing object hits the ground, and make sure Animate is off before you proceed. You can then create a pad under the bouncing object and repeat the process at the next time where it hits the ground. Because Auto Key was off, it does not matter at what time the pad objects were created. They remain inanimate through the entire animation.
If you change an object or parameter that is already animated, while Auto Key is off, the amount of change is applied equally across all the animation keys.
For example, you might animate a sphere’s radius to be 15 at frame 0, 30 at frame 10, and 50 at frame 20. If you drag the time slider to frame 10, turn Auto Key off, and increase the sphere’s radius from 30 to 40, the change in the radius is applied to the other two keys as well. Because you increased the radius by 10 units with Auto Key off, all radius keys are increased by 10 units. The sphere’s radius is now 25 at frame 0, 40 at frame 10, and 60 at frame 20.
If Auto Key had been on when you changed the radius, it would have been an animated change applied only to the key at frame10.
Because most parameters in 3ds max can be animated, the easiest way to find out if something can be animated is just to try it. Usually, if you want to animate a parameter, it can be animated.
Sometimes you need to know in advance if you can animate a parameter. If so, you can use Track View. The Track View Hierarchy list displays every parameter that can be animated. Any item in the list displayed with a green triangle icon can be animated. See Track View and Animation Controllers.
Web Designer - offers freelance web design services, redesign, graphic design, content
management, web development and e-commerce.
LTD
