DFTG 1373 Home
Syllabus
Week 1
Course
Introduction
Weeks 14
Thanksgiving
Holiday
Week 16
Final Project Due
Week 10 Notes
Basic Animation
Time Configuration
Change the Number of Frames in your Scene
Use Rescale Time to change animation length if you have already animated something in your scene.
Change the Frame Rate
Use a Frame Rate of 12 in this class.
Practice:
- Open the file animation practice.max from the I drive or class website, and save to your H drive. Open Time Configuration and change Frame Rate to 12 with 100 frames.
Basic animation
Understanding Animation
Almost anything can be animated: transforms, modifiers, materials, parameters, light settings, etc.
Animate Objects with Auto Key (we will not use Set Key in class)
Adjusting Keyframes
Animate a Modifier
Make a Preview Animation
Practice:
- Animate the time of day from 10am at frame 0 to 2pm at frame 100. Select the light object and go to the Motion panel to do this.
- Animate the Camera moving from one side of the room to the other (keyframes at 0 and 100). Adjust the motion of the camera by adding a new location at frame 50.
- Apply the Melt modifier to the Vase object (keyframes at 0 and 80).
- Make the flowers fall over as the vase melts (rotate the flowers, keyframes at about 40 and 80).
- Create a Preview animation of the Camera view.
Rendering to video formats
Render your Scenes
Image Resolution
Understanding Safe Frames
Set a Custom Output Size
Set Render Output Options
Always select Save File under Render Output and give the file a name and type before rendering an animation. You cannot save animations after they have rendered.
View a video
Select File > View Image File and open the saved video.
The Dome trick for a realistic background in an animation
Create a sphere that encompasses the entire scene, set hemisphere to 180 to make half a sphere or dome over the scene. Use the Normal modifier to flip the normals so materials apply to the inside. Apply a sky material to the dome. All lights and cameras must also be inside the dome.
Practice:
- Create a video rendering of your animated scene. Use 640x480 resolution, and save it as an .avi filetype. Play the video after it renders.
Linking
Understanding Hierarchies
Link and Unlink Objects
Move an Object’s Pivot Point
Using Dummy objects
Objects are often linked to Dummy objects; the dummy will not render, and can be used to control another object. The size of the dummy does not matter.
Create Panel > Helpers > Dummy > Click-Drag to create
Practice:
- Open the file ball bounce.max from the I drive or the class website, and save it to your H drive. Change the frame rate to 12 fps, and the animation length to 80.
- Select the ball in the Front viewport in Frame 1, start Auto Key animation mode, move the slider to frame 10, and move the ball up until it is at the top of the Perspective viewport. Turn off animation mode.
- Select both keyframes 0 and 10 by selecting one, holding CTRL, and selecting the other. Copy the selection 20 frames up in the timeline by holding Shift, clicking and dragging from 0 to 20. Copy again to frames 40 and 60. Select only frame 60 and copy it to frame 80. You should have keyframes every 10 frames, and the ball should bounce up and down 4 times.
- In the Top view, create a dummy object over ball; link the ball to the dummy. Move the dummy to the left side, slightly off screen in the Perspective view; the ball will follow the dummy. Start Auto key animation mode, drag the slider to frame 80, and move the dummy to the right side of Perspective view. Turn Auto key off.
- Play the animation. The ball should bounce across the screen, but the bounce doesn’t look realistic because it slows down before it bounces, making more of an S motion. We will fix that next week.
Assignments
1. Open the completed projector.max scene from last week. Set the frame rate to 12 with 100 frames. Make the projector play the practice animation file created in class. You may add and animate a camera if you wish. Render and save the animation.
2. Open your eggs.max file that has the materials on the eggs. Animate the eggs moving into place, one by one. Animate the material that is on the first egg that moves into place. Create a camera and have it move around the eggs one full rotation. Use a frame rate of 12, 120 frames, for a 10-second animation. Save the file.
3. Render the animation in #3 using the different settings listed in the Render Output Comparison table (handout) to compare render speed, quality and file size.