| Keyframe
Animation in 3D Studio MAX ( 3DS
MAX ) - Tutorial / Lesson |
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Let's
say good bye to all the
stills for now - Lets
get it moving. Let's animate.
Animation in 3D Studio
MAX ( 3DS MAX ) is a cakewalk
if you learn the fundamentals
really well. Before going
into details, lets see
how animation is done
in 3D Studio MAX ( 3DS
MAX ). Animation is nothing
but a sequence of frames
in which each subsequent
frame differs from the
previous one slightly.
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The
continuous play of these frames
in succession at a certain speed
(said as frames per second or
fps) helps us perceive jitter
free motion or animation. This
is the basic principle of animation
everywhere. It means that if we
want to animate a ball bouncing,
we need to create 30 frames for
a single second, and each frame
showing the position of the ball
at that time instant (1/30th of
second). Oh dont worry about the
frame mathematics. in 3D Studio
MAX ( 3DS MAX ), things are much
simpler. If you want to bounce
a ball, lets say we need the animation
to be visualized in 100 frames.
We define the initial position
of the ball at the 1st frame using
a keyframe (thats what we call
it in 3D Studio MAX ( 3DS MAX
)). Now at around the 50th frame,
we move the ball down to the floor
where it bounces and set another
keyframe. Again at the 100th frame,
we set a keyframe with the ball
up in the air (bounced). So we
created just 3 keyframes defining
the ball's key positions during
the entire animation. 3D Studio
MAX ( 3DS MAX ) interpolates all
the remaining frames to make it
a 100 frame long animation. Simple.
Huh?
We are going
to do exactly the same thing here
in this lesson. Animate a ball
bouncing. Shall we? |
Setting
up the scene for animation in
3D Studio MAX ( 3ds max ) - Tutorial
/ Lesson |
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Since we need a ball
and a floor to bounce
on, we need to create
those objects to make
our scene before we can
jump into the animation
stuff. Create a new scene
in 3D Studio MAX ( 3ds
max ). Reset it using
File > Reset. Now create a
floor using a box. Here
we are not strict regarding
the dimensions. Make a
box to seem like a floor
to bounce on. Refer to
the illustrations on the
right. Don't worry about
the textures assigned.
We will do that shorty.
Now, create a sphere and
place it above the floor
to it's one extreme. See
the Top view's image to
know the positioning of
the ball. Done? Well now
let's assign some nice
materials to both our
floor and the ball in
3D Studio MAX ( 3ds max
). Open Material Editor,
select the first empty
slot and click Get Material
button  .
Within the Material Browser,
choose Mtl_Library as
source and from the list
choose the material with
name Wood_Burloak.
Now the first
slot contains the wood
material. right? Now select
the floor (box) and click
on Assign Material
to Selection 
in the Material
Editor. Assign the material
Fabric_Tan_Carpet to the second
slot in the Material Editor
and assign it to the sphere
(ball) in the scene. All
done? Great job. Now your
scene in 3D Studio MAX
( 3ds max ) should look
like the figure given
here
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Save the scene
under the name 'level4-ball-scene.max'.
Let's learn how to make the ball
bounce on the floor, in
the next page of this tutorial |
