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272 Chapter 12: Animation
This section discusses the basics of creating
animation. It looks briefly at a comparison
between computer animation and classic
hand-drawn animation, and then describes the
creation of keyframed animation. The following
topics are covered here :
Animation Concepts (page 2–272)
Using Auto Key Mode (page 2–274)
Using Set Key Mode (page 2–275)
Viewing and Copying Transform Keys (page
2–279)
Cont rolling Time (page 2–281)
Setting Time Segments (page 2–282)
Mov ing Through Time (page 2–282)
Choosing a Frame Rate and Playback Speed (page
2–283)
Animation Concepts
Animation is based on a principle of human
vision. I f you view a series of related still images in
quick succession, you perceive them as continuous
motion. Each individual image is referred to as
a
frame
.
A frame is a single i m age in an animated film.
Traditional Animation Method
Historically, the main difficulty in creating
animation has been the effort required of the
animator to produce a large number of frames.
One minute of animation might require between
720 and 1800 separate images, depending on the
quality of the animation. Creating images by
hand is a big job. That’s where the technique of
keyframing
comes in.
Mostoftheframesinananimationare
routine, incremental changes from the previous
frame directed toward some goal. Traditional
animation studios realized they could increase the
productivityoftheirmasterartistsbyhavingthem
draw only the important frames, called
keyframes
.
Assistants could then figure out what belonged
on the frames in b etween the key frames. The
in-between f r ames were called
tweens
.
Once all of the keyframes and tweens were drawn,
the images had to be inked or rendered to produce
the final images. Even today, production of a
traditional animation usually requires hundreds of
art ists to generate the thousands of images needed.
The frames marked 1,2, and 3 are key frames. The other
frames are tweens.
The 3ds Ma x M ethod
This program is your animation assistant. As the
master animator, you create the keyfr ames that