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284 Chapter 12: Animation
NTSC: U.S. and Japanese video standard of about
30 fr ames per second.
PAL: European v ideo standard of 25 frames per
second.
Fi l m: Movie standard of 24 frames per second.
Custom: FrameratesetintheFPSparameter.
Configuring Animati on P layback
You use settings in t he
Time Configuration dialog
(page 3–768)
>Playbackgrouptospecifythe
playback speed, and the number of viewports that
play the animation.
Real Time: Animation plays at the selected
playback speed, skipping fr ames, if necessary, to
maintain the correct speed. Tur n this off and the
animation will play every frame without trying to
maintain the correct speed. The different playback
speeds are also useful when using the
Motion
Capture utility (page 2–632)
.
Active Viewport Only: Animation plays only
in the active viewport. Tu rn this off and the
animation will play in all four v iew por ts at once.
Speed: Cho o se one of t hese options to multiply
the frame r ate by the selected speed.
Direction: When Real Time is off you have the
option to change the direction of the animation
playback. Choosing Reverse will play the
animation from end to start. Choosing Pingpong
will play the animation from start to end, and then
end to start.
Loop: When Loop is turned off, the animation
will play once and stop.
Vi ewport P la y back Speed
Theabilityoftheprogramtoplayyouranimation
at a specified rate depends on many things,
including the complexity of the scene, the number
ofobjectsmovinginthescene,thegeometry
display mode, and so on. The worst case is a
camera move in shaded mode, in w hich the
viewport is filled with detailed geometry. In such
cases, it’s be st to simplif y the viewpor t display,
using e ither wireframe display or, in extreme c ases,
box display mode.
Na turally, it takes more computing power to
display your animation in four viewports, and
playback smoothness is red uced. When Active
Viewport Only is on, you can switch active
viewportsduringplaybackeitherbyclickingthe
label of an inactive viewport, or by right-clicking
in an inactive viewport.
Working with Controllers
Everything you animate in 3ds Max is handled by a
controller. A controller is a plug-in that handles the
storage and interpolation of a ll animated values.
The default controllers are
• Position: Position XYZ
• Rotation: Euler XYZ
• Scale: Bezier Scale
Although 3ds Max has many different ty pes of
controllers, much of the animation is handled
by the
Bezier controller (page 2–305)
.Bezier
controllers interpolate between keyframes in a
smooth curve. You can adjust t he key interp olation
of these interpolations through the keys on the
track bar or in Track View. This is how you can
control acceleration, hesitation and other types
of motion.
The default controller for Rotation is Euler
XYZ, which breaks the rotation down into
three individual Bezier Float tracks. The default
controller for Position is Position X,Y,Z. The Scale
controller default is Bezier.