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276 Chapter 12: Animation
The basic way to animate is quite simple. You
animate the t ransform parameters of any object to
change its position, rotation, and scale over time.
Turni ng on t he Auto Key (page 3–717) button,
then moving the time slider places you in a state in
which any changes you make will create animation
for the selected objects in the viewport.
Animation is used throughout 3ds Max. You can
animate the position, rotation, and sca le of an
object, and almost any parameter setting that
affectsanobject’sshapeandsurface.Youcanlink
objects for hierarchical animation, using both
for ward and inverse k inematics, and you can edit
your animation in Track View (page 2–501).
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 2–276)
Using Auto Key Mode (page 2–278)
Using Set Key Mode (page 2–280)
Viewing and Copying Transform Keys (page 2–283)
Controlling Time (page 2–285)
Setting Time Segments (page 2–286)
Moving Through Time (page 2–287)
Choosing a Frame Rate and Playback Speed (page
2–288)
Animation Concepts
Animation is based on a principle of h uman
vision. If 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 image 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 m inute of animation m ight 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 w hat belonged
on the frames in b etween the keyframes. The
in-between f rames 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.