3ds Max animation basics

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Now,

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let's take a look at how we can start to move

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our objects around our scenes inside a three Ds max.

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So we'll be talking about some animation.

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Now, the animation controls as we spoke about before are down here on the bottom.

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So you can see here we have a timeline

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right now. It goes from 0 to 100 those are in frames.

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So right now, we have 100 frames that we're looking at.

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We also have a time slider up at the top that we can slide

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and that lets us know what frame we're on out of how many,

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if we go into the little clock here with the gear time configuration,

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we can choose the frame rate that we're gonna be working at. So

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we need to know how many frames per second we're going to be using.

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So right now we're at 30. If you want to go to custom, you can change this

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to say a film frames per second at 24

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whatever you wanna do, I'm gonna go ahead and just leave it at 30

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or you can set these

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defaults

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that will also change the start and end times we

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can choose what we're going to see in the timeline,

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we want to see frames and then also the playback speed,

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we can also choose how long the timeline is.

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So right now we're going from 0 to 1 22 we can set this back to 100 if we want to.

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And now we've got 100 and one frames because we are starting at zero.

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So once you have that the way that you want, you can say, OK,

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now we can start moving our objects around the scene.

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Now, there are a couple of different ways that we can go about this. We've got auto key

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and set key.

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So if we want to do it manually, we can use this set key method.

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So we'll go ahead and click on that.

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You can see the red indicator here and the red indicator around our viewport.

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The first thing that I want to do is start to add some rotation

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to the propellers.

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So let's go ahead and click on the propeller itself and we want to

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make sure that we are on a specific frame in this case frame zero.

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And to set a key, you can see this little plus sign over here.

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And this lets us know that the shortcut to set a key frame is K.

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So we can either hit this button

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or hit the K key.

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Now, you can see here on that actual key frame. There are a few different colors.

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Those indicate that we have key frames on the position, rotation

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and scaling because we just hit the key button.

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All right. So now we need to decide how long it's gonna take to go around one time.

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And so let's say that

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we want it to go pretty fast.

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So I'm gonna say by frame five, we want it to be almost all the way around.

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So I'm gonna go ahead and right. Click on this, we'll go into rotation,

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open the options

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and I wanna choose a Y rotation

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and let's do 359

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and then we'll go ahead and set a key.

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So now you can see that rotating between zero and five,

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it's rotating one complete revolution.

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So in order to see this

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and to be able to make the

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propeller, keep going after frame five,

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we're gonna go in and look at the curves for the animation.

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We can access the curves by going to graph editors

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and we're gonna choose the track view curve editor.

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So here we can see our object

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and we want to look at the rotation and specifically the Y rotation

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and I wanna be able to see my curve. So I'm gonna come down here

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and hit this button to frame

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and you can see here is our Y rotation.

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Now you can see the rotation happening from here

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down to here.

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And then you can see this dotted line.

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This lets us know that the rotation value is going to stop. OK.

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These are the values, this is the time when we get past this time,

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the values are going to stop changing because we're past our key frames.

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What we want to do is change the interpolation between these key frames.

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So we want to make this a completely straight line

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so we can use this button right here. Set tangents to linear.

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That's gonna make it completely straight line from here to here.

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Let's do the same thing up here.

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And then what we want to do is change how 3d

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Max treats these curves.

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And so we're gonna hit this button right here, parameter curve out of range.

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These curves are the out of range curves and we

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want to change how three Ds Max treats those.

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So we'll go ahead and click on that

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and you can see there are a number of different options

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and you can change the option based on coming in and coming out right now.

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It's set to constant.

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I'm gonna go ahead and change them both to linear, change to linear and say, OK.

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And if we minimize this and play our

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animation using the playback controls at the bottom,

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you can see that it just keeps spinning.

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So go ahead and add the same key frames for all of the other propellers,

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you can offset them a little bit,

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but you want the speed to remain pretty much

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the same and then we'll come right back and

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add some key frames to the drone so that we can start to fly it around our scene.

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Now that we've got the propellers going,

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let's add some key frames to the drone overall so that we can get it to take off and land

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and let's say that we want it to land right here.

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And so what I'm gonna do

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is

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work my way from the end.

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So we'll go to frame 100

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let's choose the drone and let's add a key right here.

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So this is where we want it to end up.

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Now, I'm gonna move it to where we want to start.

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So let's drag all the way back to frame zero.

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I'm gonna pull out a little bit

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and let's go to move

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and I'm just gonna kind of move it

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back

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over here and you can

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put it wherever you want.

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We can also add some rotation to it.

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Let's say it's kind of

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right back here.

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I'm gonna also change the reference coordinate system to local.

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OK? So let's say that's where it starts.

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So we're on frame zero, we're gonna go ahead and set a key.

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So if we were to scrub between these two, it would just slide across the ground

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back to where it started.

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But what we want to happen is we want it to take off, fly over and land

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where we have it. So let's kind of pull out a little bit

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and so it's gonna come to right there.

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So let's have it take off and get to maybe around that high. So we'll say

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by frame 20

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let's make sure it's

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kind of up high

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and we'll go ahead and set a key.

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We can play that through to check the speed,

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ok?

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And we don't want it to go down until it gets closer

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to where it's gonna land.

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So maybe

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right around here.

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So we'll go ahead and take it back up.

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Soap comes up,

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flies over

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and lions.

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Ok.

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Now let's say that looking at this,

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it's landing a little too quickly.

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Well,

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when you're working with key frames and you

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want something to happen a little bit slower,

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you can space those key frames out.

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So we can actually select this keyf frame and we can move it and say, OK,

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I'm gonna move it to frame 70

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moving that heat frame out

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will make it land a little bit slower.

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Another cool thing that we can do is come over to the motion panel,

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turn on motion paths

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and say,

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always show motion path and we can actually see the path that the stone is taking.

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In addition, we can grab one of these points

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and we can actually change the path.

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How cool is that?

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So let's say we wanted to take a little bit more of an arc path,

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go back

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and now we can have it do that.

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So we're actually visually changing the path that it's flying along.

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We can also go back into the graph editor.

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We can see all of the motion here that's happening.

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So for instance, the Y position,

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Z position

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X position and so forth, along with the rotation,

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you can see the Z position

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is

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the ground right here

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and the ground right here.

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So if we want to change how this rises from the ground,

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so we can change the timing or ease in and ease out by either dragging these

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key frames around.

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We can also do the same over here.

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You can see we have a tangent handle.

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If we wanted this to just plop down and kind of crash,

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we could create a very sudden stop.

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But what we want to happen is we wanted to kind of ease down.

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So we'll leave that ease in there

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and kind of frame this up a little bit more

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back, kind of where we were

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and scrub through and kind of see that

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and let's get a little bit closer.

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So now you can see our drone flying in and landing.

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Let's go ahead and turn our motion paths off, go back to frame zero.

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And now we can play our animation.

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Obviously, we can smooth things out a little bit, we can change the timing

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and you can do all of that within

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the timeline and also within your curve editor.

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So that's a quick look at working with animation

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in three Ds max setting some key frames,

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editing those key frames in some very basic ways

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and getting our objects moving around our scenes.