Animating with 3ds Max

Introduction

Modelling a scene in 3ds Max is one thing but to animate the objects really brings the virtual world to life. While animating can be difficult it's not too hard to get basic animations going. The key, as with 3D modelling, is to study how objects behave in real life and where that is not possible use reference photos and videos that can be found online. With high-speed cameras readily available we can see in great detail of how objects and parts of objects react to each other.

As 3D is an extension of 2D it's best to be able to animate in 2D before moving on to 3D as techniques used in 2D can be transferred to or adapted to 3D. As in 2D, when we make animations in 3D we create the key frames where there is significant change in the animation and then 3ds Max produces the in-between frames; the frames between the key frames.

Introduction

Animating a bouncing ball

Tips for animating using 3ds Max

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Update: Tips for animating using 3ds Max (25/3/16)

Animating a bouncing ball

As an introduction to animating using 3ds Max we will animate a ball that falls onto a surface and bounces a couple of times. Before animating we need to understand how the ball would fall in real life so that we can try to replicate the same using 3ds Max. There is no harm in exaggerating certain details if it gets across what you are trying to convey.

I've illustrated the path of a bouncing ball, which you can see below. Take note that the way a ball falls depends on how the ball is dropped and a number of other factors so this is just one example.

The ball starts off in the air, falls, hits the floor and then bounces up. It then shortly falls and bounces again but not as high as previously. This repeats a number of times, with the height of the bounce decreasing, until the ball comes to a halt. All the while this is happening the ball is moving forward, unless it's bouncing on the spot.

Next we will go over the main animation controls which you will see pointed out in the image that follows:

The timeline near the bottom of the screen shows the range of frames that we work with and whenever we add transformations to objects a coloured key appears on this timeline for the currently selected object. We can move back or forward along the timeline by manually moving the frame slider (Time slider), and it moves automatically when the animation is being played. Speaking on playing animations, there are a number of playback controls that let us move to the start, go to the previous or next frame, start or stop the animation and we can also type in a frame number and go straight to it.

To create an animation there are two main ways which are Set key mode and auto key mode. Auto key mode is best for beginners as 3ds Max will automatically record object transformations while Auto key is on. This is in contrast to Set key mode which gives you more control over your animations as you have to tell 3ds Max when you are happy with the transformations rather than having any changes automatically logged as in Auto key mode. It is very easy to leave Auto key on and then accidentally make changes to an object as if you weren't animating so Set key mode helps prevent that.

There is also a time config. control which can be clicked to bring up a number of options such as to change the animation playback speed but this doesn't effect the speed of an animation saved as an AVI file. To alter the length of an animation to be saved as an AVI file you can re-scale the animation by clicking on the Re-scale Time button and changing the Length value.

Before going on to describe how we will animate the ball I should point out that not everything can be animated so you will have to find workarounds. For example, you cannot animate turning a light on and off using a light's on value but instead you can vary the light's intensity value, which will probably work out better anyway.

Now let's animate a bouncing ball:

Firstly we are to keep it simple by making the ball bounce on the spot several times, each time with decreasing height:

1. Set your units (Customize->Units Setup...). I use Metric and under System Unit Setup I have 1 unit equal to 1 millimeter.

2. Create a plane in the top view (length & width segs 0, length and width 0.5m) to be the ground and place at 0,0,0.

3. Create a sphere (16 segments, radius 0.015m) to be the ball.

4. Click Auto Key and make sure the frame slider's at 0.

5. Move the ball into its start position (position 0, 0, 0.15m). You will need to zoom out.

6. Go to frame 10 and then move the ball to the ground (position 0, 0, 0.015m).

7. Turn off Auto key, go to frame 0 and then play the animation. The ball should fall to the ground. Note the animation will play in the currently selected view.

8. Turn Auto key on and move to frame 20. Move the ball up to position 0, 0, 0.075m.

9. Move to frame 30 and move the ball back to the ground (position 0, 0, 0.015m).

10. Go to frame 40 and move the ball to position 0, 0, 0.037m.

11. Move to frame 50 and position the ball on the ground at 0, 0, 0.015m.

12. Turn off Auto key, go to the first frame and play the animation. The ball should bounce several times, each time the height of the bounce should be less.

Next we will have the ball moving along the ground.

1. Turn on Auto Key on, go to frame 10 and move the ball to position 0, -0.08, 0.015m.

2. Move to frame 20 and set the ball's position to 0, -0.12, 0.075m.

3. Onto frame 30, put in position 0, -0.14, 0.015m.

4. For frame 40 set the ball's position to 0, -0.15, 0.037m.

5. Lastly, move to frame 50 and change the ball's position to 0, -0.155, 0.015m.

6. Turn off Auto key, go to the first frame and play the animation. The ball should bounce several times while moving across the ground. Play with the position values to get the movement more to your liking.

To help show the ball's movement we will now add rotation to the ball.

1. Add a patterned material to the ball as well as a UVW map set to Spherical mapping. Note that the material appears on the ball for all frames.

2. Turn on Auto key and for the following frames set the rotation as:

a. Frame 0: 0, 0, 0.

b. Frame 10: 90, 0, 0.

c. Frame 20: 135, 0, 0.

d. Frame 30: 157.5, 0, 0.

e. Frame 40: 168.5. 0. 0.

f. Frame 50: 174, 0, 0.

3. Turn off Auto key, go to the first frame and play the animation. The ball will move as before but will also rotate increasingly slower toward the end of the animation.

Once we are happy with the animation we can save our work as an AVI file:

1. Go to Render setup... and set the range from 0 to 50.

2. Scroll down to the Render Output section, click on the Files... button, choose a file and directory and pick AVI file from the Save as type: drop-down option. Click the Save button.

3. Choose MJPEG Compressor from the drop-down, alter the quality setting (the higher the value the better the video quality but the bigger the file size) and then click the OK button.

4. Click the Render button and you will see all the frames rendered in turn. Note that as the first frame is 0 and the last one is 50, there are 51 frames in total.

5. Open up the video using a player and watch the animation. It has taken 51 frames to create a one second animation and we only made a few key frames!

If you want to go back to rendering just one frame, under Render Setup... click the Single option and un-check Save File if you don't want the render to be saved.

And there we have it-out first animation! There are a number of things we can do to make it better such as to add squash and stretch to the ball for when it hits the ground to help better show the impact. Of course we can also add a material to the ground, maybe a reflective surface, and add some lights also. Do keep in mind however that the more we have going on in a scene the slower the animation will be to render when we save as an AVI file. It's a good idea to keep things simple until we are happy with the animation and then to add more to it when we are happy with it.

Think about what other animations you could do that are quite simple. How about a ball that knocks another along the ground? What about an object that rolls off something else? Perhaps you will see something in your daily life that will give you inspiration. Just don't be discouraged when things don't work out-try again or try something else.

Tips for animating using 3ds Max

When animating, coloured blocks will appear on the timeline representing different types of transformations for the currently selected object. If you want to see only certain transformations, select the transformation as you normally would when transforming an object and then right-click on the timeline and pick Filter->Current transform.

If you find after linking body parts together that rotation causes a body part to become skewed (the body part becomes stretched) you need to first unlink the body part.Then select the parent, go to the Hierarchy panel and select Scale in the Reset section. Link the body parts again and then the skew should be gone when rotating.

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