CGTalk - Keyframe Animation Questions (max 5.1)

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Northchild

11-03-2003, 12:47 AM

Hi all,

I'm coming from a Flash background, so please be gentle. :blush:

Haven't figured out how to bone a character yet, so my techniques may be a bit primitive. I have four things that I want to animate: a character's head, left wing, right wing, and the entire model moving towards the right-hand side of my display. I set a rotation for the head at Frame 10, using Set Key mode, and hit the big Key button - because I want the character to look before moving. At Frame 20, I rotate and position both wings and repeat process to Set Key.

What doesn't make any sense to me is that Max now interpolates movement for the wings from Frames 1 to 20, when the wings were clearly at the "start" position when I set my key at Frame 10. I'm used to the Flash style where you set a key frame and it basically records where everything is, then goes from there when you set the next key.

Is there any way that I can use keyframe animation in a similar way to what I'm used to in 3ds max?

Thanks - any help appreciated as always! :)

Cullen

11-03-2003, 01:49 AM

If you set a key for the head, that doesn't set a key for the wings. I am guessing this is why they are moving from frame one. Rather than frame 10.
You can select multiple objects to set a key... By default Setting a key the way you described sets a key for Position, Rotation, Scale, and IK Parameters.

So, unlike flash, you can control what type of keys you want to place on your object. Click on key filters to change what keys are to add when you select "Set key".

This may seem like a hastle at first... but the bottom line is it gives you much more controll. And is second nature after a while.

Northchild

11-03-2003, 03:12 AM

Thank you for the heads-up, Cullen, that answered my question in a way that I wasn't able to work out from the documentation. I ended up checking everything in the Key Filters menu, then selecting all the objects in the character everytime I wanted to Set Key. This way, I have something approximating what I'm used to, I'll experiment with only setting Pos/Rot/Scale for certain objects later on. Many thanks! :)

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