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Mastering
3D Studio MAX R3 |
Using Controllers to Animate
Animation controllers are the instructions MAX uses to create
and interpret the keys of an animation. With animation controllers, you
are getting closer to the guts of MAX: why the computer draws
the frames it does from your settings. In this section, well look
at the more common controllers and how to switch between them. In the
next chapter, we will cover some of the ways to refine the effects of
controllers through tangent types.
Top 5 MAX Concepts
Controllers: Do You Control Them or Do They Control You?
Have you ever been killing time in MAX, maybe on your lunch break,
and gone into the Track View and expanded all the tracks, just to
see what you get? If you have, you might have noticed all the different
shapes the tracks have next to them. There are purple cylinders,
blues spheres, and yellow boxes. Add some green clovers and its
a box of Lucky Charms!
But if you really do expand all the tracks, you will notice an
abundance of green triangles "pointing" to the right. There are
a lot of them for sure. What do they all mean? Here is the answer.
Every place you see that triangle in the Track View indicates that
particular track is animatable: youre allowed to change its
settings over time. But it also means something else. Every green
triangle you see also indicates a controller is being used.
A controller is nothing more than a tool for a particular job.
Like choosing the right kind of screwdriver, choosing the right
controller depends on the task at hand. If you want something to
move in straight lines, without any ease in or ease out, choose
the Linear controller.
What most new MAX users get confused about are the default controllers
selected by the developers. They dont realize they can change
them! The Bezier Float controller is the most common default controller
in MAX, but that does not mean its the best or most versatile
controller!
Another aspect of controllers that many people get confused about
is the fact that you can have controllers within controllers. For
example: A box has a default Bezier Float controller on its position
track. This controller does not allow you to keyframe the X, Y,
and Z positions separately. So we change the Bezier Float controller
to an XYZ controller. This controller breaks out each axis of motion
separately, and we get a Bezier Float on each individual axis of
motion.
Now lets say we want to have this object (pretend its
a car) jitter up and down like its going over a dirt road.
We expand the Z axis track and change the Bezier Float controller
to a Random Noise controller. Now the object randomly bounces up
and down in one axis, while allowing me to have great control over
the other two axes of motion. This is possible because of the XYZ
controller!
One good thing about all this is that when you go to change a controller,
MAX only shows you the controllers that will work for the current
object or operation. The program wont even let you try to
use the RGB Color controller for position tracks, for example.
So next time you are killing time in MAX, try this. Launch the
Track View. Expand all the tracks. Click the Filters button and
check the Show Controllers option. Then look at all the tracks and
see what is controlling them. Try changing them to see whats
available and what is possible. The sooner you understand that controllers
are just tools and not "fixed" features you have to deal with, the
sooner MAX will begin to be a tool you use easily and naturally.
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Using the
Default Controllers
When you use the Animate button, MAX assigns the default controller for
the keys created. Whenever you change the assignment of a controller,
you can choose to make the new controller the default for this type of
track. Lets look at some of the default controllers. Open the Track
View of your animated box file from earlier (anim_box.max).
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| TIP A quick way to open
the Track View for just one object is to select the object, right-click
it, and choose Track View Selected from the shortcut menu.
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PRS Controller
Open the boxs hierarchy. The default Transform track has three
subtracks nested under it: Position, Rotation, and Scale. This is called
the PRS controller. We will look at other options for the Transform track
later.
Bezier Controller
The most common default for controllers is the Bezier controller. Click
the Filters button and check Controller Types. You will see that the Position
track now says Bezier Position. Lets look at what that
means.
- 1. Reset MAX.
- 2. Create a sphere in the upper-left corner of the
top view and turn on its trajectory display.
- 3. Go to frame 50 and turn on the Animate button.
Move the sphere to the upper-right corner of the top view. The trajectory
is a straight line.
- 4. Go to frame 100 and move the sphere to the lower-right
corner of the top view. Notice that the trajectory curved when you did
this.
- 5. Turn off the Animate button. Keep this file open
if you are going to continue with the next three exercises.
The curve of the trajectory created is the effect of the Bezier position
controller: It instructs MAX to transition from one key to the next with
a Bezier curve calculation. This is often very helpful, but not always
exactly what you want.
TCB Controller
In 3D Studio for DOS, the only controller available was the TCB
(Tension, Continuity, and Bias) controller. TCB is still the default controller
for rotation and for many plug-ins.
- 1. Still in the file from the previous section,
click the Add Key button and create a key somewhere in the rotation
track.
- 2. Click the Move Keys button and then right-click
the key you just made to get the Key Info dialog box (shown in Figure
6.14). This is the dialog box for a TCB controller.
FIGURE
6.14 The Key Info dialog box for a TCB controller
The little Xs in the graph represent transition frames into and
out of the keyframe. This graph can be changed with the tension, continuity,
and bias settings of the Key Info dialog box. It does the same thing that
we will do later with function curves, but is less intuitive to understand.
© 2000, Frol (selection,
edition, publication)
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