• Automate your animation with parameter wiring, and animate multiple objects by changing just one parameter.

To simplify the animation process, you can set up custom parameters that pertain to just the values you want to animate, and put all the new parameters in one central location. Then you can wire (connect) these custom parameters to real parameters to create a useful interface for your animation needs.

While programming experience and math skills are helpful for doing parameter wiring, they re not essential to take advantage of this powerful tool.

Wiring 101

To illustrate the concepts of parameter wiring, I ve used a simple animation of a bead on a wire. In this example, you ll create a custom manipulator right on the screen, and then use it to control the bead s animation.

Figure 1: Load the file BeadStart.max, and select the bead. Choose Animation menu > Constraints > Path Constraint, and click the wire to put the bead on the path.

Figure 2: Pull the time slider to see the animation. The bead goes around the path, but doesn t turn with it. In the Motion panel, turn on Follow, and try different Axis settings until the bead goes around the wire correctly.

Figure 3: Now we ll create a custom manipulator to control the bead. On the Create panel, choose Helpers > Manipulators, and click Slider. Enter a name for the manipulator in the Label field, and click in the Front view to create the slider. Set Maximum to 1.0, and adjust the...