TABLE OF CONTENTS The best way to learn how to animate is to jump right in and start animating. You will begin this chapter by picking up the Mobile exercise from Chapter 2, "Your First Max Animation," and adding animation to the shapes of the mobile. You'll take a good look at 3ds Max's animation tools so you can start editing animation and training your timing skills.
Topics in this chapter include:
Hierarchy in Animation: The Mobile Redux Using Dummy Objects
The Bouncing Ball
Using the Track Editor-Curve Editor
Track View
Anticipation and Momentum in Knife Throwing
Do you remember way back when you were reading Chapter 2? Those were good times, weren't they? After setting up the mobile in that exercise, you animated only the bars to rotate, but you left the rotation of the shapes for later. In this chapter, you'll pick up where you left off with the mobile from Chapter 2 and finish the animation using the hierarchies that were set up in that exercise.
| Note | If you skipped the Mobile exercise in Chapter 2, you may want to try it now before you move on with this animation exercise. Understanding hierarchies and how they work in animation is extremely important. |
You can begin this exercise by using your own Mobile file from Chapter 2, or you can open Mobile_v05.max from the Scenes folder in the Mobile project on the companion CD. This scene file is the same as the...
