TABLE OF CONTENTS Perhaps the most interesting and fun part of using VIZ is creating an animated presentation of your design. Animation can really bring your designs to life by adding motion over time.
Time is really the key ingredient to animation. This may sound a bit simplistic, but it will become clear as you work through the tutorials in this chapter that you need to pay close attention to the interaction of objects in your model through time. As you gather more experience animating your work, you'll start to develop an almost intuitive sense of what I call the spacetime of your model; the 10 to 20 seconds of each animated segment you create. You'll become intimately familiar with this space- time as you move and adjust the elements of your model. So as you work through this chapter, be aware of how time is always the key component of animation.
Each camera move, light intensity change, and even object movement must be carefully choreographed to create a natural flow of your vision through time. I'll show you the basic tools needed to accomplish this. You will be working primarily by keyframing within VIZ. This fundamental animation concept means designating critical points in the sequence (keyframes) where you want specific camera positions or lighting conditions and letting the program animate the change between those points. You'll use the building you've been working with from Chapter 6 to explore keyframing.
