CREATING REAL TIME ANIMATED PREVIEWS IN 3DS MAX

As your scene becomes more complicated you cannot always expect 3ds max to play the animation back at the correct frame rate.

To access this tool you create preview animation, Shift+v can also bring this up.

You are thus able to edit your playback settings for the animation.
Your output will allow you to alter your compressor.

Thus allowing you to see the animation playback at the correct speed.
\

You can playback the preview at anytime you wish and also you can see if your animation is fully correct.

CREATING REALISTIC CROWD SIMULATIONS WITH POPULATE

Using this you can generate a crowd of background characters doing a multitude of tasks so that you may fill a scene.

The populate option is located at the top of 3ds max, hitting the drop down key next to it you will be able to access the tools necessary to populate your scene.

Create flow will allow you to create a crowd of walking pedestrians.

Left click to create your area path.

The red and blue markers represent female and male characters within a scene, the lines also representing the pathways they walk along.

Do not be concerned with the linear nature of the pathway as 3ds max will make it so the characters move naturally and not stiffly on track. Choosing simulate will this create your pedestrians.

You can also create an idle area where the characters solely stand about.

You can also have simulated people who sit.

You can also change the resolution of your bystanders.

Regenerate will allow you to randomize your flock of humans.

The slider bar making it more or less random, the dice representing random and the red square specifying one pedestrian type and making everyone in the scene the same person.

TRANSFERRING ANIMATION WITH 3DS MAX'S SAVE AND LOAD FEATURE

You can utilize this for moving a certain object all the way to moving an entire control rig.

Go to your management of layers and you will find this exciting mess.

Selecting your controls layer you will then be able to see the controls of your rig. From that point you can move your original rig and enter in a new one.

Make sure you add in all it's little bits and pieces so it is not missing any.

And thus you will merge your new heinous spawn with the old one.

AIN'T THAT THE MOST INTERESTIN' USE OF TECHNOLOGY?

Selecting the animation of the new rig you can now decide what you are to do with the golem.

There you will have the choice of the absolute and the relative.

Relative will look at any existing animation and proceed to merge it with the new file. whereas absolute will be automatically replaced with whatever is within the file you are opening and hoping to apply to the new rig/animation.
You also have the choice of Replace and Insert At.

You can click insert at to determine yourself where you would like the new animation file to begin at, and replace to use the timing saved in the new file and place it over the old one.

Choose to apply the file and you may end up with this warning.

This lets us know that we need to transfer motion from one rig to the other on the new file, and we can. You can click yes, exit out of the information and open back up the tab from before containing the new file to find the ability to edit your mapping.

As well as get mapping beside it. Choosing edit mapping will open this box:

 There you can begin to match the controls of your animations, you can do this manually.

Like so,

Clicking the arrow and this linking them.

But you also have a method where this matching and linking is automatically done for you by highlighting the sides in question.

Matching them by Exact Name, Closest Name or Hierarchy.
If Exact Name doesn't work you can utilized the more general link of closest name.

Saving this and allowing it to apply to the new rig you will see that the new rig will duplicate the animation of the old one.

This can be used for background characters milling about in an animation among other things and is able to save an animator a good amount of time and effort.

VIEWING AND EDITING AN OBJECT'S TRAJECTORY

When the object of an animation is collapsed the spline line of movement is no longer necessary to be seen.

First you need to make the objects trajectory visible again.

The larger square dots show the position keys while the smaller white dots show the positioning.

Going to the sub-object level you may gain control over a certain key, and then you can add or delete keys on your trajectory line.

This can allow you to modify your movement.

GHOSTING ANIMATED OBJECTS

Ghosting is  a tool utilized for checking the timing and spacing of an animation.

Going into the views drop down tap you will be able to see the ghosting option,  here.

This allows you to see the rig's movement in the past frames as well as the current one, this can help the animator monitor the speed of the object moving within an animation. When the ghosted shapes are further away it signifies the object is moving quickly versus when they are bunched up the object is moving slowly.

You can also change how many ghosted frames you see for maximum effect in the preference settings.

You can also focus on one object, including specific parts of a rig.

Just go to scene explorer and unfreeze the mesh to your object, proceed then to make your object selection. Now you may see the ghosted path of movement.

When you are finished utilizing this tool you can go to the ghosting tab and deselect it. Thus making it disappear.

Baking Animation in 3ds Max
Baking is the process of converting movement into key frame animation, as you need full control over a dynamic object. The object may be driven by expression and you want to convert this into key frame animation.

The variable of drive was added to the expression in this case. With the object selected move to the motion panel and then proceed to select trajectories.

This then shows the path of the animation.

Here you may able to pick the range and transform you would like to bake.

Sample rate will determine how many key frames are created in that range.

So you may need to change it. This creates a multitude of key frames within your curve editor.

OPTIMIZING ANIMATION DATA

In the curve editor you will simplify the wild curves within the multitudes of these key frames.

This allows for all the static keys to be removed and thus make the animation smoother.

GIMBLE LOCK AND EULER FILTER

Gimble lock is when you lose control in one of your rotation axis's.

Go to tools, manage layers and it brings up your controls. From that point you can select the part with the problem, go to the curve editor and see where the issue is an thus fix it.

Go and find the Euler filter.

And press okay allowing for the issue within the rotation of the wrist in this case to be corrected automatically.

Also be sure to delete any extra keys.

ANIMATING OBJECTS ALONG A PATH

The object needs to follow a spline, and a natural arc must be created in the spline for the object to follow. To create the path that the object needs to follow go to the line tool.

Create, and then move on to the shape of the line.

Go to the modify panel and select the points

Right click and proceed to choose Bezier for the purpose of curving the line that you have created.

And you may rotate manually if it is imperfect automatically.

Go to animation tab and go to constraints and then specifically path constraint.

Proceed to drag the object specified to your path.

Turn on follow and the object will follow the path.

Enable banking

And you may use spline on the curves so that you can alter the tangents making it a perfect curvature and line path.

ANIMATING WITH CONSTRAINTS

After selecting the object one may utilize the motion panel

You may alter the weight here in the curve editor.

Go to the path constraint and add keys, setting the key that you have sets properties to zero

From here you will alter the percentage of the tracks of your animation as well. Allowing for a transition of the object to the path line made prior.

To ensure that there is curvature of this movement instead of just straight linear movement you would again select Bezier. Allowing you to adjust the tangents. Making way for a quality transition.