Our first go at 3D animation was to create a bouncing ball, but first we needed to explore and understand how the key frames in 3DS Max work. Hitting the auto key button allows use to go into animation mode within 3Ds Max.
(Example of key frames being used.)
We first moved our ball around to understand how the key frames our ball was in moved and animated when placing them within different locations within different frames. Once done we then put in some eyes and grouped them together to make a little ball character. We then animated the character ball to bounce.
(Example of ball character being moved around and animated)
To give the illusion of the ball bouncing we moved the ball character upwards then down, then scaling it to give the impression the ball was being squished by the pressure of the force to make a bounce.
(Example of Scaling the ball on a key frame to give impression of pressure.)
Now that my animation is complete, I then moved onto rendering my animation into a video file, as seen in the link below.
Opening Doors Animation
Making the crate was created simply by placing in a box and sizing it to what I wanted. Once the box was sized I then converted it to an editable poly, there we inset and then extruded to make our box look like a crate.
(Example of the crate created.)
Now done we needed to make the hollow inside of the crate, we did this by selecting a face of the chosen area of the crate that I wanted to be the entrance, and extruded it then by using the move tool to pull back inside it's self to make the entrance.
We then needed to make the doors for the crate, this was done by placing boxes and then flattening them down to look like doors and placing them together. I then went into the hierarchy tools, and created the pivot point for my doors, so they will have a hinge to animate a swing effect, also locking the door is once position making it easier to animate.
(Example of hollow inside of crate and door animation.)
Hitting auto key to activate animation, I rotated the doors to open then close. When I was happy I then rendered the animation as seen below.
Texturing
Not having a lot of experience in 3Ds Max, we thought it might be a good idea, to explore the basics of how texturing is done and created. We unwrapped our model into a UV, there we flattered the map to lay out all the area's of our model, once done we exported our UV map as a JPEG and took it into Photoshop where we could do some simple painting over it.
(Example of UV mapping)
Once into Photoshop, I put a grey overlay on and started painting with the colour orange on the sides to give the impression of rust. When I was happy I then imported my map into the materials and placed it on my model, still not accurate what what i created when applied I then added the image of my UV mapping into the UV editor to add that accurate texture.
(Example of the map I made, and it applied to my crate.)
Video below shows the same animation of the doors opening but with a texture applied to the crate.
Outcome: Today I learnt a great deal about how an animation might work within 3D software, I have next to no experience in 3D animation, so I've always wondering how animations were created within a 3D environment like 3ds Max. Understanding how key frames and and auto key work, helps me fully understand how to perform the basic beginnings of an animation, these principles can also be applied to software packages like Maya as well. Learning how to texture and use UV maps in 3ds Max was very interesting to learn, I have no experience or training within 3ds max, so learning how to texture, create objects and animate is all good to understand how to use 3ds max.
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