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CAD Forums => CAD General => The Third Dimension => Topic started by: jbaxter on December 20, 2007, 10:57:08 PM

Title: 3D Max Animation speed
Post by: jbaxter on December 20, 2007, 10:57:08 PM: Hi,

I am preapring a coupkle of small flybys of a scene and always seem to result in an AVI file that has too fast a speed.

Seems like no matter what I do to change fps or time scale the AVI runs too quickly.

Scene just has a simple camera followign a path spline.

Would like some advice on this.

Regards,
John
Title: Re: 3D Max Animation speed
Post by: MP on December 20, 2007, 10:58:19 PM: Maybe run it on Vista.

:-D
Title: Re: 3D Max Animation speed
Post by: MP on December 20, 2007, 11:04:08 PM: Have you tried bring up Task Mangler and giving the running video process low priority (right click, Set Priority ...)?
Title: Re: 3D Max Animation speed
Post by: jbaxter on December 20, 2007, 11:14:12 PM: I want to send these AVI's to some clients and do not want to ask them to fiddle around with system settings.

Regards,
JB
Title: Re: 3D Max Animation speed
Post by: mjfarrell on December 21, 2007, 05:12:43 PM: John,

Without seeing your time scale settings, or the codec you are selecting, I offer this.

FPS, number of frames, and duration are related.

I suggest setting 15 FPS and 45 seconds as your time scale for this motion path animation, you should get 675 frames.
Title: Re: 3D Max Animation speed
Post by: jbaxter on December 21, 2007, 06:42:22 PM: Thank you, I will give it a try.

I had 15fps and 180 for time scale.

Regards,
John
Title: Re: 3D Max Animation speed
Post by: jbaxter on December 21, 2007, 06:48:22 PM: Hi,

15fps and 45 time scale resulted in the camera only travelling a small distance along the constrained path and was not any slower, quite confusing this.

Regards,
JB
Title: Re: 3D Max Animation speed
Post by: mjfarrell on December 21, 2007, 06:50:12 PM: change that 45 to 675
Title: Re: 3D Max Animation speed
Post by: jbaxter on December 21, 2007, 07:35:42 PM: AArrrrgggghhhh :-), after changing to 675 the camera travels all the way down the path until it reaches 180 (no slower) and then from 180 to 675 on the time scale just sits there still????

Regards,
JB
Title: Re: 3D Max Animation speed
Post by: mjfarrell on December 21, 2007, 08:07:35 PM: now that you have the correct number of frames, you now need to remove the key at frame 180
you need two key frames, one at zero, position one, and one at 675, final position
Title: Re: 3D Max Animation speed
Post by: mjfarrell on December 21, 2007, 08:18:24 PM: perhaps this will help :
http://www.cadtutor.net/dd/studio/walk/walk.html (http://www.cadtutor.net/dd/studio/walk/walk.html)
Title: Re: 3D Max Animation speed
Post by: jbaxter on December 21, 2007, 08:29:45 PM: Thank you, that is a big help.

I am just working out how to add/remove key frames.

Regards,
JB
Title: Re: 3D Max Animation speed
Post by: jbaxter on December 21, 2007, 09:05:25 PM: Hi,

Thanks for your help with this.

I found the track view area where you can select the camera and its position and shows the keys, seems like you can right click the vertex points and change the end keyframe to be 675 rather than 180.

Not sure why I cannot do this simpler with the large key button at bottom of screen with set key toggled but does not seem to have any effect in adding keys?

I am stumbling around with it but sometimes the best way to learn.

Looks like increasing the time scale and then changing the keyframe to the end frame has slowed the animation down considerably and gets the result I am after.

I will check out a few tutorials on keyframing and see if I can learn a bit more about it, I found an interesting tutorial with a bouncing ball here:

http://www.sajuonline.com/Pages/Learners-corner/3D%20Studio%20MAX%203DS/basics/Chapter%204/chap%204-%20keyframe-anim-basics-page1.htm (http://www.sajuonline.com/Pages/Learners-corner/3D%20Studio%20MAX%203DS/basics/Chapter%204/chap%204-%20keyframe-anim-basics-page1.htm)

Regards,
JB