animation
Adam's intro to max architectural animation text tutorial, which is practically impossible, but I'll give it a shot:
SETUP:
- Get your scene with all your object, lights, materials, etc. the way you want 'em
- There's a little button usually in the lower right that's called "Time Configuration" - click it
- The defaults should be good, but you might like the Time Display to be SMPTE, which gives the time in minutes, seconds, and then frames. Standard NTSC (American video) has 30 frames per second. I assume you know how animation works, and thus what frames are and why there are 30 per second.
- Still in Time Configuration, there's a box under Animation that says Length -- input how long your animation will be (this can be changed later, so don't sweat it). For a 10 second animation, enter 0:10:0. For 3 1/2 seconds (I don't know why), enter 0:3:15.
ANIMATE:
- The simplest way to animate is to press the Auto Key button. You'll notice the Time Slider Bar turn red, as well as the active viewport. This means you're animating... ooo, exciting.
- Your objects will all be positioned where they are at time 0:0:0. Move the Time Slider to a few seconds over.
- Move an object.
- Press the Auto Key again.
- Move the Time Slider back to 0:0:0.
- Press the Play Animation key. Take note of two things: the Time Slider starts moving on its own and your object should move on its own, too!
RENDER:
- Open up the Render Scene window.
- Under Common/Common Parameters/Time Output, instead of Single, choose Active Segment or enter a Range of time you want rendered.
- Choose an output size you'd like.
- Choose Render Output File. In this window, choose a format you'd like. I like .avi because it's non-proprietary and offers a range of codecs.
- After pressing Save, you'll get a window for the AVI File Compression. The default's usually fine (Cinepak), but the others each have their specialities. I'd highly recommend testing your video, as different codecs are supported or not supported by different machines, operating systems, softwares, etc. This is a world of confusion in itself.
- Back in the Render Scene window, go 'head and press render (make sure the proper viewport's selected.
That's the ultra-abbreviated version of animating. As with everything in Max, you can dive as deep into it as you have patience for.
Handy tools you may want to check out (each of these could use its own tutorial):
- menu: Animation / Make Preview...
- menu: View / Show Ghosting
- right-click the viewport name / Show Safe Frame
- You can render an animation to a still image (.jpg, for instance), which will render each frame as a separate file. This is convenient for rendering different pieces of a longer animation not at the same time. You can later assemble the .jpgs with menu: Rendering / RAM Player
- Set Keys - a more manual way of animating, but gives you more control. Use this with Key Filters, which limits what attributes of an object get animated.
- And for that matter, check out what Keys are all about. You'll notice little red boxes in the Time Slider where you've animated objects. Again, there's a whole world to explore in each of these.
- I've often been asked, "Is there a way to render multiple cameras at the same time [for still shots]?" There is no easy way to do this that I know of -- please let me know if you do. However, what I do to achieve this task is set up an 'animation' with very few frames -- one for each still shot that I want, and use only one camera. When I have a shot that I like, I move to the next frame, hit the Auto Key button, position my camera where I want it, and repeat the process for each shot. Then render the range of frames to still .jpgs with the high resolution that I want. Now you can sleep while your machine renders for a few hours!
The only other comment I have for architectural rendering, is that in Max nearly everything can be animated that you'd want. For instance, you can animate lights, materials, modifiers, and object parameters. If you begin to play around, you might lose sleep. Enjoy :)