Adding a Background and a Material

Creating and Animating a Flying Logo

Adding a Volume Light and Volume Fog

 

Autodesk 3ds Max Tutorials > Special Effects > Creating and Animating a Flying Logo > 

Adding a Spotlight

• Continue from before or open tut_wwdesigns_globe_text_bground.max.

Create a spotlight:

You'll add a target spotlight that casts a focused beam of light onto each letter of the logo as it rotates. The target in this case is the earth so that you can easily align the beam of light to the logo text.

1. In the Top viewport, slide the time slider to frame 50 so that the logo text is rotated around the lower half of the earth sphere.
   NoteThe illustrations display the text in white, not gold.

   

2. Go to the Create panel > Lights and click Target Spot.
3. In the Top viewport, click below the logo text and drag upwards until the light cone touches the edge of the sphere.
4. Go to the Modify Panel. The Spotlight name appears at the top of the panel. On the Spotlight Parameters rollout use the Falloff/Field spinner to narrow the beam of light. Try changing the Field to 7.0.

   

5. Select the spotlight target.
   TipIf it's difficult to select the spotlight target, type H on the keyboard. In the Select Objects dialog, select Spot01.Target.
6. Select Tools menu > Align and click the earth sphere.
7. In the Align Position (Local) group, click X, Y and Z Positions. For Current Object and Target Object, click Center. Click OK.

   The spotlight target is now aligned to the center of the sphere so that the light shines on the text logo.

8. Select the spotlight source, Spot01. Open the Modify panel and click Exclude from the General parameters rollout.
9. Select the object Planet Earth from the Scene Objects list, and then click the >> button. Click OK.

   This prevents the spotlight from illuminating the earth sphere.

10. Right-click the Perspective viewport label and select Views > ActiveShade to see how the light illuminates the text.

    

    You'll probably need to adjust the spotlight target further so that the light illuminates only one letter at a time.

11. Right-click in an empty place in the viewport and select Close from the upper–left quadrant menu.
12. With the Modify panel still active, scroll the rollouts until you can see the Spotlight Parameters rollout. In the Light Cone group, make sure Circle is turned on.
13. Experiment with different values for Hotspot/Beam and Falloff/Field until the size of the light beam is focused on only one letter.

    

    Target spot illuminating the letter R

14. In the Perspective viewport, play the animation.

    If you prefer that the logo text scroll more slowly, you'll add an additional 100 frames to the animation.

Add frames to the animation:

1. Click the Time Configuration button.
2. In the Time Configuration dialog, set Length to 200.
3. On the toolbar, click the Select by Name button. In the Select Objects dialog, select Planet Earth and Text01.

   The keys appear in the track bar.

4. On the track bar, select the key at frame 100 and slide it to frame 200.
5. Play the animation again. The logo text and the earth sphere rotate more slowly.
6. Save your work to an incremental file name. Choose File > Save As. Click the + button.