Animating with Dummy Objects

Animating with Auto Key: Bouncing a Ball

Using Weighted List Controllers

 

Autodesk 3ds Max Tutorials > Animation Tutorials > Animating with Auto Key: Bouncing a Ball > 

Using the Dope Sheet Editor

Track View also has a mode called Dope Sheet, which lets you work with keys and ranges. In this lesson, you'll use the range function to make your animation go faster. You'll also use the Time tools to reverse your animation.

Speed up the animation:

The bouncing ball doesn't have enough pep. To speed up the animation, you'll use Edit Ranges in Dope Sheet mode.

1. Continue from before or open bounce_multiplied.max.
2. Select the dummy object in the viewport. Then, on the Graph Editors menu, choose Track View — Dope Sheet.
3. On the Keys: Dope Sheet toolbar, click Edit Ranges. By default, the Keys: Dope Sheet toolbar is on the top left.

   The Keys window now displays the ranges for the animation.

4. In the Controller window, highlight the item label Dummy01. This way you will adjust the ranges of all the dummy’s tracks at the same time.

   Before making changes to the dummy, you want to make sure you also are making changes to the bouncing ball as well. Since the bouncing ball is the child of the dummy, you'll use the Modify Child Keys button.

5. On the Display: Dope Sheet toolbar, click Modify Child Keys to turn it on.

   Now the changes you make to the dummy range will also be applied to the bouncing ball.

6. Click the end of the Dummy range and drag it to the left to around frame 100.

   

   Range bars used to speed up the animation

   This compresses the animation for the dummy and the bouncing ball so it happens within 100 frames.

   TipYou can raise the time ruler up from the bottom of the Keys window for greater precision.
7. Play the animation.

   The animation plays faster. The ball continues bouncing at the end of the animation. There are several different ways you could correct this. You could try to use an ease curve to stop the animation, or create keys from the out-of-range curve, and then delete the keys. Or you can set the active time segment to 100 frames.

8. Click the Time Configuration button beneath the animation playback controls.
9. Change the Animation End time to 100.

Reverse time:

You can reverse the animation by using the Time tools available in Dope Sheet mode. It's easy to do.

1. On the Keys Dope Sheet toolbar, click Edit Keys.

   The range bars are replaced with keys.

2. On the Time menu, choose Select.

   When working with Time commands, you first select the time, then make changes to it.

3. In the Keys window, on the Dummy track, drag from frame 0 to frame 100 to select the time.

   The time is displayed as a light yellow band in the Dummy track.

   

   Time displayed as light yellow band

4. On the Time menu, choose Reverse

   The animation plays backwards. The ball bounces from right to left instead of left to right, and the last bounce now happens on the letter F instead of the double L in ball.

   Tip You can easily reverse the playback of an animation using controls found in the Time Configuration menu. But if you need to actually reverse the keys, this is the technique to use.