ANIMATING LIGHTS AND CAMERAS

You can virtually animate any object in Max. This would include lights and cameras. The same principle is applied when animating these objects. All you need to do is set up the scene and plan-out the animation sequence for the lights and cameras. For example, let’s say you are trying to light up a scene using various light colors. First, set the Autokey for the initial light. After that you can continue by changing the color of the light and setting your Autokey as well.

Figure 5-9. Animating light color.

For cameras, it’s very easy. You can either pan or zoom around the scene. Most animations include panning while zooming is used when you want to focus on a subject in the scene.

Figure 5-10. Zooming in the camera.

There’s much to explore if you want to animate lights and cameras. You can move them, rotate them and pretty much anything that is doable in Max can be animated. As the saying goes, the sky is the limit.

Try This!

1. Load the lighting.max from http://www.mediafire.com/?2pathhocnwd4wy8.

2. Move the Track Slider to Frame 100 and press the ‘Autokey’ button.

3. Select the ‘Sunlight’ object. Go to the ‘Intensity/Color/Attenuation’ and change its light color to black.

4. Now, select the ‘Camera01’ object and zoom in on the lamp.

5. Press the Autokey button again and click on the Play button to see how the sunlight and camera is animated.

You have seen the different techniques in animating objects in your scene. Just a review, bones are used to move most objects such as characters and mechanical devices. In addition, when doing facial animations morphing is best used. Lastly, bring life to your scenes by animating lights and cameras for more theatrical effects.