3D Animation

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3D Animation

• The location of any object can be defined with a
  coordinate system.
• Think of the Earths longitude and latitude as a
  polar coordinate system.
• The coordinate system we use is the Cartesian
  coordinate system.
• It was developed in 1637.

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3D Animation
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3D Animation

• The X and Y axes form a flat 2D plane. Much
  like a piece of paper on your desk.
• This geometric plane doesnt actually exist
  because it has no thickness. However we will use
  this concept as a necessary means in creating our
  model geometry.
• The location were the X, Y, and Z axes cross is
  called the origin.

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3D Animation

• The X, Y coordinate plane looks like this

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3D Animation

• The Z axis is added to complete the coordinate
  system.

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3D Animation

• There are three intersecting planes
• XY, YZ, and ZX

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3D Animation

• A Scene is a collection of elements that combine
  to create a visual illusion in computer graphics
  (CG).
• Objects in 3D graphics are called models or
  geometry.
• Your creation of 3D objects is called modeling.

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3D Animation

• Visual qualities that give models a finished
  appearance such as color, shininess, bumpiness,
  and pattern are called materials.
• Materials are pre-made or can be created. A
  scanned image can be applied to a model. This is
  called a map.

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3D Animation

• The act of bringing your scenes and models to
  life is called Animation.
• We will use a process know as Keyframing to
  create our animations. We will create a few
  key frames and let 3ds MAX interpolate the
  rest. (This is referred to as tweening).

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3D Animation

• When the models have been created, the materials
  applied, the cameras in place, and the lighting
  done it is time to render the scene.
• Rendering usually takes a while. Depending on
  how complex your scene is it could take minutes,
  hours, and even days.
• The good rule is. keep it simple and simulate
  quality when possible.
• We will render to .AVI files and .TIFF as an
  image sequence file.

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3D Animation

• All colors that we use for artwork can be made
  from three primary colors
• Red, Yellow, and Blue
• However, colors used in 3D graphics software use
  three different primary colors
• Red, Green, and Blue
• This is because the light from the computer is
  projected into our eyes, which will behave
  differently than color that is used for paint.

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3D Animation

• Mixing paint colors of red, yellow, and blue will
  yield black.
• When red, green, and blue are projected together
  from our computer screen we get the opposite
  effect white.

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3D Animation

• Another method of mixing colors in 3ds MAX is
  HSL.
• Hue is the tint of a color. They are colors of
  the spectrum.
• Saturation is the relative purity of a hue. A
  pure hue is vibrant and said to be saturated. If
  other hues are mixed then it eventually becomes
  desaturated.
• Luminance is the brightness of a color. A
  luminance of zero is black.

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3D Animation

• A bitmap is a file that contains an image. It is
  a flat 2D image.
• They can be a scanned photograph, an image
  created in a paint program, or rendered in a
  program like MAX.
• Formats include .BMP, .TGA, .TIFF, and JPG.
• Read the WARNING statement on page 13.
• Resolution is the number of pixels across and
  down the image. 640 x 480 is common 1024 x 768
  is higher. Higher resolutions require more
  rendering time.

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3D Animation

• Bit Depth A bitmap will have a maximum number
  of colors that it can contain. It is the number
  of bits per pixel.
• If an image stores 8 bits per pixel, then it
  stores an eight-digit binary number for each
  pixel. The highest is 11111111.

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3D Animation

• Color Channels There are three channels for
  each primary computer color RGB. If each
  channel has 8 bits then 3 x 8 24.
• 8 bits 28 256
• 16 bits 216 65,536
• 24 bits 224 16,777,216
• 24 bits is about all we can perceive.

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3D Animation

• An alpha channel is transparency information
  built into a bitmap. It works like a mask to
  make some parts of the image opaque and others
  transparent.
• The process of combining multiple images and
  animations to create a final production is called
  compositing.
• 3ds MAX is a compositing program as well as Adobe
  Premier, Adobe After Effects, and Combustion.