3D Max Keyframe info headache

[Chris62]

Ive been using 3D Max for quite a while however the key frame velocity settings still elude me. This is a real simple scene but Im pulling my hair out.

 

The camera is constrained to my path - the camera target is looking at earth. Standard mats - scanline render , web rez output.

 

Camera pulls away from the sun, swings around orbit 270 degrees and settles on earth - trying this in 3 - 5 seconds.

 

For the life of me I cant get the camera to slow up and land softly - I have a hard hit. It looks worse because the earth is at a slow ration. Ive got the curves window open and I use bezier curves every day in PS, Illustrator and animation curves in After Effects - its where I live, but I cant get the proper change in velocity with the Max curves no matter what I do.

 

Any help would be great - I can zip this simple scene.

 

thanks

Edited February 2, 2014 by Chris62

[Nicolai Bongard]

It has been a while since i did any animation, but here are my tips: Double check that you do not have a keyframe just before the last one (or witchever you are are trying to edit the curve of), as the curve will only affect the movement between the one you are editing and the one before (or after). So if you have two keys close to each other, the movement change caused by the curve might not be noticeable. When animating a camera along a spline, you should (unless there are some stops on the way) only have two keys, one at the start of the movement, and one at the end. Also note; there are different curves depending on wether you want to adjust the movement to or from the keyframe. Also, 3-5 seconds sounds really fast, you might have to adjust the curve significantly in order for the slowdown to be noticed, but then that will mean that everything else will be sped up/the camera will spend less time there. You should perhaps consider making the animation slightly longer.

[Chris62]

Hi Nicolai,

 

Thanks so much. Yes I checked the keyframes to make sure there wasnt one next to or maybe underneath somehow, and yes only two keyframes - start and end. It is a bit short but I have 22 seconds to work with and have several other elements in the allotted 22 seconds so Ill have to see where i can trim the other segments down to free up some time.

 

I did notice though the key frame interface is a bit different when you use the constraint to path option. Im really happy with the simple move, it just lands really hard so Ill see how it looks at twice the length.

 

Its all pretty straight forward but for some reason the animation curves always seem a thorn in my side.

[Francisco Penaloza]

Usually when you have complex camera move I divide each move to different dummies then link the camera to this dummies, so some of them will control distance, the other height or rotation and so on, this way I don't end up with a jungle of path in my graph editor.

 

If you are just using a spline to control the path of your camera, you need to click on the camera, then go to the Motion panel, click on the path Constraint controller and change it to Bezier float, then you can adjust your ease curve in the graph editor as you need. This graph will control only speed or position on time for your camera, physical location will be controlled by the position of the actual path.