Animating the Ball
Your first step is to keyframe the positions of the ball. As you learned in Chapter 1, “The 3ds Max Interface,” keyframing is the process—borrowed from traditional animation—of setting positions and values at particular frames of the animation. The computer interpolates between these keyframes to fill in the other frames to complete a smooth animation.
Open the Animation_Ball_00.max scene file from the Scenes folder of the Bouncing Ball project you downloaded. If you get a warning to “Disable Gamma/LUT,” click OK.
Start with the gross animation, or the overall movements. This is also called blocking. First, move the ball up and down to begin its choreography.
Follow these steps to animate the ball:
1. Move the pivot point ...
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