Preserved Topic: 360° rotations in 3DSMax

I want to capture a 360° rotation in 3DSMax to a .gif.

Can someone point me to a tutorial for doing this?

360 rotations in max are probobly the main reason i HATE that program...

Sadly you just cant keyframe the start and end positions, as max will not rotate properly. You will have to set various keyframes along the way to make sure it rotates without back- rolling.

--now inc

www.now-incorporated.com

Max 4 does not have that problem. It was one of the enhancements over v3.

so how do I do it in 4 Das? I have Max4...

In MAX 3, you can rotate it 90 degrees, keyframe, 90 degrees, keyframe, etcetera...after that render it to an avi file, and i think then that one or another gif animation application will allow you to open the avi and save it as a gif animation.




Computer Senility. I had a friend once who had it. His name was Gilbert, but he prefered it if people called him 'Ramases Niblick the third...Kerplunk, Kerplunk, Whoops! Wheres my thribble?'... - Kryton, Red Dwarf.

I wouldn't render to an avi. You'd get degradation from the avi codec (unless you used a lossless codec, and then the file would be huge).

The Max4 feature list said that you don't need more than two keyframes, but it wasn't working for me.

This is how I'd do it:
1 - turn on animate
2 - move 1/3 of the way to the end of the animation (with 30 frames, move to frame 10), and rotate the object 120 degrees
3 - move 2/3 of the way to the end (frame 20 of a 30 frame animation), and rotate the object another 120 degrees
4 - move to the end of the animation and rotate another 120 degrees (360 total)
5 - render to numbered files. I like to use 24-bit TGA files. Use a folder with nothing else in it.
--- to render to numbered files, go to the render dialog, specify an output file (test.tga), and select the option "Active time segment"
6 - in ImageReady, select File

don't you guys find the animate button a complete pain in the ass. i hate that damn thing, its so vague and i keep leaving it on. Motion graphs are the only way to animate, if you can learn how to use them then you can probably do anything

I described the procedure using the animate button because it would take too long to give a crash course in the trackview (which is Max's motion graph system).

Actually, for a simple 360 rotation, I'd probably use an expression, and define the angle vs framenumber. There's no need for keyframes at all.

If MAX is softening the motion graph for keyframes, and you can't mess with the motion graph, This is what I would do.

Keyframe at frame 0 with 0° rotation, keyrame at 90 with 1080° rotation, render frames 31-60.
That's assuming you want a 30 frame turntable animation.

-Electro www.badsun.com

[This message has been edited by Electro (edited 04-23-2001).]

I haven't done any animation in a *long* time, let alone in 3DS Max. But I'll interject anyways.

Why not set a path for the camera to pan around the object? Seems like you should be able to do the same thing with lights. Just track the object, leave the object sitting still, and move everything else. I'ld do it with 1 or 2 light sources. Actually, I would do it with more just because it's lateral way of doing it. I'm such a rebel that way.

Certainly not for every instance, but it is an alternative. Then again, there is something to be said for learning how to keyframe the object itself for rotation.

I did something similar to that for my red plastic die (which seems to have been archived), warjournal.

I found it easier to link the camera to a dummy object at the world origin, then I just rotated the dummy. This causes the camera to smoothly orbit the world origin (where I'd placed the die).

Okay, I've had a flashback to my old Amiga 2000 days. Don't remember the package, but you could do rotations by doing a physics simulation. Drop the object on a frictionless surface and give it a rotational vector. Of course it's a lot of math if you want one rotation to fit into so many frames. I think you could just give it a rotational vector and let it go without the whole physics simulation deal. Bah!

Physics simulations on a home 'puter back then were da-bomb. So was anti-aliasing.

Man, I feel old.

Back to your lives, citizens. Nothing here to see.