Part 3, Basic Animation continued

This problem is easilly fixed. In the Time Configuration window I simply change the length upto 200, that'll do for now (you can tell I haven't a clue how many frames this'll take :P ). In the time frame there are now 200 frames. All the keys I set before are still on the same frames and the animation still runs at the same speed.

At this time the final leg segment is at the top, it doesn't need to move up. All that's left is for the body to move up on top. I put it's final frame as 140, it moves up at a constant speed. But it suddenly stops. It would look much better if it slows to a stop. So how do we do this? By manipulating the final key! With the time slider on the key I want to manipulate I go to the motion tab on the Command Panel. At the bottom is the key info rollout. Here we can control how the animation flows into and out of the selected key, and the graph think with crosses helps you to picture how the animation flows (3DS Max 5 and up uses a different system here, you get buttons with the various track view settings to choose from, ie east to, ease from, direct etc). Because I want it to slow to a stop into this key I increase the "Ease To" setting (default 0). This can be very much trial and error in gmax, but in playback 27.5 looked good in this case. Thing is though it goes up faster from the last key so it can slow to a stop. To compensate for this sudden acceleration I moved the key forward to frame 158, now it can slow to a stop without suddenly accelerating from the previous key.

So now it lifts up nicly and slows to a stop, but surly breaking all laws of physics it's only balencing on 1 leg. To get the other 3 legs I can simply clone the set of leg segments I already have, and as a bonus the clones come with the animation keys so I don't need to do them again!

Proceed to Part 4