Page 948 - Kitab3DsMax

Part VIII: Advanced Animation Techniques
FIGURE 36.12
The monorail and “Primitive Town”

Drawing curves
If you know what the curve you want is supposed to look like, you can actually draw it in the Key pane
with the Draw Curves button enabled. This mode adds a key for every change in the curve. You may want
to use the Reduce Keys optimization after drawing a curve.

Tip
If you make a mistake, you can just draw over the top of the existing curve to make corrections. n
Figure 36.13 shows a curve that was created with the Draw Curves feature.
Reducing keys
The Reduce Keys button enables you to optimize the number of keys used in an animation. Certain IK
(inverse kinematics) methods and the Dynamics utility calculate keys for every frame in the scene, which
can increase your file size greatly. By optimizing with the Reduce Keys button, you can reduce the file size
and complexity of your animations.
Clicking the Reduce Keys button opens the Reduce Keys dialog box. The threshold value determines how
close to the actual position the solution must be to eliminate the key. Figure 36.14 shows the same curve
created with the Draw Curves feature after it has been optimized with a Threshold value of 0.5 using the
Reduce Keys button.

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