Page 962 - Kitab3DsMax

FIGURE 36.28
The In and Out tangents corrected for the new keys

The hopping looks better, but the sliding motion would look better with a slight pause before
Part VIII: Advanced Animation Techniques
hopping over the first red piece.
8. Select Move Keys Horizontal from the Move Keys flyout, and choose the second X-position track
key. Hold down the Shift key, and move the key a few frames to the left to make a copy of the
original key. Click the play button.
The red pieces should disappear as the white piece hops over them.
9. Scroll down the Controller pane on the left, and select the three red pieces. Under Tracks on the
menu bar, choose Visibility ➪ Add.
A visibility track has been added to each of the red pieces, directly below the root name.
With visibility, a value of 0 is invisible, and a value of 1 is visible. You could change the tangent
types to Stepped to turn the red pieces invisible from one frame to the next, but changing the
entire track to an On/Off controller helps to visualize what is happening.
10. Select the visibility track for Red Piece 01. Right-click, and choose Assign Controller. Choose On/Off.
Nothing seems to have happened. The Off/On controller is best used in Dope Sheet mode.
11. Choose Dope Sheet from the Modes menu. The On/Off controller track is represented with a blue
bar. Blue indicates “on” or visible. Click the Add Keys button, and click to add a key at frame 50.
The blue bar stops at the key at frame 50. Click Play.
The first red piece disappears at frame 50. You can copy and paste tracks to save yourself a bit of work.
12. Select Red Piece 01’s visibility track in the Controller pane. Right-click, and choose Copy. Select
the visibility tracks for Red Piece 02 and Red Piece 03 (hold down the Ctrl key to add to the
selection). Right-click, and choose Paste.
Paste as a Copy because the other pieces should disappear at different times.
13. Move Red Piece 02’s key to 75 and Red Piece 03’s key to 100. Click Play.
Things are looking pretty good, but the animation would look better if the whole thing were faster.
14. Click the Edit Ranges button and the Modify Subtree button. A World track bar appears at the
top of the Key Pane. Click and drag the rightmost end of the range bar to frame 75 to scale all the
tracks at one time. Click Play.
The animation is quite respectable as the white piece slides into the correct square and then hops
over and captures the three red pieces.
Figure 36.29 shows the checkerboard.

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