Animating in Bryce The first thing I did was copy a 3D model I had made known as temple scene, this

was so I didnt damage the original file. By using a duplicated copy with its own easily identifiable name meant that if that got damaged I nonetheless had my original as a back up. This duplicated file was then placed onto the desktop. The reason being using the file direct from the server or from a memory stick would likely cause a lot of problems, such as aborting the reanimation rendering partly via the animation. The next stage was a check on the document specifications; this is a good idea to do whenever a new Bryce scene is created. This is simply because doing it later on in the project can cause issues. The first specification I checked was the document set up, I created certain the size of the scene was 768x576 (as this would be simpler to convert into the PAL format). I also created sure antialias was turned on to improve the image high quality. If I want the animation to be truly detailed I could click on superfine, nevertheless this would greatly increase the render time. For this easy test animation that quantity of detail was not required. I could also specify if I wanted the render time to be shown. I choose to have it on, as it would tell me how long it would take to render the animation. It is often a good idea to start having a extremely basic setting, after which upgrade up to a regular that your happy with. Now the fundamental set up was out of the way the next stage was to sort out the camera. After all only the camera can film the animation and not the other cameras like the director camera. For example if the director camera is searching at 1 object like a train, and also the camera is searching at an additional object like a pen. The train would not be observed as the animation is only seen via the camera, and not the director camera. This indicates that in this case only the pen could be seen. I could make the camera go to the director cameras position, by going towards the little upside down triangles on the left of the main window (under the triangle that permits a choice of camera) and choosing camera to director. The impact of this is that now the camera sees and follows the directors camera precisely, what the director camera sees is what the camera sees. I also at this point had to set some more parameters in the animation set up. The parameters I required to select where how long the duration of the animation was going to last, which I could easily input into the correct min, hours, seconds, boxes. Plus I could select to show if I wanted the time of the frame, or the number of the frame to be shown. This was so I would know what time or frame number was being rendered during rendering. It is usually much better to render small snippets of animation instead of trying to do it all in 1 go. Doing it in 1 go can take a great deal of time. One of Robs suggestions was for lengthy animations render a few seconds of animation on a few computers, as doing this vastly speeds up the rendering procedure (much like a render farm). Now that the time has been set a blue bar should

appear under the primary window. This blue bar is the timeline for Bryce, its a bit simplistic, but its a simple program. Under the blue bar are timeline controls, controls to change how the timeline looks also as a button to nano preview animations to test them out. Also included is an icon of a key (called the autokey), when the slider on the timeline is over a keyframe, the key will glow yellow indicating a keyframes presence. Lastly there is a toggle button to toggle among the animation controls and the main Bryce display. However autokey can be turned off, and keyframes added manually by utilizing a plus, or removed utilizing the subtract icon. The introduction of the timeline now means which you will discover in issues like material properties boxes will now have a timeline as well, in which properties may be changed over time. Now that I am all ready, I can now begin to animate some thing in this case the camera. To animate the camera I have to make certain absolutely nothing else is selected. By default Bryce will automatically choose the camera as the object to be animated. Using the camera selected start at the point you would like to animate the camera from, and then move it into its final position in the end of the timeline. This should result in the begin of the animation using the camera in its begin position, and at the end of the animation, the camera should be at its final destination. Anything in among the keyframes in the begin and finish the camera ought to be moving its position in order. This way of doing its hardly ideal the reason becoming is that often the camera is in the wrong position halfway down the timeline. Nevertheless this can be effortlessly resolved by selecting a various camera angle and choosing the camera inside the scene. This ought to mean that the camera is not only selected, but its path as well should be visible represented by a blue line. Keyframes on this line ought to be represented by a blue dot. It is worth pointing out that in the event you where to slide the timeline slider at this time, you need to see the camera move along the blue pathway. At any point of this blue pathway line you can move about the pathways direction by going to edit and shifting the x y z parameters. By doing this you are able to get a far much more accrete control over not just the camera positions, but also other animated objects as well. Now that I'm pleased using the animation all that is then needed is for it to be rendered and saved. However its worth checking the nano preview to make certain that the animation is ideal, this nano preview should give a rough idea what the finish result will look like. If this is ideal which it was in my case I had to go to Render animation and double check the begin and finish time, generating certain this it was correct. I then checked the format of the movie and its compression. For Macs it automatically selects the very best choice which is Quicktime. For PC its very best to save as DVI as Macs cant handle Quicktime created in the PC. By saving it as an AVI in the PC means it can be read by the Macs, without too much trouble. All thats then needed is too select the destination location of the file, which in my case will be the desktop. Click OK and also the animation should begin rendering. Lastly its a great idea to watch the very first frame of animation to obtain a great idea of the length of the animation. If its too long its worth thinking about breaking up the

animation some more. My finish result was that my animation showed the camera move from its begin position to its finish position, with out bumping into anything. This nevertheless was not the end of this initial foray into animation; I had to add on time to the duration setting taking my animation from its original three seconds of length, to 6 seconds. In this extra 3 seconds I added a little animation of the donut shape in the middle of my villa slowly moving up in parallel with the camera. I animated this on a separate computer, as the first animation was being rendered on an additional machine. Performing this meant I could animate both the animations in half the time. The animations where now both complete, they where not great, but not poor for a initial attempt at Bryce animation. anime