Playblasting Your Animation

table of contents

Playing your animation in the Perspective view gives you a rough idea of what your animation is going to look like. However, even the fastest computer and 3D graphics card can become bogged down and fail to display the animation smoothly at the frame rate you want. In some cases, hiding objects or setting the display quality lower can compensate. However, sometimes this isn't enough, and you must create a compiled movie of the frames to see the animation play smoothly at the target rate. Rendering the entire animation would give you this compiled movie, but it could take hours. Maya provides a faster method: the Playblast feature.

Tutorial: Using Playblast

The Playblast works by taking a screen shot, frame by frame, from a particular viewport, and then playing them back in sequence as a compiled movie. The result is an accurate interpretation of your animation's timing at final render. Playblasting can help you identify areas of your animation that might be off in timing. Follow these steps to try it out:

  1. With the Perspective view active, position the view so that you can easily see the house as it deforms . Open the Playblast Options dialog box (Hotbox Window Playblast option box) and reset the settings to their default values (Edit Reset Settings).

    graphics/ch10d_icon.gif graphics/ch10e_icon.gif
  2. You'll notice that the Scale value is set to 0.50. Click the Playblast button. The Perspective view displays at half (50%) of normal size, and you can see the animation being played back one frame at a time. During this process, each of the animation frames is captured and stored to a buffer.

    trap

    Maya is relying on your 3D graphics card to calculate the images. If you cover the Maya interface with another window to do something else while the Playblast renders , your video card will not attempt to draw the images, and you won't have a movie to watch! You must leave the Playblast window open and unobscured while Playblast calculates.

  3. When the playblast ends, your default media player opens and plays back the animation. Use this playback to decide whether you are happy with the way your house moves. If you find any problems, go back to the Graph Editor and make changes as needed.

  4. Remember to save your scene again after making any changes.

tip

Because it takes time to evaluate your animation before you can edit it, it's essential that you keep your system responsive . Adopt the philosophy of "divide and conquer." Hide all the objects you don't need to see. Replace complex objects with simpler, faster-to-display approximations ("proxy" objects). In short, do everything you can to get your display to play back animations at the target speed so that you can easily evaluate your work by clicking the Play button. If you must resort to a Playblast or a full render every time you're ready to evaluate your animation keys, it will slow your work and also wear down your creativity.


Going Further

Having the house move is fun, but when the chimney and porch are visible, the animation doesn't look rightthe chimney and porch remain still while the rest of the house warps through them. Using the skills you have learned so far, try setting them up for animation. You can group them with the house's deformations first so that they follow the house's motions . Then you can apply additional bend or other animation to make the chimney and porch more lively. If you aren't sure what the animation should look like with the porch and chimney animated, load the scene file noted here.

graphics/ch10f_icon.gif


Maya 4. 5 Fundamentals
Maya 4.5 Fundamentals
ISBN: 0735713278
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 201

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net