topic Re: Questions regarding SFX, fps, and shadows in 3ds Max Animation and Rigging Forum

Questions regarding SFX, fps, and shadows

Anonymous — Sun, 18 Sep 2016 00:31:55 GMT

Hello,

Having trouble getting the fps correct in my animations. Even though I turned up fps in 3ds Max the end results look slow mo? We had to create four objects falling downstairs, dominoes, a wooden block, a bowling ball and a rubber ball for one of our class assignments, I was able to create them, but for like the dominoes, when I ran it in 3ds Max, it was set to a higher fps and ran nicely, but when rendered to an .avi, it looked slow mo?

Other questions I have are, can SFX and the animation be run on separate tracks with the ability to run the animation at a faster fps and the SFX remain on constant 1x? This question came about because I needed to speed up the animated motion of the objects I was working with, but when I did the SFX ended up sounding like it was a 33 rpm being played at 78 rpm?!

And finally, why am I not getting shadows on my objects even when I add lighting? I've added Standard/Omni lights as well as Skylights and other variations, while making sure I had shadows turned on for all objects and the scene, and having the scene set to use scene lighting.

Turned in the assignments as finalized by myself, but hope to get help in understanding what might be done to avoid such issues and make the correct adjustments going forward.

Any and all suggestions will be taken with seriously, used to improve my animations and appreciated greatly!

Thank you AutoDesk Community YOU ROCK!

Sincerely,

Crystal

Re: Questions regarding SFX, fps, and shadows

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Sep 2016 18:31:35 GMT

Hi,

No one was able to help on this so far. I figured out the lighting issue, but was still hoping for help with the audio / animation tracks and whether or not these can be separated as they can in ToonBoom. Whenever I speed up or slow down the visual animation, the SFX is also slowed or sped up, which then screws up the whole scene.

Any tutorial links, materials or hints / tips / tricks regarding this would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Crystal

Re: Questions regarding SFX, fps, and shadows

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Sep 2016 18:33:11 GMT

Hi,

No one was able to help on this so far. I figured out the lighting issue, but was still hoping for help with the audio / animation tracks and whether or not these can be separated as they can in TB. Whenever I speed up or slow down the visual animation, the sound effects are also slowed or sped up, which then screws up the whole scene.

Any tutorial links, materials or hints / tips / tricks regarding this would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Crystal

Re: Questions regarding SFX, fps, and shadows

ads_royje — Thu, 22 Sep 2016 19:17:32 GMT

Hi Crystal,

sorry you did not get an answer so far 😕

For Audio / animation tracks.

In 3ds Max the time line drives the playback, and audio is synchronized to time.

The animation is synchronized to time by fps as you specified.

You can indeed change the 'speed' value for playback in max, but that is not altering the animation, it is just doing it faster. Thus why you get the 33rpm sounds like played at 78rpm! (that's a funny record reference 😉 hehehe but I get it! 🙂 )

If you need to alter your animation to play faster, but keeping the same fps you'd need to use the trackview retime tool

in the trackview menu > edit > transformation tool > retime tool (for selected object) or retime all tool (for all scene animation)

There is another 'intuitive' way of retiming animation, I'd suggest this.

In the time line, right-click > Configure > Show Selection Range

Select you animated object,

Keys are displayed in the timeline, select the keys in the time line.

A black line appears, with a white box on each end.

If you pick the line and move it, you can move the animation in time, if you select either white ends , you can retime your animation.

The set up I'd suggest, in the Time Config dialog where you can set the speed.

Set the fps to 30 fps (NTSC) which the avi can playback smoothly.

Keep the speed set to 1x.

That is the default real animation playback. Using the [x] real time On!

Now, you can select your objects, the keys in the time line, and retime (scale) your animation to run at the 'speed' you like.

When you'll render, you'll get the same animation speed.

I hope this can help clarify a bit! 🙂

Re: Questions regarding SFX, fps, and shadows

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Sep 2016 20:41:17 GMT

Wow!! JT!! You're the best!!! Really. Wow!! I'll use this. I think we'll be lip-syncing at least some of our final animation in the course I'm in now, so this info will be beyond valuable to me! Thank you, THANK YOU, Thank you!! 🙂 Perfect!

Re: Questions regarding SFX, fps, and shadows

ads_royje — Thu, 22 Sep 2016 20:44:47 GMT

Your happiness makes my day worthwhile! 🙂

Indeed, for lipsync, you'll find the Selection range very effective! 🙂

It will affect only the selected keys, so you can fine tune the lipsync animation to the audio!