From the course: 3ds Max 2020 Essential Training

Creating keyframes in Auto Key mode - 3ds Max Tutorial

From the course: 3ds Max 2020 Essential Training

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Creating keyframes in Auto Key mode

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- [Instructor] When 3ds Max was first introduced, it had a revolutionary new feature which was Auto Key mode and now this is something that we see in a lot of programs but 3ds Max kind of pioneered that concept in 3d and that is you're in a mode in which whenever you change something, you're automatically creating key frames in an animation. So let's test this out. I've got a camera and I want to trock across the room and I want that to animate. So let's do a little key frame animation. Let's select the move tool and I've got it over here on the left side of the screen in my top view port and I want to animate it moving across the room like that. Alright? So the thing with Auto Key is you don't want to be on frame zero of the animation if you're in Auto Key mode and creating a key frame for the first time. So this is a rule that applies only the first time you create key frames for a particular transform or parameter. What you want to do is enable Auto Key from the bottom of the interface. We got a button labeled "Auto Key." Then you want to go to the position on the timeline, the time index, for the end of the animation. Maybe I'll go down to my last frame, 1:49. And now if I move the object or really do anything in this scene, I'm going to create a key frame at the current time but I'm also going to be creating a key frame at frame zero or the beginning of the animation sequence. So all I have to do to create that animation is just drag this camera over in the x axis, release the mouse, and the animation is finished. I've got a key frame indicated here by a red dot or box and another key frame down here at the end. I'll turn Auto Key off, rewind, and press play, and because I've disabled update the active view port only, I'm seeing the camera move in all views. I'll stop that and rewind it. So the very first time you invoke Auto Key, you want to be at some location in the timeline other than the first frame. Okay, and from then on you can just park it wherever you need. So I can maybe go to the middle of the animation here around frame 70 and turn Auto Key back on again and with that move tool active, change the position of the camera. Maybe move it back a little bit. Release the mouse and now I have another key frame at frame 70. Disable Auto Key and rewind and play it back again. So I've got a little bit of a subtle arc there where it's coming in closer at the end. Okay, that's how Auto Key works. It's pretty simple. You want to remember if Auto Key is on. You don't want to accidentally leave it on. That would be bad because then you might be working in some other aspect of your scene and creating key frames when you didn't intend to. It's a classic rookie mistake. You leave Auto Key on and then you go into the material editor and all of a sudden you're animating colors and you didn't even realize you were doing that. So when you're finished creating animation, always just reflexively remember to turn Auto Key off.

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