From the course: Learning 3ds Max 2020

Creating keyframes with Auto Key - 3ds Max Tutorial

From the course: Learning 3ds Max 2020

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Creating keyframes with Auto Key

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- [Instructor] Creating animation key frames is very easy in 3ds Max using the auto key feature, which was introduced in Max 1.0. When auto key is enabled, almost anything you do, such as transforming an object, or changing a parameter, will automatically create key frames. The thing to keep in mind with auto key, is that frame zero on the track bar or timeline, is special. And if we're parked on frame zero, even if we have auto key enabled, then no key frames will be created. So if there are no key frames on the the particular channel or track, such as the position of this drone helper object, then you won't get any key frames on frame zero unless paradoxically you're parked on some other frame. So the way this is intended to work is for an object or parameter that has no key frames yet, you want to position your time slider on some non zero frame, with auto key enabled and then make your change. Once that change is done, you will get a key frame on the current frame, and you will also get a key frame on zero representing that particular track or channel before you made the change. Okay that explanation may be a little bit convoluted, but let's take a look at this in practice. We're parked on frame 30, auto key is enabled, and we're going to move the drone helper object up. Select it and with the move tool activated, just move it up in the world z axis, release the mouse and now we have two key frames. We have the key frame before we moved the object at frame zero and a key frame after we moved the object on the current frame of the timeline. And we can rewind and play that back and we can see that we've got some motion there. We can add another key frame. Let's maybe go down to the very end of frame 119 and with auto key still enabled, we can click on the xz bracket of the move gizmo, and position the drone offscreen, release the mouse, and another key frame is created at frame 119. We can rewind and play that back and we can see that we've got some animation there. That's the basics of using auto key. We can press stop and disable auto key and rewind back to frame zero. Once again, keep in mind that you're going to create a key frame at frame zero so that's why we want to have the track bar start on frame zero rather than frame one.

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