Shooting my Animation

Building the Scene

Now I am ready to start filming my animation! I started off by creating my backgrounds on “Photoshop”, before applying them as “Materials” to my “Material List”. I then created a “Plane” and applied the “Material” onto it. I had my background to my scene.

I “Cloned” this “Plane to make another background, putting it at an angle to the first. I also created another “Plane” to use as a floor for my character to walk on. I found a cobblestone “Material” on the internet for this use.

 Next I “Imported” my character into the scene. I also added a “Camera” to allow me to shoot the scene exactly the way I wanted to without losing my ability to move around the screen and make corrections and movement. I froze the background and floor so it would be easier to select my character and “Camera” to edit and move about the scene at will.

  My opening shot involves my character walking towards the screen. The “Camera” follows this movement, keeping the feet in shot. I edit the feet to move along by selecting the “Bones” and rotating them to move up and down like normal feet do. By adding “Key Frames” allows the movement to be saved and actually happen.

  The scene is ready to be finally shot, imported and edited into “Premiere Pro”. To do this, I simply go to “Render Setup”. In this window, I choose which frames I want to “Render” and to what format. I then save the shot to my chosen folder, and select “Render.”

 My scene begins to “Render”. Now all I have to do is wait, as this can take a little while.

  I have now imported the shot into “Premiere Pro”, ready to edit it. Now onto the rest of my animation back in 3DS Max.

  Once all my shots are “Rendered”, I can now edit them into a short animation in “Premiere Pro”.

Cutting the film into small pieces like this allows my animation to have a smooth flow for the viewer watching it.