Keyframing in Bryce: The Advantages and Disadvantages of Two Different Approaches
- Keyframing in Bryce: The Advantages and Disadvantages of Two Different Approaches
- Auto-Key On
- Advantages and Disadvantages of Each Approach
- Not Either/Or, but Both/And
From Chapter 14 of Real World Bryce 4 by By Susan Kitchens and Victor Gavenda
This article is provided courtesy of Peachpit Press.
Key
events, or keyframes, are the structural anchor points that hold together the
animated sequence. Key events are the "and then this happened" points of the
animation story. They are like telephone poles, between which are suspended
the wires of animated transitions as something changes from one condition to
another. You will use key events to set up your animation and tell the story.
When it comes to setting up keyframes, the intent is this: Set a starting time and condition. Generate a key event for that time and condition. Move to a later time and change the condition; then generate a key event for that second time and condition. Move to a yet later time, change the condition, and generate a key event for that third time and condition. Keep doing this until all the key events are generated for all the different conditions that exist in the sequence.
Bryce has two strategies for generating key events. Auto-Key is the automatic strategy, where Bryce "watches" for all the changes in the objects over the duration of the sequence and generates key events for every change that takes place. In the manual option (Auto-Key off), you manually set the key events for different changes in objects over time. We'll discuss these both in depth.