3ds Max 2012 Bible - Kelly L. Murdock [507]
When the entire sequence is completed, you can render it using the Sequence⇒Render Work Area menu command. The completed animation file then can be saved using the File⇒Export menu command.
Figure 49.3 shows the Premiere interface with the animation clips loaded and positioned in the Timeline panel.
FIGURE 49.3
Premiere can be used to combine several animation sequences together.
Video compositing with After Effects
If you need to add a little more to your animations than just transitions, you should look into Adobe's After Effects. After Effects lets you composite 2D and 3D clips into a single image or animation. You can paint directly on the animation frames, add lights and cameras, and create visual effects such as Distort, Shatter, and Warp.
After Effects includes a library of resources much like those found in Premiere. These resources can be positioned on a Composition pane. Effects applied to the loaded animation clip are listed in the Effects panel along with all the effects settings.
After Effects includes many of the same tools used in Photoshop and Illustrator. These tools let you paint and select portions of the animation clip as if it were a still image, but the results can be added or removed over time.
Tutorial: Adding animation effects using After Effects
Some effects are much easier to add using a package like After Effects than to create in Max. A good example is adding a blurry look and the waves coming from a heat source to the melting snowman animation created in Chapter 22.
To add video effects using After Effects, follow these steps:
1. Open After Effects, and drag the Melting snowman.avi file from the Chap 49 directory to the Project panel.
2. Select Composition⇒New Composition, select the NTSC, 640 × 480 option from the Preset list, and click OK.
3. Drag the Melting snowman.avi file from the Project panel, and drop it on the Composition pane.
4. With the animation selected in the Composition pane, select Effect⇒Distort⇒Wave Warp. The Wave Warp effect appears in a panel. Set the Wave Height to 4, the Wave Width to 30, the Direction to Vertical, and the Wave Speed to 1. This adds a heat wave effect to the entire animation.
5. Select Effect⇒Blur & Sharpen⇒Gaussian Blur, and set the Blurriness value to 3.0.
6. In the Timeline panel, drag the Work Area End icon so that it coincides with the end of the animation.
7. Select Composition⇒Make Movie. In the Render Queue dialog box that opens, click the Render button to render the animation with its effects.
Figure 49.4 shows the After Effects interface with the animation clip loaded.
FIGURE 49.4
After Effects can add special effects to an animation sequence.
Introducing Composite
Autodesk offers an end-to-end solution for production houses to complete their work, and Max now ships with its own compositing tool called Composite, shown in Figure 49.5. Composite is a different animal from Max, but its array of weapons is just as deadly in a slightly different arena. The biggest difference between Composite and Photoshop is that Composite can handle animations and Photoshop can work only with static images.
FIGURE 49.5
Composite is a full-featured compositing tool that ships with Max.
Composite enables motion graphics, compositing, and visual effects, which doesn't sound too different from what Max does, except for that funny word—compositing. If you think of the final rendered image produced using Max as just an image that needs to be combined with other elements such as text, logos, other images, or even a DVD menu, then you're starting to see what post-production teams know. Compositing is the process of combining several different elements into a finished product. Positioning these elements can even be done in 3D by placing