Sunday, February 24, 2008

Free Animation Resources

With this week's poll on using copyrighted materials in your animations, you might be asking yourself: if you can't use copyrighted materials without stretching your already-thinning pocketbook to pay royalties and fees, how are you supposed to produce any animations at all unless you spend ages creating everything down to the tiniest sound effect from scratch? Luckily there are plenty of free resources for animators to use, so you don't have to turn yourself into a one-man (or one-woman) recording and production studio. Many musicians and photographers put their work online for free use, and often only require a credit byline to acknowledge them for their work. Even better, if you can't afford those pricey animation software packages, there are also free animation programs that you can try.

3D Computer Animation Tutorials: Step-by-Step Lessons in 3D Studio Max

Even the most realistic and detailed of 3d digital productions has to start somewhere; a simple polygon, an extruded spline, a mapped texture. These tutorials in Discreet's 3D Studio Max v.4.26 will help you get that start, and get a grasp on the basics of working in a three-dimensional environment.
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An Introduction to Computer Animation
Just what is computer animation? This introduction provides a brief overview of the basic concepts and uses of 2D and 3D computer animation.
3D Studio Max Lesson 1.1: A Basic Overview of 3DSMax's Main Tool Bar
In this set of tutorials, we'll just be taking a look at the environment of 3D Studio Max version 4.26, and helping you to get more familiar with the tool panels, how to navigate them, and how to use the sets of basic tools you'll need to begin animating.
3D Studio Max Lesson 1.2: Tab Sets Overview
The second part of our first lesson in 3D Studio Max's tools will cover the bank of tabbed tool sets below the main toolbar. These tool sets allow quick and easy access to a large majority of 3D Studio Max's various objects and tools used to create, modify, and animate, and can be used as a shortcut to commonly-used buttons/tools found elsewhere.
3D Studio Max Lesson 1.3: Main Tools Overview
The third part of our first lesson in 3D Studio Max's tools covers the panel of primary tools taking up the right-hand side of the interface. These are the main tools that you will use to create, modify, and control your objects.
3D Studio Max Lesson 1.4: Animation Tools Overview
The last set of tools that we’ll discuss as part of the standard 3D Studio Max interface are the ones that help control how you view your animation, your timeline, and how you view your scene.
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