Animated Materials & Modifiers

Nearly every parameter in 3ds max can be animated - including creation parameters, modifier parameters, and material parameters. The basic idea is always the same: Turn on Auto Key, set your first parameters, move to a different frame, and set the parameters to something else; 3ds max will calculate the in-between frames.

Animating Modifiers

Most modifiers that have spinner adjustments allow Max to set keyframes for any spinner value and interpolate (animate) between keyframes. We shall construct a simple box and transform it into something that looks alive just by animating a few Max modifiers applied to it.

In 3ds max, at the 0 point of the grid, create a box object, length=20, width=20 and height =20. Give it 12 height segments at creation time so that our box will have a degree of flexibility.
Go to frame 30 and turn on Auto Key. Increase the box height to 200. Notice that the spinner for the Height parameter now has red lines outlining it; this red indicates that the parameter has animation keyframes applied to it.
Drag the timeline slider and the box should grow from frame 0 to frame 30.

Return to frame 0 and turn the Auto Key button off.
In the Modify Panel > Modifier List, select Taper and apply it to the box.
Go to frame 60 and turn the animate button on. There is a default key for the taper settings already at frame 0, so we will now set new keyframes at frame 60 for the taper modifier.
Set the amount spinner to –1 to achieve a taper that narrows at the top and set the curve spinner to 1 which will give the sides a slightly convex shape.
Drag the timeslider and you will see the box grow over 30 frames and taper to a point by frame 60.
Let's add another modifier and give the box some life.
Turn off the Auto Key button and at any frame add a bend modifier from the Modifier List.
Go to frame 90, turn the Auto Key button on again, and set the Bend Modifier Angle to 50 degrees and the direction to 359 degrees.
Preview the animation by dragging the timeslider and notice that the box now begins to bend as it grows and tapers. This is not the exact movement we are looking for. What we want to achieve is to have the box grow, taper and then begin to bend after the other two modifiers have finished affecting the object. Track View offers us an easy way to do this by moving the keyframes that have been set for the bend modifier.
Open Track View - Dope Sheet from the Graph Editors menu, and find the track for the Box object. Hit the plus sign to expand the tracks for the box.
The box doesn't actually move from the spot it was created so there are no position keys set for it. Expand the Modified Object Track and it is there you will see the keyframes that have been set for the creation parameters as well as for any modifiers that we have animated. Expand the Bend Modifier track and you will see there are keys set for the Angle and Direction at frame 0 and at frame 90 as well. Simply select both the keyframes for the Bend at frame 0 and drag them to frame 60.
Scrub the animation again and the box should now grow and taper and then begin to bend and wave about.
Apply a twist modifier and go to frame 60 and turn the Auto Key button on.
Set the twist angle to 400 degrees. Preview the animation. The box should grow and twist and taper until frame 60 , then it will bend and wave its top end.
We have started with a simple box and by animating a few common modifiers we have turned it into something that begins to look as though it is alive.

Animating Materials

Materials created in the Max material editor can also be animated. Animated materials have many uses. They can be used as opacity maps to make objects vanish or appear in interesting ways, to change the surface colours of an object - for instance, a black iron tool could become deep glowing red when heated in a fire. Animated materials can be used to create water and clouds, show a movie on a television screen in your Max scene, or control glows, highlights and other post processing effects.
There are two basic types of animated materials in Max, those that use animated bitmaps - such as when .avi files are used as a texture map - and those that are created procedurally by adjusting Max material settings. We will look at procedural animations only.

Start a new project and create a sphere.
Open the Material Editor and create a bright red material and assign it to the sphere.
Go to frame 30 and turn the Auto Key button on. Change the diffuse map slot of the material to yellow, advance to frame 60 and change the diffuse colour to green, frame 90 use blu e and frame 100 use red again.
You can create a full colour preview of any material right in the Material Editor. The small icon that resembles a strip of film will allow us to preview the sample slot for any animated material before we render it in a scene.
Preview the animation and the sphere should smoothly change colour to reflect the keyframes you have set.

Note:
When animating between colours in Max keep in mind that max will take the shortest route across the colour wheel to get to the next defined colour and this will sometimes create in-between frames of dull brown or gray as the center of the colour wheel is crossed.

The transparency value of a material may be animated and objects can be made to fade in and out of a scene using this method.

Creating Water with Space Warp and Animated Materials

Create a large thin box object 400 units by 400 units by 10 units.
Set the length segments to 36 and the width segments to 36 so that our box will have enough vertices to give it some flexibility.
Find and click on the Space Warps button in the Creation menu.
In the Drop-down box, choose Geometric/Deformable, select Wave and click-and-drag in the top viewport to create a Wave Space warp object on top of the mesh box. Click a second time to create the wave height.
Set the Wave Parameters to Amplitude 1 = 20, Amplitude 2 = 30, and Wavelength = 200.

Space Warps are invisible Max objects that deform 3D space around them and any mesh that is within that space also becomes distorted.
To see the effect of your space warp, select the box object and in the top menu bar locate and click the Bind to Space Warp tool which is immediately left of the select arrow.
Click and drag from the box to the space warp and the cursor will change to show a wavy icon.
Drop the cursor on the space warp and the box is now bound to the space warp and will begin to show the wave effects.
Your Space Warp is probably hidden by your box, so use Select By Name to select the Warp again.
In the Top view, move the space warp around on the box, the waves will move as the warp moves. That would be one way to animate the wave effect. Keyframing the Phase spinner of the wave space warp is another more common method for creating animated waves.
Turn on Auto Key and go to any frame you like. Change the Phase of the space warp. Do this several times. At frame 100, change the Phase back to zero.
Turn off Auto Key and preview your animation with the time slider.

Now we will create an animated water-like material to apply to the waving box.
Open the Material editor and create a new material named water.
Use a light blue colour for the diffuse colour and a dark blue colour for the ambient colour. Make sure to unlock the ambient and diffuse colors so you can set them to different values.
Set specular level to 75 and glossiness to 60.
In the Maps rollout of the Material editor, click the "None" button next to the bump map.
Assign a map type of Noise as the bump map. Noise is a random pattern generated by Max and has many uses.
Try a noise size setting of 10 and apply the material to the wavy box.
Render a frame to see the result. Try Fractal Noise and Turbulence noise to see their effects on the object's surface.
Animate the noise by going to frame 100 and entering a new value such as 2 into the Noise Parameters Phase spinner with the Auto Key button on.
Preview the animation and you should see the box ripple like an ocean swell while the bump map wavelets play across its surface.

Practice Assignment

Try to animate other kinds of modifiers and material parameters. Create at least 3 separate trials for your own learning.