Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Note
This display option is not available by default. To make the scene sum-
mary visible, go to the Dope Sheet's View menu and enable Scene Sum-
mary.
As you can see, the toolbar is a cut-down version of the Graph Editor's, allowing you to
add/insert new keys and input absolute values for existing keys. Next to the Stats boxes is
a new button for turning hierarchy on and off. When this is enabled, the keys are displayed
on objects that exist below the active object, meaning you can work on an entire hierarchy
at once.
You can also display each separate attribute in the scene by clicking on the plus icon next
to Scene Summary, which will open up its contents (
Figure 16.9
,
bottom). You can then
select the keys, represented byblack blocks; the blocks turn yellow when selected. Youare
then free to move or even scale them using the middle mouse button to achieve the anima-
tion you require.
Playblast
Dependingonthespecificationsofthecomputeryouareworkingonandthecomplexityof
your scene, it can be difficult to get a realistic idea of how your animation is going to flow
whenputintothegame.Producinga
playblast
allowsyoutoquicklyoutputyouranimation
as a movie, play it back, and see how the animation will look when run at an exact frame
rate.
Toproduceaplayblast,right-clickontheTimeSliderandselectPlayblastfromthecontex-
tual menu. Maya will then run through the animation, taking screen grabs of the selected
view, and storing them either as a movie file or separate images.
If you open the Playblast options (
Figure 16.10
), you can configure what Maya will cap-
ture and how it is stored. Most of the options are fairly self-explanatory, so let's just have a
brief look at the less obvious ones.