Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 15-5
Figure 15-6
6. Now go to frame 42 (the end of our
scene), and enter the value of
200 m
for that frame's Z position. (This will
make the text “zoom off” into the
distance.)
Hey! You're animating! (Well, you're start-
ing to at least.) When you “scrub” the
Frame Slider back and forth, you'll see that
the text “bounces” backward, going
“behind” the camera again between frames
6 and 36. It didn't do this before when we
scrubbed through our frames in Figure 15-4.
This is
not
what we want our text to do.
LightWave will
interpolate
(
inbetween
)
from keyframe to keyframe smoothly with
mathematical perfection. Its default mode of
interpolation is a kind of
spline
(spatial line)
known as a
TCB spline
(which stands for
tension
,
continuity
, and
bias
). This kind of
spline is affected heavily by large, quick
motions that come immediately before or
after a
keyframe
(just like we've got
between frames 0 and 6). The solution to
our bouncing text is to either add more
keyframes or manually adjust the interpola-
tion to make the “inbetweening” exactly
what we want for our motion. LightWave's
Graph Editor will let us “sculpt” the
func-
tion curves
that control every aspect of an
item's motion — and more!
