Basic workflow for manually creating an animation

Learn the process of modeling, animating, fine tuning, and finally rendering your animated scene.

Alias provides two types of automatic animation, where you plug in parameters and Alias creates the animation, as well as manual, freeform animation.

In Alias, manually creating animation involves establishing a timeline, then varying one or more properties of objects (for example, position or color) over time.

To apply the workflow

Create the model.
Decide how long you want the animation to be and create the necessary number of time frames in Alias.
Use basic techniques to vary the scene through the length of the animation:
- Place objects you want to animate, including the camera, where you want them, and with the values you want, at each point in the timeline, then mark those frames as keyframes.
or
- Establish motion paths for objects to move along through time.
For more advanced animation, Alias is capable of varying almost every property of an object or shader along the timeline, not just position.
Decide how the objects should transition from frame to frame.
More advanced animation can use the Action window, expressions (mathematical formulas describing relationships between time and object properties), and constraints, to create more realistic and automated effects.
Preview or render the animation.

Parameters

Objects have many parameters that can be animated. Examples are the objects X,Y, and Z positions, rotations, scaling, and visibility.

Different types of objects have different animation parameters. For example, you can animate a camera’s field of view, and the color and intensity of the light.

In Alias, you control which parameters of an object are animated using the Param Control window.