3DS Max Tutorial 01: Spinning UFO

There was some interesting in how I created the spinning UFO in my animation so here is my first ever attempt at a tutorial. Honestly it is a simple process and doesn't require any advanced knowledge of 3DS Max. I'm assuming you know how to create models in Max.

0. I'm not going to explain how to model the UFO. Basically I started with a sphere and squished it until I got the saucer. The detail was added later but is an important part of making the animation work. If you don't break the flat surface of the UFO it'll be difficult to tell that it is spinning.






1. To get the top and bottom halves spinning independently you'll have to split the saucer in two. All I did was select the polygons around the middle of the UFO and cloned them to a new object. I then deleted the original polygons. Make sure to rename both parts.

2. Select the main / top&bottom of the UFO. Turn on the Rotate gizmo (E key). On the timeline, make sure you're at frame 0 and turn on Auto Key. Click Set Key or the button with the key on it to set a keyframe.

3. Move to frame 50, make sure the top half of the UFO is still selected. Rotate the UFO 360 degrees counter-clockwise around the Z axis. A keyframe should be created, if not click Set Key again

4. Do the same thing to the middle section of the UFO except rotate 360 degrees in a clockwise direction.

5. Hold control and click on both halves to select them.

6. Open the Curve Editor. There is a button on the toolbar.




7. Hopefully the Track View - Curve Editor window will open and look like this.







8. The Curve Editor allows you to tweak your animation with some precision. Marquee select all of the nodes (gray boxes) in the graph.

9. Menu bar click Controller > Out-of-Range Types...













10. The Param Curve Out-of-Range Types window will popup. Click on the Loop button and press Ok.








11. The Curve Editor should now look something like this.








12. Again marquee select the nodes, if not still selected, and click the Set Tangents to Linear button on the toolbar. This will turn the motion curves to straight lines thus making the rotation smooth (instead of the default slow-in slow-out motion).

13. Close the Curve Editor and click Play Animation. Look at that UFO spin!

If you look at my first image of the UFO model, the green cube hovering above is a dummy object that I used to make the UFO fly along a path.. which is a whole another tutorial for another day maybe.

Also a note. If you do use a dummy and plan on moving the UFO, make sure to Link the middle section of the UFO to the rest of the body. Do this AFTER you have the rotation animation working like you want it or you won't be able to rotate them separately.