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.Maya todaymight be a totally different program when this book hits the stores, and dif-ferent again six months later.In other words, we re talking about movingtargets.Each program is morphing as we try to hunt it down and define itsqualities.However, one can distinguish a certain personality in each of theprograms.Second, no clear-cut statement can be made as to what is the absolutebest animation program.What might be best for a character animator maynot be best for a logo animator or a game animator.However, a trend in theleading programs seems to be occurring at present and is related to twoqualities: ease of learning and depth.Ideally, a program should be both easyto learn and deep in capabilities.Unfortunately, none of the programs Ihave seen demonstrate both qualities.Consequently, you can at presentbuild a contrary scale of these two parameters.I encourage you, as you read this chapter, to start exploring the CD thatcame with this book and using the various aspects of each program.You willsoon acquire a personal sense of which program feels most comfortable andsuits your needs.That is why the CD is there.In my opinion (okay, start those letters and emails flowing), I wouldclassify New Tech s LightWave as the easiest 3-D animation program tolearn, although it may be shallow in terms of some of its facilities, espe-cially where character animation is concerned.Discreet s 3ds max ismore difficult to learn than LightWave, but its more robust featuresincrease its depth.Both Softimage XSI from Avid and Alias|Wavefront sMaya are at the top of the difficulty spectrum.These programs are diffi-cult to learn out of the box and are deep in facilities.For example, I havenot yet met an animator proficient in XSI or Maya who did not attend aschool to learn it. 04_200505_Avg_ch04 9/5/03 11:29 AM Page 175The Mechanics of Three Leading Animation Programs175Why can t a program be both easy to learn and deep? Could it be that thedeep program manufacturers, while interviewing users in focus groups, haveidentified difficulty as a positive attribute? Hanging out with some Mayaand SXI animators, there definitely seems to be a kind of fraternal atmos-phere in the air, perhaps bred from hazing and tortuous rites de passage.Third, the real measure of one program s superiority over another couldbe defined by which program generates the most revenue.This would be adifficult statistic to obtain, but a rough review of major films , games , andnetwork televisions uses of computer animation over the past five yearswould probably result in a pretty even spread among the major animationprograms.At certain times, one program might reign in one category oranother, but as each produces new features and gathers new operatorsunder its umbrella, different programs take their turn at the head of theclass.None, however, as yet totally dominates, which is a good thing.This chapter will dissect the basic mechanics of each program.Mechan-ics can be broken down into the following aspects:Views How you see your workObjects How you make and manipulate objectsTimeline How you add the fourth dimension to create animationCommon ElementsAs the technology and art of 3-D animation has progressed over the pastdecade or so, certain conventions have come into existence and are commonto most, if not all, animation software.Here are some of the conventionsshared by LightWave, 3ds max, and Maya.Further on in this chapter, eachsoftware program will be discussed separately to give you a bit more detail.By the way, let s define the word object here so nobody gets confused.Forthe purpose of this book, object can refer to any point, collection of points,polygon, collection of polygons, surfaces, or effects.That sounds like the con-tract I signed to write this book! The point I want to make is that objectscan be an orange, a wall, an ocean, a streak of light, a puff of smoke, or evenan infinitesimal point that cannot be seen anywhere in the animation(called a null object).Cameras and lights, by the way, sometimes act likeobjects too, because they can be animated in much the same way as anobject.I try, however, to distinguish cameras and lights whenever it makesa difference, such as deformation.You can t deform a camera like you candeform an object, at least not in the virtual world. 04_200505_Avg_ch04 9/5/03 11:29 AM Page 176Chapter 4176ViewsEach program offers four methods for viewing a scene, three of which areorthographic: the front view of the X- and Y-axes, the top view of the X-and Z-axes, and the side view of the Y- and Z-axes.The fourth is a per-spective or pictorial view.Orthographic views are devoid of perspectiveand intended to be simple, clinical, blueprint kinds of displays based on a3-D Cartesian plane grid.Orthographic views are useful for creating, find-ing, and changing specific elements of a design, such as a seam or points,and for accurately laying out animation.The perspecive or pictorial view allows the scene to be seen as the humaneye might see it, principally from an external perspective, with the abilityto rotate the object(s) or the point of view around all three axes.The per-spective view is usually offered from some omniscient point of view throughthe software s camera(s) or even through a lighting device
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