Animating Your Scene

You can animate almost anything in your scene. Click the Auto Key button to enable automatic animation creation, drag the time slider, and make changes in your scene to create animated effects.

Controlling Time

The program starts each new scene with 100 frames for animation. Frames are a way of measuring time, and you move through time by dragging the time slider. You can also open the Time Configuration dialog to set the number of frames used by your scene and the speed at which the frames are displayed.

Animating Transforms and Parameters

While the Auto Key button is on, the program creates an animation key whenever you transform an object or change a parameter. To animate a parameter over a range of frames, specify the values at the first and last frames of the range. The program calculates the values for all of the frames in between.

See Animation Concepts and Methods.

Editing Animation

You edit your animation by opening the Track View window or by changing options on the Motion panel. Track View is like a spreadsheet that displays animation keys along a time line. You edit the animation by changing the keys.

Track View has two modes. You can display the animation as a series of function curves that graphically show how a value changes over time in the Curve Editor mode. Alternatively, you can display your animation as a sequence of keys or ranges on a grid in the Dope Sheet mode.

See Track View.

source: Autodesk 3ds Max Help