OgreMax Scene Exporter for 3DS Max - Node Animations

Node Animations

### What is a Node Animation?

A node animation is a type of animation that animates the transformation of a node. A node is used to position, rotate, and scale objects, such as meshes, cameras, and lights, within the exported scene.

Unlike mesh animations, node animations are scene-level objects. This has a few important implications:

- Node animation names must be unique in the scene - One way of ensuring names are never duplicated is by using the Prefix Node Animations with Node Names setting on the General page of the Scene Settings dialog.
- Node animations are only exported when a scene file is generated - Because node animations are scene level objects, they will only be exported when exporting to a scene file (as opposed to a mesh file).

### 3DS Max Timeline

All animations are created on a single timeline. For example, if you have a ball with a left-to-right bouncing animation, and an up-and-down bouncing animation, then those animations will all exist on the same timeline at different times.

### Node Animation Settings

The OgreMax Scene Exporter generates animations based on the settings on the Node Animations page of the Object Settings dialog for an object.

There are a few settings to be aware of when setting up node animations:

- Node Animations - These settings, also located on the Node Animations page, list the animations to be extracted from the 3DS Max timeline. For each of these settings:
  - The Start and End times must correspond to the associated times on the timeline where the animation actually takes place. See the Node Animation dialog for more details.

### Exporting

When the scene is exported the animations will be created according to the configured animation settings.