Hi there... A couple of things have been bugging me while animating in Bryce 4. Regarding keyframes... I need to have objects in a particular anim to move in a jerky fashion, so they are in the same position for several frames then jump to another position for a series of frames etc. (remember Mr. Benn?) The keyframes get interpolated so the object moves 'spline-wise' smoothly between the positions. Is there any way to turn off interpolation or break the splines? I don't want it smooth! Secondly, in the keyframe editor, is it possible to assign more than one movement curve to an object during one animation? I need to have more complex camera movement that it will allow me! I have to split the animation up into loads of sections just to get round this. Hell... I want to work on the file during the day and render the whole lot at night! Any advice would be great! Howard:))

for the first part about fast jumpng, create an additiona keyframe right befre the cut. For example, you want a guy standing there for 15 frames and then want him to appear somewhere else in the 16th frame. Add a keyframe at frame one, and at frame 15. Then go to frame 16, add another keyframe, and move him. This tells bryce that he is standing still for the first 15 frames (start and end keframe is the same) but at the 16th frame, he has to be somewhere else. So there will be no delay or interruption. For the camera....you can add more points to a path by control-clicking on it. Useful if you want more complicated paths. You can adjust path behavior while holding they c,b,or t keys and fragging on a point. To make a camera seem to start somewhere spontaneously, use the methos i described above. So you have a shot that is 250 frames long. It ends with a keyframe at 250. Make a new keyframe at 251, and move the camera somewhere completely different. From there, keep animating, and you can do this every time you want a new shot to happen. When viewed, the animation will cut to the new locations at those frames. Then just use an editing app to polish it up. Of course it will all still be on one path, it's just that you are not allowing bryce enough time to make a transition because it is across only one frame.

There are at least two ways to get a "jerky" animation: Option 1: You could set two key frames, several frames apart, to have identical postitions, followed immedately by a new postition....argh, here's an example: Frame 1: Ball at (x,y,z) 1, 1, 1 Frame 6: Ball at (x,y,z) 1, 1, 1 Frame 8: Ball at (x,y,z) 13,12, 8 Frame 13: Ball at (x,y,z) 13,12, 8 Frame 15: Ball at (x,y,z) 5, 8,12 Frame 20: Ball at (x,y,z) 5, 8,12 Got it? This way the ball sits, jumps to a new position, sits, jumps, etc. This is nice because you can do all the work in the main workarea, but you do have extra baggage to create multiple key frames for each location. Option 2: Define just one key frame for each position (as you are now.) Then, go into the Motion Lab, locate the object you want in the list, and you can modify the motion flow. Instead of a nice diagonal line, you want to set up a staircase, where each step jumps up exactly on each key frame. The advantage is that you only need one key frame per position, but the drawback is that you will have to reconfigure your "steps" in the motion lab anytime you add or remove a key frame. Fianlly... For complex camera moves, personally, I usually set up a target object for the camera to track at all times. This object (usually a sphere for me) is set with Hidden Checked, so it never appears in a render, but, by linking it to the camera as a target object, the camera will always look at it where ever it goes. With this configuration, you can animate the camera position freely, but still keep it pointing exactly where you like by animating the hidden "target" object independantly. The result is flowing, complex camera manuevers that always keep the desired subject in frame. Hope this helps. Have fun.