Max-Realms | 3ds Max Community - Tutorials (Folder)

Boombox (Speaker Animation)

BoomBox Animaton

Tutorial written by Tom.Klejne for http://www.3dspline.com. (For any questions, feel free to contact me)

The goal of this tutorial is to create a speaker, with a speaker cone that vibrates/moves too match the beat of the assigned sound file, without manual tedious keyframeing.

1. First create your boom box model, a simple model would do just fine, like this one...(figure 1.0) This boom box model was created with primitives for the speaker box, ring around the speaker cone, and the speaker core, simple Boolean for the holes and a spline lathe for the speaker cone itself.

Figure 1.0

2. Click on the "motion"

tab , next open up the "assign controller" rollout , then click on the "position: Position XYZ" and click assign position controller button

, and select "audio position" from the list, click OK, then right click "position: audio position" and select properties. You should now see a similar properties menu as in Figure 1.1

Figure 1.1

3. From this properties menu choose a sound, preferably one with a lot of base/beat.

4. now change the "target point" value of either x,y or z depending on your scene position. Try to have the speaker cone moving into the speaker box, for this scene I used the Y dimension (the target point value is the maximum position. The object will move, and the base point value is the point the object starts at).
Tip: change the base point value too see far the object moves according to its value, then change it back to the value it was, and then change the target value.

5. repeat step 2-4 but for the scale controller instead of the position. Controller, this adds a lot of realism and more motion to the speaker cone.

6. Now that we got the motion working with the beat, we need too add the sound to the scene, open track view, then if the "world" rollout isn't already opened, open it, right click on "sound" and select properties, then add the same sound file as you did for the motion controllers.

7. You might want to add more realism to the animation by adding motion blur, right click on the speaker cone, click properties and under motion blur, check the "object" radio button..., this concludes the boom box tutorial, be creative and use this technique in different ways.

You have just animated a boom box to play your chosen sound! (note: your frame's will not line up to mine unless the exact sound file is used).

Frame 1	Frame 12
Frame 1	Frame 12

Finished product