8

Intr oduction to chara cter studio
character studio provides professional tools for
animating 3D characters. It is an environment
in which animators can quickly and easily build
skeletons and then animate them, thus creating
motion sequences. The animated skeletons are
used to drive the movement of 3ds Max geometry,
thus creating virtual characters. Crowds of these
characters can be generated using character
studio, and animated using a system of delegates
and procedural behaviors.
character studio comprises three components:
Biped, Physique, and Crowd.
•
Biped (page 3–1010) builds and animates
skeletal armatures, ready for character
animation. You can combine different
animations into sequential or overlapping
motion scripts, or layer t hem together. You can
also use Biped to edit motion capture files.
Note: Biped does not create character mesh
objects. You should create your character mesh
before using Biped to create a sk eleton for it.
•
Physique (page 3–1088) uses the biped
armatures to animate the actual character
mesh,simulatinghowthemeshflexesand
bulges with the movement of the underlying
skeleton.
Note: YoucanusePhysiquewithother
hierarchies beside the biped skeleton.
•
Crowd (page 3–1019) animates groups of
3D objects and characters using a system of
delegates and behaviors. You can create crowds
with highly complex behaviors.
If you are new to 3ds Max, read
What You Should
Know to Use character studio (p age 2–690)
and
Understanding character studio Workflow (page
2–697)
.
If you are already a 3ds Max user , proceed to
Understanding Biped (page 2–691) to continue.
To f i n d o u t a b out Phy s i q u e , re a d
Understanding
Physique (page 2–692)
.
To learn about the Crowd system, read
Working
w ith Crowd Animation (page 2–1006)
.
What is character studio?
character studio is a set of components that
provides a full set of tools for animating characters.
character studiolets you create skeletal hierarchies
for two-legged characters (called
bipeds )that
can be animated quickly using a wide variety of
methods. If your character w a lks on two legs,
the software provides unique
footstep animation
Character Studio