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928 Chapter 14: Character Studio
• You can make portions of the skin rigid,
directly moving along with the skeleton they’re
attached to.
• You can add bulges to simulate bulging muscles.
Bulges are controlled by editable cross sections
of the skin, and by bulge angles that you set.
• You can add tendons to distribute the effect of
one bone’s motion to areas of the skin other
than those around the bone itself.
• YoucansavePhysiquedatatoaPhysique(
.phy
)
file, preserving data common to all objects
sharing a given Physique modifier. Later, you
can reload the data file, either to restore the
data that belongs to a part icular skin or port ion
of skin.
Physique works with bipeds created and animated
using the Biped plug-in, and w ith 3ds Max
hierarchies, including the Bones systems. Physique
also works with bones that are not in a hierarchy
and splines.
See also
Posing the Biped (page 2–706)
Cr e a t in g a S kin
A mesh deformed by a skeletal structure is called a
skin
.Incharacter studio,Physiqueisamodifier
youapplytoaskintomakeitdeformablebythe
biped, or by another skeletal structure. The images
belowshowmeshesfordifferentskeletons.
Meshes for Physique
A skin used with Physique can be any 3ds Max
objectthathasverticesorcontrolpoints.
Specifically, a skin can b e:
• An editable mesh or editable poly object. This
is the most commonly used type of object for
Physique. Often, it has b een collapsed from an
object with modifiers, or a compound object.
• An uncollapsed object with modifiers or a
compound object.
• A parametric geometry primitive such as a
cylinder.
Geometric primitives are useful mainly for
simple applica tions of Physique; for example, a
cylinder with two bone links to depict an arm.
•Apatchobject.
•Asplineortextshape.
•ANURBSobject.
• A Free From Deformation (FFD) modifier .
•Ameshobjectyouimportfromanother
application such as AutoCAD®.
Tip: Although you can apply Physique to a
compound object or an object with modifiers, you
should collapse the stack before applying Physique,
if poss ible. This w i l l maximize performance and
reduce the amount of work you’ll need to do to
get Physique working properly. An exception
is the Optimize modifier, which can be useful
for improving performance when applied below
Physique on the stack.
Wa rn in g: After you collapse a compound or modified
object, you can no longer edit it parametrically. If you
work extensively with complex meshes of this sort, you
can save two .
max
files: one to contain the original,
editable objects and modifiers, and the other to contain
only the collapsed mesh.
You can create a figure’s skin out of several objects.
For example, you could have separate objects for