8

Scaling a Character 951
LevelofDetailControls
The controls in the Physique Level of Detail rollout
(page 2–960)
help you optimize performance
while working with Physique, by letting you
specify which skin deformations are refreshed
automatically in viewports. The more complex the
skin object, the more effective these controls can
be at speeding up your work.
Note: The 3ds Max renderer also heeds Level of
Detail settings. Don’t forget to reset these controls
before the final render .
Tur ning B lending On and Of f
When Physique is first initialized, the Blending
BetweenLinksparameterinthe
Physique
Initialization dialog (page 2–963)
is set to N
Links (page 3–1072)
. This means that every
envelope must b e considered when determining
the i nfluence on any
ver tex (page 2–974) .You
can reinitialize with No Blending (or only 2, 3, or
4links)toreducethiscalculationpermanently,
although at the cost of losing some or all blending
at the joints.
Note: SettingtoNoBlendingisadvisedonly
for those developing characters to be used by
real-time game engines.
Yo u c a n a l s o s e t N o B l e n d i n g a t t h e Ve r t e x
sub-object level. You can temporarily disable Link
Blending on the Physique Level of Detail rollout,
on the Modify panel.
Using the Optimize Modi fier with
Physique
The standard 3ds Max Optimize modifier allows
you to reduce the level of mesh detail in order to
increase display performance and speed up screen
refreshes. Optimize can be helpful with Physique
when you work with complicated skin objects such
as detailed biped figures.
Therearestackupdateoptionsthatdetermine
how the stack is updated. See the
Physique Level
of Detail rollout (page 2–960)
for a reference on
the stack update options.
Wa rn in g: If the current stack update option is Reassign
Globally, any modifier in the stack below Physique causes
Physique to reevaluate vertex assignments each time
the stack is changed. While this technique will improve
performance in one way, it will hurt performance if you
need repeatedly to make changes down in the stac k.
Procedure
To optimize skin objects:
1.
Select the skin.
Iftheskinconsistsofmultipleobjects,selectall
of its component objects.
2. Apply an Optimize mod ifier to t he skin.
The Optimize modifier’s Parameters rollout
appears on the Modify panel.
3. In the Optimize group of the Parameters
rollout, increase the value of Face Threshold.
As you increase Face Threshold, Optimize
reducesthenumberoffacesinthemesh.
The optimized mesh displays more quickly and
speeds up your work with Physique. However,
it doesn’t show full detail, an d s ometim es an
optimized skin does not animate correctly, because
of the reduced number of vertices.
Tip: Always turn off Optimize before you render
the animated skin.
Scaling a Character
Using standard 3ds Max scale transform tools, you
can adjust a biped’s p ostu re by scaling the size of
its links. You must be in Figure mode to scale the
biped links. If y ou try to scale a biped without
going into Figure mode, nothing happens.