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834 Chapter 14: character studio
• Designed for footsteps— The biped skeleton
is specially designed to animate with character
studio footsteps, which help solve the common
animation problem of locking the feet to the
ground. Footstep animation also provides an
easy way to rough out animation quickly. See
the section Creating Footstep Animation (page
2–856).
See also
Biped (page 2–843)
Biped User Interface (page 2–932)
Under standing Physique
Physique is a modifier that, when applied to a
mesh, allows the movements of an underlying
skeleton to move the mesh seamlessly, like bones
and muscle under a human skin. Physique works
on any point-based objects including geometric
primit ives, editable meshes, patch-based objects,
NURBS, and even FFD space war ps. For NURBS
and FFDs, Physique deforms the control points,
which in turn deform the model. It will attach to
any skeleton structure including a biped, 3ds Max
bones, splines, or any 3ds Max hierarchy. When
you apply Physique to the skin object(s) and attach
theskintotheskeleton,Physiquedetermineshow
each component of the skeleton influences each
vertex of the skin, based on settings you specify.
Physique affects a mesh after you click Attach To
NodeonthePhysiquerolloutandselectaroot
node in the v iewports. During the attach process,
Physique works its way through all of the children
in a hierarchy, starting at the object you select,
andcreatesitsownlinkswithassociatedenvelopes
(page 2–1085) for each link it finds. T he lin k s
created by Physique are referred to within this
documentation as the Physique deformation spline
(page 3–927). Vertices that fall within envelopes
are influenced to follow the lin ks and animate the
mesh. Splines and 3ds Max bones can also be
added using the Add button in the Floating Bones
rollout (page 2–1110).
Biped and Physique
When the biped pelvis is selected in the v iewports
and Attach To Node (page 2–1106) is turned on,
Physiq ue traces its way from the pelvis down the
legs to the toes. From the p elvis it als o traces its
way up through the s pine and branches at the
collar to the arms, hands, and fingers, and up the
neck to the head. A link and associated envelopes
are created for each link found. If any other
objects, including 3ds Max bones, are linked to the
biped, Physique t reats them similarly: it creates a
new link and envelopes.
Keep this in mind when you use Physique to
attach a mesh to the biped; if your character has
additional limbs, link 3ds Max b ones to the biped
for the extra arms before using Attach To Node
to create links and envelopes. When Physique is
applied and Attach To Node is used, it creates
links and envelopes for all the links in the biped,
as well as for the linked bones. Objects t hat should
not deform, like skin, but need to be linked to the
biped, like a sword, should be linked after Attach
To Node is used to link a mesh to the biped. This
way, a link and envelopes will not be created for
the sword.