9

Splicing Footsteps 873
You can use splicing to build an extended, or
cyclic, motion sequence out of shor ter sequences.
You can also copy footsteps from one biped and
paste them onto another biped with this technique.
Splicing footsteps m akes us e of a footstep buffer
to store footstep positions and keys. The buffer
is a temporary area in memory where footsteps
are stored.
Tip: Use motion splicing when you want to edit
segments of a sing le footstep-based animation. To
build longer animations by connecting finished
.bip files, use Motion Flow (page 2–1026) or the
Motion Mixer (page 2–604).
Pr ocedur es
To copy footsteps to the buffer:
1.
Turn on Footstep mode.
2. Select a ser ies of footsteps.
3. In the Footsteps Operations rollout, click
Copy Footsteps.
To edit t he foots tep buf fer :
You can edit the footstep buffer only when
footsteps have b een copied to the buffer, as
described in t he previous procedure.
1. On the Biped rollout > Modes group,
click Buffer Mode. This button is active only
when there are footsteps in the buffer.
The viewports now display t he footsteps in the
footstep buffer, rather than t he footsteps in the
currently activated footstep sequence.
2. Editfootstepsormotionkeysasyounormally
would – by moving and rotating footsteps, or
turning on Auto Key and moving and rotating
parts of the biped skeleton.
Note: You can’t splice (copy and paste) footsteps
while in Buffer mode.
If you load a BIP file by clicking Load File on
the Biped rollout while Buffer mode is active,
the footstep buffer is replaced with the motion
in the BIP file.
3. Click Buffer Mode to turn it off.
No w you can splice the edited buffer by pasting
footsteps.
To splice the footstep buf fer :
1.
Click Paste Footsteps on the Footstep
Operations rollout.
The footsteps from the buffer appear in their
saturated colors.
2. Use Select and Move from the 3ds Max
toolbar to position the first pasted footstep at
the point where you wan t to splice. When you
move the first pasted footstep over an activate d
footstep of the same side, right or left, the
activated footstep turns red to indicate splicing
is possible.
This step is usually easiest to do in a Top
view por t.
Note: If you deselect the pasted footsteps by
clicking elsewhere in a viewp ort, no paste
occurs and the pasting process ends.
3. When you have moved the buffer footsteps to
the desired lo cation, release the mouse.
Thecontentsofthefootstepbufferareplaced
overtheactivefootsteps.Thefirstfootstepin
the buffer replaces the footstep that turned red,
and the rest of the buffer footsteps follow.
4. Thefootstepthatturnedredandtheremaining
original footsteps now appear in the viewports.
They will be near the activated footsteps, in
their saturated colors. They can now be moved
andpastedontotheendofthesplicedmotion,
which will, in effect, perform an insert of
the buffer motion. The red footstep and is