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888 Chapter 14: character studio
A Convert To Freeform dialog is displayed.
Click OK.
Don’tturnonGenerateAKeyframePerFrame
unless you have a good reason to do so. Having
a keyframe on every fr ame makes animation
editing much more complex. Use this only
if you are losing motion quality through a
conversion process.
Crea t in g Fr eef or m
Animation
Thetopicsinthissectiondealwiththecreationof
freeform animation for bipeds. They are:
Selecting Biped Tracks (page 2–888)
Animating by Moving Links (page 2–890)
Animating by Rotating Links (page 2–891)
Rotating Multiple Biped Links (page 2–895)
Using Controllers (page 2–896)
Using P rops (page 2–898)
Selecting B iped Tracks
To a n imate you r c h a r a c ter w ith f r e e f or m m et ho d s ,
you need to know how to select the bo dy par t you
want to animate, as well as the ty pe of movement
youwanttoaffectforthatpartofthebody.3dsMax
and Biped provide a number of different methods
for selecting and moving these animation tracks.
Several involve using the 3ds Max Track View, a
powerful environment for viewing and managing
the geometry and motion data in your scene.
For each biped body part, motion data is viewable
in Track View or on the track bar. Once you’ve
selected the biped object, using one of the metho ds
described b elow, you can see its associated motion
data on the track bar or displayed in the Transform
branch for that object in Track View.
Bipedletsyouexpandandcollapsecertain
animation tracks to give you more control over
your character’s movement as you set keyframes.
Forexample,tracksforbodypartsinthearms
can be animated using five separate t racks for
maximum control.
You c an also collapse these tracks for simplicity,
and use a single key to pose the entire arm. Tracks