9

934 Chapter 14: character studio
• Body Vertical
•
Body Turning (selected with the Body
Rotation button)
You c an use these buttons, available on the Track
Selection rollout (page 2–945),toselecteachtrack
as well as the COM itself.
Li nki ng the Center of M ass Object
Using the Select And Link tool (page 2–422) you
can link the center of mass object to another object
if you need to reposition an animation sequence.
An example of this mig ht be a surfer. You could
create an animation of a biped running up and
dow n the surfboard, hanging its toes off the end of
thesurfboard,andsoon,andthenlinkthecenter
of mass object to the board. When you animate
thesurfboard,thebipedanimationwouldtravel
with it.
The biped moves with the sur fboard because the center of
mass is linked to the surfboard.
Bec ause the COM is t he root object in the biped
hierarchy, it is the only object in the biped that can
be linked directly to other objects in the scene with
Select And Lin k. A different technique is used to
make other b ody par ts, such as feet and hands,
follow other objects in the scene. See Animating IK
Attachments (page 2–908).
Cente r of Mass Shado w
The center of mass shadow object, the circle
between the biped’s feet on the world plane,
provides a sense of where the character’s center of
mass is positioned relative to the feet. Another use
ofthecenterofmassshadowistolinkobjectstoit.
For example, a camera and camera target could be
linked to the s hadow object to follow the character.
The center of mass shadow between the biped’s feet.
M otion Panel R ol lout s
(B iped)
Assign Controller R ollout
(char a cter st udio)
Select a biped’s COM. > Motion panel > Assign Controller
rollout
The Assign Controller rollout assigns and appends
different transform controllers to individual
objects. You can also assign controllers in Track
View. A nimation controllers are plug-ins that
handle all of the animation tasks in the software.
For a complete list of available Animation
cont rollers, see Assign Controller (page 2–546).