8

Surface Follow Behavior 1113
Anexamplewouldbebirdsflyingoverarowof
telephone poles, and then each one dropping to
land on top of a different pole.
Surface Follow Behavior
In crowd animation (page 2–1006) ,theSurface
Follow behav ior moves delegates with respect to
object surfaces. Target objects can be animated.
For example, you can apply an animated Noise
modifier to a patch grid to simulate a choppy water
surface, and objects guided by Surface Follow wil l
stay on top.
Sy nt hesis, S y nthes ize
Synthesizing is the process of computing (s olving)
motions for
crowd simulations (page 2–1006) .
The resulting simulation is a synthesis.
Talent Figure Mode
When y ou work with motion capture (page
2–910)
,afteryouloadaraw marker file (page
3–1063)
,youcanturnonTalentFiguremodeto
scalethebipedrelativetothemarkers.Calibration
for the entire marker file takes place when you exit
Talent Figure mode.
Tangents
Thetangentofafunctioncurveaffectsthe
interpolated values between the keys of an
animation. Most animation controllers use fixed
tangents to define the function curve at a key
location.
By default, 3ds Max assigns smooth tangents to
thekeysinaPositionfunctioncurve.Thisisthe
reason that an animated object moves in smooth
curves through the key frames. 3ds Max assigns
smooth tangents because they usually provide the
most natural motion.
Of course, you also need a way to add some corners
and abrupt turns when you need them. The
Linear
controller (page 2–325)
uses a discontinuous
tangentthatpointsattheprecedingandfollowing
keys, producing an abrupt change in motion at
that key.
Thetwolargeflyoutbuttonsatthebottomofthe
Key Info dialog provide five different types of
predefined tangent typ es (p age 2–300) ,plusasixth
type that lets you create your own custom tangents.
If you look at a single key dot and the line running
through it, the line on the left side of the key dot
istheincomingtangent,andthelineontheright
is the o utgoing tangent. U sing the tangent flyout
buttons, you can assign a different tangent type
totheincomingandtheoutgoinglinesforeach
key dot.
Thebuttonontheleftassignstheincoming
tangent at the lef t side of the selected key dot,
and the button on the right assigns the outgoing
tangent on the r ight side of t he selected key dot.
TCB (Bi ped)
TCB is short for Tension, Continuity , and
Bias. These parameters quantif y the traditional
animation technique of ease in and ease out (also
known as “slow in and slow out”). In
freeform
animation (page 3–1039)
of a biped, you can use
them to change the timing of a limb’s movement
from key to key.
TheTCBcontrolsareintheTCBsectionofthe
Key
Info rollout (page 2–809)
.