2009
Understanding character studio Workflow
Biped, Physique, and the Crowd system work together within 3ds Max to
provide a complete set of character animation tools. Although these
components can be used in a variety of ways, it is helpful to approach character
studio with a basic understanding of how a typical character animation is
created.
The following sections provide a brief summary of the basic workflow and
related benefits to creating a character with Biped and Physique. You might
not use all the following steps, but you’re likely to do them in the following
order.
Create Skin Geometry
Create a basic skin shape for your character using any 3ds Max modeling tools
and surface types. Be sure to place your character skin in a neutral pose with
arms outstretched and legs spaced slightly apart. You might also want to add
sufficient detail to your skin mesh or control points around joints to facilitate
deformation during movement.
NOTE Physique deformations are based on a volume, which means you can refine
your geometry later with minimal impact to skin behavior. Thus, you can create
your animation before building your model, if you like.
Create a Biped Skeleton
Biped automates the creation of bipedal character skeletons. It also lets you
introduce significant changes to the skeleton structure and sizing at any point
during your animation without adversely affecting character motion. As a
result, you can animate your character without knowing if it is short or tall,
skinny, or fat. It also means that if the director changes the character
proportions, the animation still works.
For more detail on posing a biped skeleton, see
Biped on page 4147.
Attach the Skin
■ Position the biped character within its modeled skin. Use Figure mode on
page 4420 to scale bone lengths and to orient the skeleton correctly within
the skin volume. Scale bone thickness as desired to achieve a good initial
fit. Then save a figure file, so it’s easy to return to this pose.
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