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Pivots are shown as red dots on the hands and feet. Use wireframe
viewport shading if you have problems seeing the choices.
5 Turn off Select Pivot.
6 Rotate the hand or foot around the selected pivot.
TIP If you find that you are not rotating around the selected pivot, set two
consecutive keys at adjacent keys with the same pivot.
Animating a Quadruped
While character studio was initially designed as an specialized program for
animating two-legged, or bipedal characters, it works quite well for creatures
that walk on four or more legs.
Here are some general rules to follow when animating characters that don't
walk upright on two legs:
■ Use Freeform animation, not Footstep animation, if your character walks
on four legs all the time.
■ Pose the biped to match the mesh in Figure mode, scaling and rotating
body parts so the spine is horizontal, and the arms stretch to reach the
ground.
■ If appropriate for your mesh, set Leg Links to 4 and rotate the legs so the
knees point backwards. You can set this value at creation time in the Create
Biped rollout on the Create panel, or later using the
Structure rollout on
page 4424 on the Motion panel.
■ Animate pivot points with planted keys to mimic the rolling of the feet
from heel to toe. Treat the hands the same as the feet. Set planted keys on
the hands and feet, then move the center of mass object to bend the knees
and elbows. See
Key Info Rollout on page 4367 for more information on the
three set key buttons.
■ You can save3ds Max objects as part of the BIP file. If you need additional
legs (for a centipede) or extra arms or wings you can use standard bone
objects with IK chains, and save all of it with the BIP file.
■ The Balance Factor in the Key Info rollout Body group, is designed to
synchronize upper body and lower body movement. Set Balance Factor to
Freeform Animation | 4277