2009
■ Put the lowest biped spine object at the character’s belt-line.
■ Scale the biped fingers to slightly protrude from the character’s hand.
■ Rubber Band mode and scale are used to size the biped limbs to fit the
biped to a mesh.
■ Use the options from the
Twist Links group on page 4430 to transfer twisting
animation in the biped's associated mesh.
■ Use Props to represent weapons or tools attached to your character.
■ Use Select And Link on the 3ds Max toolbar to link non-deformable
(mechanical) objects to the biped. Do this after Physique is applied to
prevent Physique from generating extra links (Envelopes). Superflous
envelopes (links) can be turned off in Physique however, so this is not
critical.
NOTE Objects like eyeballs and weapons should be linked to the biped after
Physique is applied; otherwise links (Envelopes) will extend to these objects
when Physique is applied.
■ Reposition and use Ponytails on the Structure rollout to animate a
character’s jaw, ears, hat, hair and ponytails.
■ A saved .fig file can be reloaded if the biped is repositioned in Figure mode
by mistake.
Move the first link on each finger to position the fingers relative to the mesh;
use local and world coordinate systems for this. Scale the finger links to
position the joints. After positioning the thumb, rotate the first thumb link
around the local X-axis until the local Z-axis creates a natural rotation for the
thumb (refer to the image). A User view and toggling back and forth between
a shaded and wireframe display is helpful when fingers are positioned.
Biped User Interface | 4423