8

786 Chapter 8: Modifiers
Note:
Youmustselectatleast2verticestouse
the Ring selection.
•
Sel ect El ement—When on, selects all
vertices of the element you select, as long as you
select at least one vertex from that element.
Tip: Yo u c a n e d i t yo u r s e l e c t i o n b y h o l d i n g
CTRL or ALT, and then select vertices. This
adds or removes, respectively, vertices to or
from your selection.
•
Ba ck fa ce Cull Ver tices—When on, vertices
pointing away from the current view (on
the other side of the geometry) become
unselectable.
Envelopes—Turn on for envelope selection.
Cr o s s S e c t ion s —Turn on for cross-section
selection.
The first step, after applying the Skin modifier to
an object, is to determine which bones participate
in the object’s weighting. Every bone you
choose influences the weighted object with its
envelope, which you can configure in the
Envelope
Properties g roup (page 1–786)
.
Add—Click to add one or more bones from the
Select Bones dialog.
Remove—Choose a bone in the list, and then click
Remove to remove it.
[list window]—Lists all bones in the system.
Highlighting a bone in the list displays that
bone’s envelope and the vertices influenced by the
envelope.
An horizont al scroll bar appears if a bone’s name
is longer than the window’s w idth.
Note: If an older scene containing long bone names
is loaded in 3ds Max, its name is truncated to fit in
the window. You can overwrite this by setti ng the
MAXScript
shortenBoneNames property of your
Skin mo difier to false.
Example:
$’Sphere01’.modifiers[#Skin].shor tenBoneNames
=false
For detailed information about the MAXScript
utility, open the MAXScript Reference, available
from Help menu > MAXScript Reference.
[BoneNameType-InField]—Enter a bone name
to highlight it in the bone list above.
Tip: You can type-in the first few characters of the
bone you want to highlight in order to narrow the
list.
Tip: You can u se the wildcard (*) key to help you
find your bone faster. For example, you can find
Robot R Index Finger by typing-in *RIn .
Cross Sections group
By default, each envelope has two round, lateral
cross sections, one at each end of the envelope.
These options add and remove cross sections from
envelopes.
Add—Choose a bone in the list, click Add, and
click a position on the bone in a viewport to add a
cross section.
Remove—Select an envelope cross section and
click Remove to delete it.
Before you can select a cross sect ion, the Cross
Sections option in the Select group must be on.
You can delete only extra cross sections that you
have added; not the default cross sections.
Envelope Propert ies group