Datasheet

Chapter 1 ✦ Finding Your Way — Exploring the Max Interface

The Character menu

The Character menu lets you create and work with characters as separate entities. The

Create and Destroy Character commands add characters to or delete characters from the

scene. Characters can be locked or unlocked to allow free movement. Characters can also

be saved as a separate entity and inserted into another scene.

The Bone Tools command opens a dialog box where you can edit the underlying bone sys-

tem. Characters also have skin, and the Character menu includes commands for setting and

assuming a skin pose.

To learn about characters in more detail, see Chapter 35, “Rigging Characters.”

The reactor menu

The reactor menu includes everything you need to access the reactor physics simulation

engine. With reactor, you can define objects as rigid bodies like chairs or bowling balls or as

soft bodies like stuffed animals. You can also define specialized objects including cloth and

rope.

Although reactor isn’t new to Max 6, the upgraded version of reactor called reactor 2, which

includes many new features, is new. Max 6 has included reactor as a menu item to provide

easy access to these features.

After physical properties are defined, you can define physical forces to act on these objects

and simulate the resulting animation. Not only does reactor make difficult physical motions

realistic, but it also is fun to play with.

Because reactor is the heart of dynamics in Max, you can find it in the part of this book that

covers dynamics, specifically, Chapter 40, “Animating with reactor.”

The Animation menu

The Animation menu contains many commands that help in producing animation sequences

such as IK Solvers, Constraints, and Controllers. The IK Solvers menu command lets you

select from a submenu of Inverse Kinematics (IK) Solvers. The options include HI Solver, HD

Solver, IK Limb Solver, and SplineIK Solver.

The Constraints menu includes options that limit the motion of an object during an animation

sequence. This feature is helpful for keeping the movement of objects within certain bound-

aries. Controllers, like Constraints, are parameter-driven options for animating objects. Table

1-3 lists the available Constraints and Controllers.

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