3ds max biped animation problem; jerky curves
polycounter lvl 11
So i try to animate a biped in 3ds max, and i use the hand to pose the arm in different positions during a walk cycle. then it looks really jerky, making a small stop at each key.
i have it euler mode, so i open the workbench and look at the rotation curves for the armjoints. they are all smooth. i look at the hand joint, but it doesnt have any rotation curves since i only moved it around, so i open the poscurve. there i see the jerky pattern in the curve. only i cant touch it. it is some weird doted lines instead of the usual ones, and there are no keyframes shown. why?
another thing. this only happens on the arms, not on the legs.
i have looked around a lot and cant find any decent guides on how to get smooth animations on the biped using the euler system. would be super grateful for any suggestions.
i have it euler mode, so i open the workbench and look at the rotation curves for the armjoints. they are all smooth. i look at the hand joint, but it doesnt have any rotation curves since i only moved it around, so i open the poscurve. there i see the jerky pattern in the curve. only i cant touch it. it is some weird doted lines instead of the usual ones, and there are no keyframes shown. why?
another thing. this only happens on the arms, not on the legs.
i have looked around a lot and cant find any decent guides on how to get smooth animations on the biped using the euler system. would be super grateful for any suggestions.
Replies
In Quaternion you can interact with position curves and it will translate that back into rotation values. That functionality doesn't exist when biped is in Euler mode.
If you grab the hand and move it, the rotations are calculated per joint. It doesn't set it to IK mode and start using position just because you "positioned" the hand. You would have to turn on Planted keys to start using Position tracks.
TimothyC went over the "issue" over at CGTalk a few years ago and explains it pretty well. http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=565232
Personally I don't like working with biped in Euler it gives me some wacky default curves that require a lot of hand tweaking and I get better default curves with Quaternion. It's a little less friendly to work with but there is less to tweak so it actually saves me time and I mostly get what I want.
Also I've had my Euler curves reset when I load/save an animation and that never happens with Quaternion. I only had to redo the tangents a handful of times to find out it wasn't worth it and kept using Quats.