3dsmax Shortcuts for Skinning and Rigging?
vertex
Hey everyone, I was wondering if anyone had some shortcuts on skinning and rigging in 3dsmax. By far for me, this is the most tedious task before I animate something. I'm use to rigging with CAT and rarely biped or bones. All are equally and ridiculously challenging. Till this day I've must of rigged over twenty models and none are what I consider successful rigs or rigs appropriate for production. I simply can't seem to ever get around to finding the perfect way to skin and rig a character. I do utilize Mixamo auto-rig but more than often, I'll have a rig that simply cannot be used with this amazing software; more than likely it has open geometry. Nevertheless, I was wondering how is it people learn to set up the perfect skin and rig for their characters. Are there any shortcuts?
Replies
Unfortunately, it doesn't currently support mocap(I have requested it to the dev, Rune Spaan, and he looked into the possibility but said it would be difficult to implement)
It is free(a $50 pro version adds quadrupeds) and I honestly think that if it supported mocap it would completely replace biped/Cat as Max's goto auto-rigging options.(if enough people requested mocap I'm sure he would add it if he could) It is also built during production so is pretty rock solid, but Rune works in VFX so it hasn't been developed with the games industry in mind. I have tested it through a UE4 pipeline and it worked perfectly first try.
It's a fantastic rig to animate with(it is called supersimplerig for a good reason) and Rune built it to rival any Maya auto-rig out there.
For skinning there are several paid solutions. One is WeightPro 2.0 http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/plugins/weight-pro-v2-0
And the other is LH-Auto Skin/rig tools(I have tried the skinning tools and they work pretty well) http://cg-animation.com/en/tools/lh-auto-skin.html
You both should check it out and post up any requests. Rune is quote active on there.