[3ds max] biped head and arm rotation

Noren

It's been a while since I had to animate with Character Studio, but if I remember correctly, there is no way to stop the head and arms from counter-rotating / staying in their current rotation when twisting the spine? Similar for some other limbs/connections.


Edit: Basically talking abou this:

https://help.autodesk.com/view/MAXDEV/2025/ENU/?guid=biped_hierarchy

Beneficial in some instances, cumbersome in others. Maybe something that could be scripted, but probably tricky if there's already some animation.

Noren

Oof, and the separate tracks e.g. for the arms seem buggy as hell in 2023. No IK blend, but moving, deleting or just settings rotation keys on child keys can mess with keyframes or the interpolation of the parent limbs, sometimes not even visible in the curves, only in the viewport.
It's always possible I'm the one doing something wrong, like said, it's been a while, but this seems broken.

poopipe

it's been a very long time since i used biped so i may be well out of date.. 

foot and hand planting can be keyed but otherwise i think you get what you get 

From what I remember the animators I worked with who used biped tended to just work in the viewport  - you can't use the curve editor like you would on something that uses euler controllers so they only really touched it for easing etc.

Noren

Thanks! Yeah, I just stick to keeping the unified tracks and copy partial poses around for follow through etc. and pay attention to the trajectories. A bit of a pain, but at least it works.