how to animate a vibration in 3dsmax6

sonofangron

Hi, does anyone know how to animate a vibration without having to key in every single movement?

Specifically, how to make the forearms of a biped vibrate -like he was firing a machinegun.

much thanks.

FatAssasin

Use a Noise Controller in the rotation of the forearm. If you don't know how to do this go here:
http://jhaywood.com/croiProjectEyes05.htm

If you're using Biped, I've had mixed results adding extra controllers to the bones. If you run into trouble let me know.

FatAssasin

Actually, now that I think about it, it would be better to assign the noise controller to the position of the gun, not the rotation of the arm. Then make sure that both of the arms are IK linked to the gun. The gun will jump around and move the arms with it. Much easier.

sonofangron

it worked. But on my other bipeds it wouldn't. weird...

much thanks

sonofangron

"Then make sure that both of the arms are IK linked to the gun. The gun will jump around and move the arms with it. Much easier."

how do you do this? I tried the HI solver and the other IK stuff but that dotted line won't appear.

also, I tried to link the forearm to other objects but it wouldn't work.

FatAssasin

Are you using Character Studio or Max Bones?

sonofangron

Character studio

I tried it on regular bones and it works perfect.

At first I applied the noise controller to the biped -- nothing happened. So I experimented -- what could be causing it to not function? Because when I make a fresh biped I apply the noise and it vibrates like hell.

So I applied the noise controller FIRST before fitting the biped to the mesh, then tested the noise animation for every single tweak. But I couldn't figure out what was causing it to stop. A bug perhaps?

Though I did observe that if I apply the noise controller first, it messes up how I fit the biped (i.e. whenever I scale a bone, the upper arm bone suddenly slips down to a vertical position from the diagonal position I already set it on. Pretty annoying.

FatAssasin

Yeah, that's why I said that I've had mixed results with adding a new controller to a Biped. Theoretically it should work, but I don't think it's stable yet.

So the best option is to add the noise controller to the pos of the gun and then link the hands to the gun. Here's how you do it with Biped...

Position the hands on the gun the way you want.
Select one of the hands, and go to the animation tab.
Under Key Info, expand the IK section.
Click the arrow next to the blank box.
Click on the gun.
The gun's name should now appear in the box.
Set IK space to Object instead of Body, and IK Blend to 1 instead of 0.
Now when you move the gun around, the hand will follow it.
The IK space and IK Blend are animatable, so you can make the hand not follow the gun whenever you want.

And if you were doing this in an actuall production environment, you would want to link the hands to a dummy, and then link the gun to the dummy. Not link the hands directly to the gun. This way you could link the hands to all sorts of different objects by moving the dummy around and you wouldn't be restricted to having them linked to just one object.

Hope that makes sense.

sonofangron

this is great stuff. Thanks