Max biped and bones combo for rolls

Rick Stirling

About 9 months ago someone here helped me gtting a roll bone system workign in Max5, using bones in conjunction with biped.

Max 7 has it built in, but I want to add it to the feet, and maybe add some other bones.

It's just working out the way I *THINK* it should work, so if anyone can shed some light on this it would be great.

I have biped skeleton. I create a new bone and align it to the left calf. The pivot of the bone is the same as the pivot at the knee, and the bone is linked to the leg. I basically have a clone of the lower leg.

Then the X rotation of the foot should drive the x rotation of the bone. I create a dummy at the pivot of the foot and link it to the foot, and then I use the wire parameters to link the X rotation of the dummy to the X rotation of the calf bone that I created.

When I move the foot, the dummy moves and rotates as expected - it's picking up te information from the foot, but the bone (or even a bone chain, I have tried that) does not move.

However, when I rotate the dummy instead of the foot, I do get the rotation in the bone.

Any ideas?

Ryno

Yeah, the dummy is just inheriting rotation from a higher level of the hierarchy, so technically it is not rotating when you work with the foot. It is just inheriting position/rotation information, but this is not passed down to the roll bone.

Hmmm... Hang on, I'll experiment a bit.

Ryno

OK, got one solution. Add the twister bone as you have done, then assign a Look At Constraint to its rotation with Keep Initial Offset checked, and pick the Biped's toes. Link it to the leg. Now when you pivot the foot, it should turn.

This what you were shooting for?

Rick Stirling

I'll give it a go, but I've found that in max7 there is a special helper. I don't have max here, but I beleive it's *something* like TMExplorer. It's in the helper menu.

Anyway, that can inherit the rotation from the ankle bone, and then the wire parameters work.