help with rigging in max
polycounter lvl 18
I'm trying to learn how to rig in max7. I have read a few tutorials on 3dtotal, but they aren't explaining it very clearly. Umm...Should I use the premade Biped skeleton? Or make my own bones? Maybe someone could point me to a better tutorial, or explain it in a nuttshell. I would really appreciate it 
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Replies
I use a combination of:
the CS biped, as it has joint limiters built in,
other bones for facial movement and roll bones
The CS biped isn't enough for more than a simple rig.
For face bones, I place the bone sin the position I want - Jaw, mouth corners, eyefroms, eyelids, cheeks etc, then Link those bones to the head bone.
For roll bones (the most obvious being the forearm (and Biped has this built in now)) I place another bone in parallel to the main bone I want to roll, link it to the bone so that it follows movement, then use the wireparameters dialogue to wire te bones rotation.
So for the forearm, I would put a bone into the Biped forearm, and link its rotation to be 1/2 that of the wrist. As the wrist rotates so does the roll bone. Then I use skin to weight the arm, the top of the forearm is 100% to the Biped bone, the lower of the foream is 100% to the rool bone (perhaps a little to the wrist/hand) and then I blen between the 2.
Other places you will want roll bones are the scapula and the arse (bums tend to collapse really badly)
To be honest, I just learned bipped assignments and animation tonight, I had a friend guide me through the setup. I did this simple test animation of one of my models:
http://s39.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1J06H6JZSSFR20GA9PICAB5QU9
Do you think its vital to learn every form of max bones? Or is one more important then the other? Like I said, bipped is the only way I know to rig as of now, but I would be interested in learning facial rigging.
[mocap would be fun
There was a post here about face rigging the other day, wehre Kona posted an iamge - that would be a great starting point. I can also recommend the book "Stop Staring" if you really want to get into it. I keep meaning to buy a copy myself.
I'm trying to learn how to rig in max7. I have read a few tutorials on 3dtotal, but they aren't explaining it very clearly... Maybe someone could point me to a better tutorial...
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Sorry to repeat the old refrain, but have you tried the tutorials that ship with Max? I haven't seen simpler or clearer tutorials than these. And in general you get a higher degree of accuracy, in terms of terminology and procedures, than most other tutorials on the web.
Take a look in the Character Animation section, specifically "Character Animation Without Biped" if you're interested in bones and rigging. Once you understand these, I'd suggest moving onto the web for tutorials about the more advanced rigging controls.
Once you learn the fundamentals, rigging IK is not very difficult or time-consuming. And you get so much more out of it than Biped allows, IMO. Although Rick's suggestions are solid ones too. We use Biped too sometimes especially since animation loading/saving is so easy. We have a library here of mocap and other anims, in BVH or BIP format, can be handy for quickie jobs.