Inverse Kinematics and Hierarchy Linking

Zephir62

Hey everyone, kinda new here. I've been searching all over the net for tutorials and I haven't had any luck. Asking you guys is my last resort next to buying an $80 book that probably won't give me my answer anyway.

So here's the thing. I'm working with 3DS Max 8 and I'm trying to change the hierarchy linking around of the bones. This way instead of rotating the top bone in the chain(the head of the person in this case) and the rest of the body swings with it, I want just his head to pivot around on the neck bone without effecting the rest of the bones.

I've tried all sorts of creative solutions with linking constraints and fiddling around with the bone editor changing the root bones around, but I don't seem to be having any worthwhile success. So Polycount, can you please help me?

monster

Why is the head the top of the bone chain? Normally the pelvis bone is the top of the chain in a human. There is a Link tool on the main toolbar that allows you to edit parents by clicking and draging from the child to the parent.

If you need an example of a hierarchy, you can create a Biped system and examine that one.

Zephir62

Ahh I think that would work fine with what I'm trying to do Thanks big time

Edit: I take that back for some reason it screwed up my file and I didn't even save over it :P Now every time I try to open it all the bones are screwed up, IE some of them don't appear in the side viewport and only in the front, others are unlinked and facing the completely wrong way, and all that kind of crap. This is on my backup file too. Ahh! This only started after I tried unlinking bones. By the way on top of that it only seems that I can link a bone to only one other bone at a time so it kind of doesn't help with what I was trying to do earlier.