Need correct method of Physique weighting, and Bip

Scott Ruggels

it's been a few years since I ahve used 3dsMax, and the last version I used was Max5 or 6. I now have Max 8 for a contract job and it's all escapeing me. I've used Maya for about 3-4 years now and am used to it. and putting a maesh onto a skeleton is now fairly easy in Maya. For this job it's Max, and the engine DEMANDS that characters are stuck to Bipeds, Oddly enough, ONLY bipeds (you should see the doors). As such someone handed me a mash that did not have a biped in it. I remember to the point of applying the Physique modifier to the mesh and selecting the Pelvis, not Bip01, but after that... Something about locking the verts and then hand keying in the weights? Man I feel..old.

Someone have a fast way of putting the assignments on?

Oh, and how does one IK blend a hand to a weapon wionked to the other hand, they changed the controls in Biped dramatically and I cant' figure oout how to kkey the hand to go from the gun, to waving his comrades forward.

Scott

Scott

Husch

Right, when you assign the physique modifier you can choose to make the physique assignment rigid or deformable, than go into vertex mode, select the vertices, make them rigid (green cross) and lock them, than you can edit their weights in the weight table.

If your exporters support the skin modifier. I would prefer working with it, in the last 4 versions of 3D max it has been far more developped than Physique. You can save and load the weights, mirror the weights and paint the weights on the vertices. Although I think painting weights in Max is not so smooth like in Maya.

For the IK blend, with the biped selected go to the motion panel,KEY INFO, there is a little plus sign with IK behind it, click to open it and there you have your biped IK controlls.

SkullboX

I'm with husch. Unless you have to use physique, go for skin. Skin's initial weighting isn't as good and painting weights isn't as smooth as in maya, but it works about the same and is a lot faster than physique especially if you're used to maya's skinning system already.

Ryno

Yeah, you can use Skin in conjunction with Biped. Skin has far superior tools.

Mark Dygert

If at first you can't physique, skin skin skin away.

I have only had physique pay off very few standard models, even then I spent a great deal of time excluding and weighting by hand. To really get good quick results with physique you have to really push the bounds of the Da vinci pose so it doesn't grab things it shouldn't. Doing that normally ends up in weighting issues around the hips and shoulders. Endless hours of tweaking... WEE...

Just stick to envelopes and painting, it may not give you the instant results physique does, but it doesn't really make it easy to finish the job. Choice is yours really, have it kind of pay off (maybe) a little up front and spend endless hours weighting, or just move thru the model slower doing it more or less right the first few times.

Joao Sapiro

psych0 has a very easy video to learn skinning , i learned to rig with that video , he shows everything pretty good .

http://www3.sympatico.ca/psykopat/tutorials.htm
http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/269783

Scott Ruggels

CooL! thanks.

Okay the IK Blend, seemss to blend the hand to the environment coordinates, which would be good if he was climbing a ladder, but how o I get it to blend with the gun linked to his other hand? (I never solved this in Max, going back to the Q2 Female Werewolf back in 1999).

Scott