Problem going from Cryptic to Biped

omfugger

Hello,
Hopefully someone can help me out here. Been trying to figure out a solution for some time now.
I am an animator and Rigger and we are currently using the crap ass package CS (Biped Rig)what I cant stand.

I was wondering is there a solution to take Cryptic AR rig animation and put it on a Biped rig.
I am currently using Max 8.

Any help would be appreciated
R:)B

Mark Dygert

You might want to dial down the anti-CS rhetoric until you use it, I understand change is frustrating but until you can fully compare them, try to refrain from calling one "a crap ass package". Biped isn't that bad once you figure out its features and work flow. Biped isn't my first choice for animation but it's widely used and is included in max, its great at importing mo-cap and managing animation clips, creating looping animations and running crowd control simulations. The least of its strengths is being a user friendly rig, which given the technical restraints put on it (so it can do the wide range of other things) it comes off as a pretty simple, clean rig that you can use to hand animate characters with relative ease.

Please stop trying to comparing elephants to oranges and just learn to use the tools available as they are intended. You'll run into limitations with any rig unless you make it yourself, but who has the time to do that?

Besides you might get more help and appear more professional if you are less fanatical and less insulting...

Getting animation info into a Biped rig is pretty easy and there are 2 ways to do it.
- Import the animation as mo-cap data .BIP .BVH or .CSM.
OR
- Load it as XML. File > Load Animation. The mapping process will go quicker if you configure and name the objects the same in both rigs. This might be your best bet.

EDIT:
Other rigs/animation tools to check out:
http://www.lumonix.net/ (PuppetShop, great rig, easy to use, and great at making non bipedal rigs in minutes)
http://www.lotsofrobots.com/automatron/Automatron_FS.htm (some people dig that crazy control board)
http://www.softimage.com/products/cat/ (5 rabid fans can't be wrong, you'll fit right in)


Plug-Ins that help you work with Biped:
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/worker-of-biped (A Visual panel for selecting biped bones, along with other handy features)
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/biped-hand-selector (hand selector)

omfugger

Thanks for the links I will have to check it out
And yes you are correct about dogging on CS when I have been using it for the past 5 years. It is a quick and easy way to do alot of things with it. Like you said Rigging structure, crowd sims, mocap,.bips, layers, and more are very helpfull.
Hand animating will flip the IK, FK amd will always give strange results (Popping) and in theyre curve editor (Workbench)the anchors points are not moveable even when I am in Euler.

Mark Dygert

To help combat popping between IK/FK make sure you have a 3 degree bend between your bones when rigging. If you straighten out the bones of any IK/FK set up even a custom one, it will have trouble figuring out which system to use. It's why biped and 99% of all rigs have atleast 3degree bends in the limbs, so make sure your rig doesn't start out contorted. Puppetshop has a nice feature that lets you animate and blend easily between IK/FK, it gives great visual feedback as to how close to IK or FK it is using. Biped does most of its blending for you, provided you don't put the rig in an awkward start position. But under the Key Info rollout you can animate the blend.

Euler/Quaternion is set on a bone by bone basis. Its not a switch for the entire biped its a toggle for the selected bone at that point in time. The worker of biped script has a handy tool to select all the biped pieces in one click and then you can set them all to Euler and then have access to nice beizer curves. Certain objects will always be set to Quaternion, fingers, toes, tails and props, because they don't have tangents you won't get beizer curves, you'll have to adjust the curves using the TCB pop-up menu, "Right Click any Key"
.
The workbench will let you know what mode you're in by printing that info above the selected key “Quaternion Rotation of the ...” “Tangent Euler Rotation of the ...” “TCB Euler Rotation of the ...” Even when constrained to using TCB you can right click the key and adjust its ease in/out and its tension, which is just a slightly different way of editing the curve, you have the same flexibility but its just a slightly different way. The worker of biped script has this in/out/tension built in so you don't need to open workbench.

The worker of biped script also allows you to set the pivot point for any planted key you're currently on. VERY handy when doing walk/run cycles.

omfugger

Selecting a pivot from the worker for biped script, is that the same as the Key info roll out select pivot.

Thanks for the Info, Looks like you have has a lot of practice with CS. I am pretty close to finding a solution with cryptic to biped I will post it here. It would bee nice to have another tool to use.

Mark Dygert

Yep, same thing as Motion Tab > Key Info Rollout > IK drop down menu > Select pivot. But the WoB is already out and easily clickable. There aren't any new features the WoB adds, it makes the commonly used, existing features easier to access. Which for me means I can have the copy/paste pose rollout fully extended and WoB gives me access to what is hidden.

In bipeds defense, the default Biped pivot selection stays open, once you dig it out, and it does give you more pivot points to choose from. but its a really rare case that I would need to set a planted key on that level of detail.