3d studio max bones
polycounter lvl 12
hi, i'm trinyg to learn the bone system in 3d studio max to rig some vehicle, but this is all new to me and I don't fully understand it, i've been trying to look for some tutorial but i'm not sure if those are even right.
Does anyone have any good tutorial that explains the basic and the normal workflow to make a bone setup?
After trying some stuff, I have a few questions: You can't move bones that are child of other bones, how is that? Only rotation, and the only way I can think of how a suspension can work is by moving one bone in the direction of the strut, which doesn't work :poly122:
When creating one bone, it follows by creating child one by one that end at the end of another bone, but what if I create a new bone and put it as a child, does that work too?
Thanks for any help
Does anyone have any good tutorial that explains the basic and the normal workflow to make a bone setup?
After trying some stuff, I have a few questions: You can't move bones that are child of other bones, how is that? Only rotation, and the only way I can think of how a suspension can work is by moving one bone in the direction of the strut, which doesn't work :poly122:
When creating one bone, it follows by creating child one by one that end at the end of another bone, but what if I create a new bone and put it as a child, does that work too?
Thanks for any help
Replies
Laurens Corijin has a good vehicle rig tutorial here:
http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/autodesk-3ds-max/create-an-advanced-drifting-car-rig-in-3ds-max-day-1/
For Max Bones in general, Paul Neale is very good and has some great character rigging DVDs.
http://paulneale.com/
And the 'nub bones' created at the end of a bone chain can be left in place as a manipulator bone, or deleted if not needed.
It is mean to be exported to a game, so all animation stuff doesn't apply, I guess.
A bone is a visual representation of the distance between the pivot points on either end.
A lot of things are dependent on a bone having both of its pivot points. Which is why you have bones at the end of chains. Certain exporters will not read the visual representation you see and your bone will be just a point.
Even some things inside Max won't read the bone correctly if only has one pivot. Rigging is buggy enough already heh, I don't think its a good idea to give it more excuses to go crazy.
Gaps between bones/pivots can also become an issue, as new bones are created to span the gap between pivots (this happens with gaps between bones also).
Animation > Bone Tools > Edit bone mode. This will allow you to reposition the pivots without effecting the parent or child. You can also uncheck "freeze length" which will allow you to rescale the bone, if you do, also click reset scale, reset stretch. This is an important feature when doing squash/stretch animation. It can also help with things like doing cheap pistons or cranks.
Yep you can link and unlink bones however you want. There isn't anything mystical or magical about bones they are just pivot points with some visual parameters.
Actual max bones were designed for rotation, and as mentioned you can use other objects such as dummys, point helpers, meshes, primitives a
etc. as bones and skin to them with no issues. Meshes may render though, so point helpers could be your best bet.
There is an option to move and rotate bones without affecting the geometry? the only way I can think of doing this is to set all vertex weight to 0 and re-do
You can then push your bones around as you need, then you can turn it back on when you want the skin to follow the bones again.
This will not move your envelopes around, they will stay in the place they where so you might need to move them around to match the new position or adjust the skin weighting to compensate for the new position.
Reset your meshes XForms before starting skinning. (you find this in the utility panel)
NEVER Scale bones.
Actually do you guys find sometimes reset XForms doesnt work and you have to boxtrick the mesh.
If you get sick of rigging you might want to try MadCar, a premade car simulation rig. its actually lets you drive about in the max viewport!
We used it for an animation in work about a year ago, awesome.. and free
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=571932
[ame]