One rig/anim set for multiple characters (MAX 2010)

Kinky

Hey all,

I'm working on a project with a HUGE animation set which is identical between a large amount of characters. So basically I want to make one rig and skin a character to it. Then animate it all with that character. Then as new characters are completed just skin them to that rig whilst preserving the animations with minimal tweaking.

From the tests I've done it seems like it should be a fairly simple move, albeit with more tweaking per character than I would have hoped, however without taking it through to a polished set of weights its hard to tell if I'm going to run into a crippling problem later on. So I was wondering if anyone who has experience with this could share their experiences...


Thanks in advance

Matt

Mark Dygert

What kind of rig? Biped, CAT, something you cooked up or downloaded?
What kind of motions?
Are the characters fairly standard or are they all different body types?
Are the characters humanoid bipedal or are they spiders or jelly fish monsters?
Just for rendering or is it going in a game? If so what engine?

Personally I think biped will give you the most flexibility but it depends on how you answer the above questions. With biped you can save the animations and load them onto any biped of just about any other configuration and they'll more or less work. Using Motion Mixer you can even filter out bones and blend animations. Biped also has a convenient layers system that helps you add a new layer and adjust the animations.

There are other ways to do similar tasks with different rigs but it really depends on those questions.

Kinky

I have been using a standard bone and skin modifier job made by myself however i can use CAT or a biped if its going to make this easier.

Its a whole set of animations; walks, runs, attacks, emotes, idles, etc

Theyre all human but its fairly stylised so body shape will differ quite a bit, i also want to copy one animation set between male and female body types. They are for in game use; most likely Torque, however the project may be switched to Unity.

Mark Dygert

Yea I would totally use biped, its friendly and battle tested with just about every engine ever created and it does all the things you need quickly and easily. If you're more comfortable using a standard bone based rig you made yourself, there are ways to do what you're trying to do, but they're a bit buggy and sometimes require some scripting or automation to get working. You're sort of left up to your own devices to get it all working and fix it when it breaks... But with biped its been down this road many many times and it's proven itself.

I've used biped extensively (as well as quite a few other forum members around here) if you need any help PM me, post here or hit me up on MSN: vig_ at hotmail dot com I've done what your about to do a dozen or so times. The only thing that will slow you down is learning bipeds systems but they aren't that crazy or complex if you have someone who knows how to use it.

Kinky

Thanks I've used bipeds before but not extensively. However, looking forward at the task I'm about to embark on id much rather spend some time learning the advanced settings of bipeds than spend likely a lot more time fixing and troubleshooting a bone rig.

Hito

If you have to use Bones, just make sure you reset scales and stretch of the bones before any rigging is applied. Bones' scales get reversed if you've mirrored the skeleton.

When you apply old animation to new skeleton use the merge animation dialogue. If you named the bones similarly you'll know which bone's key goes to which new bone. Though it'll be alot easier if you just skinned the new mesh to the old rig.

Sometimes there will be some tweaking. If things flip wildly it's probably because of a scaling issue (from mirroring skeleton).

Biped is good for this sort of stuff, but if you have to use max bones, you aren't completely stuck with redoing the same animation over and over.

Mark Dygert

Yep I agree with Hito, if you have to use bones its not like your cut off from the Motion Mixer or being able to transfer animations around, it just as a lot more room for error.