haha I can rig but I get so rapped up in rigging in new and innovative ways, It takes so long to get to practicing animating. I spend all day and night studying rigging instead of animating. Not in school though.
Rigging, the process of creating bones, helpers and constraints, actually making the skeleton.
Skinning, attaching the mesh to the skeleton.
Rigging in max couldn't be easier with CAT and Biped. They're pretty much one click rigging solutions, so are half a dozen other plug-ins and scripts like puppetshop, CrypticAR bla bal bla bla... So rigging is a no brainer, it doesn't mean you can rig, it just means you don't need to be a rigging genius to get something working.
CAT which was included in max2011 comes with a few skinned examples but it's FK/IK system along with its spine control can be a bit problematic the first few times around.
Biped is super straight forward, easy to use and pretty much bullet proof, but you do need to skin a character unless you don't mind animating just the biped itself, which I've seen a lot of people do with it set to male, female or classic.
Skinning in max is pretty straight forward, the tutorial that is included in the help files is great. It should take roughly 20-40min to go thru and covers all you need to know. You can get a character 80% skinned in a short amount of time using just the envelopes. if you're not worried about fingers then its more like 98% skinned with envelopes.
The basic workflow goes:
Skeleton creation, align joints to the mesh.
Apply Skin.
Animate mesh to extreme poses, ignoring fugly deformation.
Adjust envelopes while sliding the bar around to check how the mesh deforms.
(If you have anything that needs cleaning up)
Use the paint weights tool to add, subtract and blend bone influences.
Ctrl + Shift + Drag = brush radius
Alt + Shift + Drag = brush strength
Alt + Paint = invert brush (subtracts, but only when blend is checked off)
If necessary use the weight tool to hand adjust the bone influences for the extremely troubled areas.
My friend. Thank you for.....clearing that up for me. I do know how to rig a character. I am not claiming to have heavy knowledge of rigging but I have rigged my own characters in a way that was good for me at the time. I was only trying to find a place to download already rigged/skinned characters. I wanted to feel out others rigs, and animate with them. Perhaps, I would find their rig more suitable for me. I would rather not use the CAT system. I have used it and I would prefer bones. Thank you for the feedback.
I'm looking at whether to use biped, which i'm hearing industries are not using much anymore, CAT system or bones to rig my character to practice animation. Does anyone have any advice? The main problem i'm having with CAT is the rolling of the heel.
Replies
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=89197
Rigging, the process of creating bones, helpers and constraints, actually making the skeleton.
Skinning, attaching the mesh to the skeleton.
Rigging in max couldn't be easier with CAT and Biped. They're pretty much one click rigging solutions, so are half a dozen other plug-ins and scripts like puppetshop, CrypticAR bla bal bla bla... So rigging is a no brainer, it doesn't mean you can rig, it just means you don't need to be a rigging genius to get something working.
CAT which was included in max2011 comes with a few skinned examples but it's FK/IK system along with its spine control can be a bit problematic the first few times around.
Biped is super straight forward, easy to use and pretty much bullet proof, but you do need to skin a character unless you don't mind animating just the biped itself, which I've seen a lot of people do with it set to male, female or classic.
Skinning in max is pretty straight forward, the tutorial that is included in the help files is great. It should take roughly 20-40min to go thru and covers all you need to know. You can get a character 80% skinned in a short amount of time using just the envelopes. if you're not worried about fingers then its more like 98% skinned with envelopes.
The basic workflow goes:
Skeleton creation, align joints to the mesh.
Apply Skin.
Animate mesh to extreme poses, ignoring fugly deformation.
Adjust envelopes while sliding the bar around to check how the mesh deforms.
(If you have anything that needs cleaning up)
Use the paint weights tool to add, subtract and blend bone influences.
Ctrl + Shift + Drag = brush radius
Alt + Shift + Drag = brush strength
Alt + Paint = invert brush (subtracts, but only when blend is checked off)
If necessary use the weight tool to hand adjust the bone influences for the extremely troubled areas.