SOS - Max animators: I need your assistance!
polycounter lvl 18
Heya guys,
I have been attempting to animate a bit with Max 2011 and have been coming across this issue with a file I've been working with... It's a biped rig with a keyframe type I'm unfamiliar with:
I can't animate anything with these blank white keyframes applied to them.
I tried keyframing with a fresh file and things seem to be working normally.
Do you guys know what's up with that? Any assistance is greatly appreciated!
Thanks!
I have been attempting to animate a bit with Max 2011 and have been coming across this issue with a file I've been working with... It's a biped rig with a keyframe type I'm unfamiliar with:
I can't animate anything with these blank white keyframes applied to them.
I tried keyframing with a fresh file and things seem to be working normally.
Do you guys know what's up with that? Any assistance is greatly appreciated!
Thanks!
Replies
Notice that at the top of the workbench you have a drop down that sets what type of curves it shows, rot is what you'll deal with most of the time, except you might have position on the Center of Mass and you'll need to turn on "Controllers to see those curves"
For some things you can use the standard curve editor but its a bit of a pain, it just depends if you're animating just biped or biped plus regular scene objects also if you want one or the other open. It sinks my fps to have both open...
Biped has "systems" left leg, right leg, spine, ect... and keys for that system are stored in that system so that's why you have a different key instead of the typical PRS keys.
...It's so strange that biped has it's own track editor, but I guess it's great for if you have more than one character in a scene.
Yea once you get over the warts, its not a bad little system. The IK FK blending is great its all handled in the same system instead of 2-3 other systems and constant snapping and wrangling... The copy/paste pose system is pretty great, so is motion mixer.
This would get you a skinned skeleton, No rig.
One of the greatest things about biped is that you can grab the hand, move it where you want like an IK rig, then rotate without having to snap or flip switches and toggle settings. Very quick and light.
Naughty Dog spent a lot of time recreating a system just like it for their animators in Maya and it was a major undertaking. Biped has had it for years. I'd take Naughty Dog's setup over biped in a heartbeat but not everyone can afford to do that. So you deal with the warts that aren't really that bad... There are plenty of work arounds for every bump biped throws at ya, it just takes a while to figure them out.
You can however load it into MotionBuilder which is a awesome little app and apply their character rig and do some neat things, then save that out and import it back onto your biped, very quick and easy to do.
attached an image of the workbench... Anything I'm missing?
Woof. That's brutal. There is IK attached to the legs, but I guess I have to move them to match up with the ground after I position the torso.
there is a pin left and right leg button in the motion panel.
(Dont judge max by biped, its like Max's ugly insane child that it keeps in the attic, They can be pretty usefull at times but no one likes to talk about them)
Thanks a ton r_fletch_r. You guys are all life-savers!
And I totally mean the candy.
Don't think too poorly of Max. Biped is it's own thing entirely. You'd feel a lot more at home if you were working with a standard max rig
Biped, does have a lot of great features once you get used to how different it works. The planted keys being the weirdest part to get used to. But if you've used a rig with IK/FK blending its like setting IK keys, which is all it really is doing.
I can animate a lot faster than a standard rig when I'm working with biped and it takes less time to set up, drag, skin animate. Its very motion capture friendly, which is great because you can load/unload/blend/filter your own hand key'ed motions it doesn't need to be mocap. So that enables you to move even faster. Biped animation layers work great (max animation layers... not so stable).
CAT, is pretty flexible and can be customized into just about any kind of shape you need. 20 legs? Done. 4 headed hydra? Done. Crab? done. Someone posted intro to CAT videos a while back, I posted it on the main page, you have to scroll for a while but I bet its still there. Great videos, everything you need to get started.
PuppetShop, is more of a standard rig with a lot of advanced features like animation clip loading and mixing. But the documentation is in video form and its like 40hrs of video which actually works out to about 120hrs of actual learning. But once you get it down, its awesome, it automates so much so fast. But I can still animate faster in biped...
Once you kind of get a flow going with the biped stuff, it isn't so bad. It was just that initial panic of "Things aren't working!" stretch that was a little stressful.