In 3ds max is there any way to rotate CAT's foot platform on the heel/toe?
polycounter lvl 6
Hi,
So in basic terms animators want to rotate foot platform not only around its center but also around heel, toe and sometimes even sides of the foot which works fine in biped but STILL haven't fixed in CAT (Correct me if I am wrong as I am using Max 2015 but comments regarding to this issue goes to 2008 so I doubt something is changed in Max 2018)
I read many forums and let me exclude few of most common replies which won't help:
1. This not gonna work during the animation where you need to move pivot to the heel at frame X and then to the foe at frame Y - it results in a mess
2. And this points to the post where the guy understands the problem but looks like his workaround is incomplete and anyways all links there already dead
3. Use walk animation layer - thank you but this is not a solution if I need a simple rotation on the heel or toe or maybe even just a single step
4. Rotation using transform coordinate center which is placed on the heel or toe could be a solution but it doesn't work in animation mode
CAT has so many benefits over biped and much easier then custom rig but this small but very important functionality is missing. So is there any workaround or CAT is not so popular nowadays or people just rotating foot platform around its center ignoring the fact it makes animation worse? Please advice
Replies
Re 1. Yep, that's the custom pivot system, this might explain it better:
For all of it's weirdness and warts, that is the way the system is designed to be used and it works pretty well if you conform to its standards. Personally I find that you have to micro manage the pivot, but I create my own rigs and create a foot step up that is easy for me to animate. You can get good results with CAT's custom pivot, but you need to use it as it was intended.
Re 2. That guy is trying to bastardize a pretty unstable rig, into doing something it was never meant to do... he deserves all of the pain that is coming to him. He should be building his own custom rigs instead of trying to graft on a new foot system. His project was doomed before he even posted.
Re 3. Whoever suggested using the walk layer, didn't understand what you are trying to do. What if you where doing a boxing game and had to do a lot of footwork? Using the walk layer would be completely frustrating. You need access to the pivot.
Re 4. You will need to work within CAT's restraints if you want to use CAT. Out of the box it's pretty unstable and I personally won't use it for production because it has screwed me over in the past and they haven't fixed any of the things that caused it to break.
Trying to hack another solution on top of CAT is just asking for trouble.
Personally I would abandon 3dsmax for animation and move to Maya. I say that as a long time 3dsmax user, 10+ years. I love max, for modeling, but animation is 3x more difficult than it needs to be. Plus Maya has HumanIK which is pretty much motionbuilder stuffed into Maya. Max has some limited functionality through CAT and Biped but it's not as freewheeling and open as HIK, that will work with any rig provided you tell it how to operate.