3ds Max® 2012 Bible

BONUS CHAPTER 7

Creating and Animating Bipeds

IN THIS CHAPTER

Learning the basics of Character Studio

Creating and editing a biped

Animating a biped using Footstep and Freeform modes

Introducing the Biped applications

Max has always had a great way to create and animate characters, but in early versions of Max, it was available only as a separate plug-in known as Character Studio. Happily, Character Studio has been integrated into Max to the point that it isn't distinguishable as a separate package. In fact, some of Max's original features have overgrown Character Studio, but much of Character Studio's original, innovative features still exist and are extremely useful, including Biped.

Using Biped, you can create a fully linked and constrained human-form skeleton by simply dragging in the viewport. Biped objects can be altered in many ways while retaining their benefit. The major benefit of bipeds is that you can realistically animate them by simply positioning their footprints or setting freeform keys.

Although Max includes other features for rigging characters, if you plan on animating a character that walks on two legs and has two arms, then biped is definitely the way to go. It's an incredible timesaver.

Character Creation Workflow

A typical workflow for creating characters in Max involves first creating a skin mesh object. After the skin mesh is complete, you can create a biped object to drive its animation. The biped consists of a pre-rigged skeleton of bones that provide ...