3ds Max 9 Bible

When it comes to character animation, several techniques can really help. Keeping these points in mind as you animate characters can make a difference:

• Use Biped: Manual rigging is useful for those cases where Biped won't work, but the tools and features found in Biped make it silly to look elsewhere for human characters.

• Use Dynamics: Dynamic packages like reactor can provide incredibly realistic motion based on physical properties. Learning to use this powerful tool for even the most basic animation sequences is worth the effort.

• Learn by Example: If you're working on a cartoon character, then by all means, watch cartoons. Traditional cartoons understand and invented the language of cartoon motion including squash and stretch, exaggerated motion, or scaling eyes large to indicate surprise. If your character motion is more realistic, find the motion, videotape it, and watch it over and over to catch the subtle secondary motion.

• Use Background Animations: The Viewport Background can load animation clips, which can make positioning characters to match real motion easy. This is a poor man's motion capture system.

• Include Secondary Motion: The primary motion of a character is often the main focus, but you can enhance the animation by looking for secondary motion. For example, when a person walks, you see his legs take the steps and his arms moving opposite the legs' motion, but secondary motion includes his hair swishing back and forth and shoelaces flopping about.

• Use the Flex Modifier: The Flex modifier gives soft bodies, such as tails, hair, ears, and clothing, the realistic secondary motion needed to make them believable.

• Use the Morph Modifier: The Morph modifier can be used to morph a character between two poses or to morph its face between the different phonemes as the character talks.

• Use IK: The next chapter covers this in detail, but here's a quick tip: Having a character move by positioning its foot or hand is often much easier than pushing it into position.

• Use the Spring Controller: Another good way to get secondary motion is to use the Spring Controller. This controller works well with limbs.

• Add Randomness with the Noise Controller: Often, perfect animation sequences don't look realistic, and using the Noise Controller can help to make a sequence look more realistic, whether the Noise Controller is applied to a walking sequence or to the subtle movement of the eyes.

• Use Manipulators: Manipulators can be created and wired to give you control over the animation values of a single motion, such as opening and closing the character's eyes.