CGTalk - Human bone set up

Seven

08-10-2002, 08:25 PM

Im having real trouble with this and the manuals not helping me.

Im trying to set up a bone skeleton for a humaniod. I dont have Characters Studio but im sure it is perfectly possible to make a skeleton in default max.

I can do legs, legs are easy, i admit there not the most functional legs in the world but I have enough to work on them. My problem is the rest of the figure, waist up.

I cant seem to get the bones to do what I want. For example when they dont have any end effectors on a bone chain they dont seem to animate. When I do place an end effector on the end of a bone chain, like the arm the bones only seem to move on a single plain, they wont move on all three dimensions. It might be me but I find this odd. Dummies arnt helping me beause they seem to lock the chain all together.

The image below is my skeleton at present, good isnt it :)

Could someone give me some help on this please. Its been bugging me for ages now, i just cant seem to create a functional bone skeleton.

With the hips i find that I can give more swinging movement to the hips using dummies.

Sev

Seven

08-10-2002, 08:30 PM

here is my current chain

catbells007

08-11-2002, 02:10 AM

It looks like your using max3 their (or earlier). I always found rigs particularly difficult to set up in ver3, i dont think it had the fastest or most predictable IK bones in the world. The IK was completely rewritten for v4.

However you must always animate using controls attached to the effectors, never try to animate the effectors, as youve already stated it doesnt work. Also the bones will only move in one axis plane as thats how joints move in the real world (ie your elbow or knee) with the exception of the root bone (ie. the shoulder) which can rotate in all directions.

Generally the spine bones will use FK and the IK arms & legs will attach to these. The legs attached at the pelvis which will be the root of your skeleton, usually a dummy object.

Here is a good leg setup for 3dsmax3 if your intersted:
http://www.comet-cartoons.com/toons/3ddocs/iksetup/index.html

Failing all that upgrade to max5 and just use Michael Comets Character Rigger script it does it all for you (which is great cause i hate doing character rigs):
http://www.comet-cartoons.com/toons/maxscript.cfm#C

Hope this is of some help

Seven

08-11-2002, 04:27 PM

Thanx for the reply, ill keep at it.

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