Working with Bones

[Eudaimic]

Also, there's a way to have your beginning pose locked down so that you can return to it at any time isn't there? How does that work? I can find the Skin Pose rollout in the hierachy menu, but I'm not sure how to use it.

When I enable it some of my bones just jump into another position, and I can't quite figure out why.

[Eudaimic]

And why the devil can't I undo the move I just made to my bone? :(

They sure didn't design this for ease of use if you ask me :(

[Mahlon]

Your answers lie in the tutorials. There's one on character assembly and I think that covers skin pose. Have you looked in the manuals?:rolleyes:

This might be harder to find, though. If you want to adjust your bones while your skin modifier is present, go into the skin modifier and un-check always deform. Make sure you're at frame 0. Adjust bones. When you finish adjusting the bones, make sure you check 'always deform' again.

Mahlon

[Eudaimic]

I really don't care much for the tutorials that come with max I must say. I have often found them to be full of errors or oversights of a varying degree of severity. But I will check the manual tomorrow, but for now I need sleep :)

Thank you for your help with positioning of the bones.

[Darknon]

You will have to remove the bone from the skin modifier, then ajust the rotation/position to where you want, and then add it again in the skin modifier

[Iain McFadzen]

Don't dis the tutorials that ship with Max5, they are a million times better than in previous versions (specifically the rigging tutorials, which were written by Mike Comet).

[gaggle]

If you encounter errors and such, use the built-in feedback-feature to notify Discreet. I noticed a slew of small errors and such, though nothing that turned me away from completing them. I agree with Iain McFadzen, the tutorials, especially those that comes with MAX5, are very good.

[Eudaimic]

Well I must admit that I have yet to try out the v5 tuts, as it was my general impression that they were more or less just carried over from earlier versions :)

I'll definetly give them a try now.

A quick question though, is there any way of transferring the values from bones in one side of the body over to the other side? Copy/paste maybe?

And the same for the Skin modifier, is there anyway to not have to meticulously go through each bone and vertex?

[Nathan]

ok, to move your skeleton without affecting your mesh, just turn off "Always Deform" in the "Advanced Parameters" rollout in Skin. simple as that... move your bones where you want them, then turn it back on. you do NOT have to remove and reassign the bones.

for a beginning pose, make a Character Assembly out of your skeleton and use "Skin Pose Mode"... that's exactly what all the new Character tools are for, try reading up on them in the help files real quick, it'll explain it for you nicely.

as for copying values in Skin... you can select an envelope and use the copy and paste buttons (under "Envelope Properties") to copy from one to another. for verts you're going to have to either do them by hand or get familiar with the Weight Table.

hope that helps

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