max | morph target question ....

[Illusion-shadow]

Well, what you can do is duplicate your mesh, and in the sub object mode, select polygon and hide the polygon that you don't need, like the body and arm... etc. Then duplicate your character as need. When you apply your target to your morpher modifier, max will only calculate the vertices that was modifier. I normally will have one file that contain all the morph target so I can update them when I need to. Then I will merge the mesh will all the morpher modifier to my scene will the rig and copy the modifier to it.

[virtualmesh]

Agree.

I'm going to share some experiences on this matter...

I've found that establishing 'animated vertex movements' on a character can be processed most efficiently (and effectively) through the following stages from first to last in priority.

1) through skin modifier, use bones and skin weights in creative ways to drive vertex locations. put as many smaller bones into your rig as you require, even use stretchy bones to solve some issues within tight areas of a body.

2) blend the bone rotation values with various bump/displacement map values to deliver finer details that neither skin weighting nor standard morphing can accomplish.

3) last but not least, standard morphing; I try to stay away from setting in morph targets into my character rigs; some dial in a mix of morph targets with bone rotations (those bones created in step 1 above) but first ask yourself, if the finer details cannot be accomplished after step two, perhaps the affect is too close in frame (too close to the rendering camera) and it may be better to render the intended affect via a separate pass on just the body part that requires the morph target (you can insert frames rendered on a separate pass into your finished animation). In these rare cases, I would have the body part (a head perhaps) separated from the character's rig and the head would have a morph library associated with it. Again, these would be rare instances.

[everlite]

Hey cheers! that's enough to give me hours of thought :-)

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