Ik with bones - bit of a noob question

[phil]

Hi james,
it's definitely possible, though you would get better results if your mesh had more detail in the areas that have to bend. You should find tutorials on rigging/boning and skinning/enveloping a character in max's own help files.

cheers,
phil

[James Bending]

Cool, i have been looking at boning the rabbit up (no... not like that, you sick puppy) and applying a skin, i have also applied mesh smooth, (if you would like to see my WIP go here (http://www.jamesbending.co.uk/my_rabbit_07_02_03.avi) )seems to work quite well apart from...

I still have a minor problem (which i thought might be the problem in the first place) of moving the entire rabbit forward and keeping the bones at the same location of the rabbit so that its easy to animate. Is it possible to do this by applying a hierachy? When i apply a hierachy to a dummy the mesh becomes distorted when it moves (see attached picture)

Thanks alot for your time

James

[phil]

yeah it is possible, but there are a few rules (well shit loads of rules actually:)

never animate a rig/heirachy before it is finnished. that's why your mesh is getting screwed.
to fix it you can probably disable your skin modifier on the rabit, then complete the heirachy and then re-enable the skin.

it's a good idea to leave a frame at the very start of your animation (frame 1) with no animation on the rig. ie don't start animating till frame 2. this leave you with an original reference pose which can come in handy later on.

rather than linking your bones to a control dummy for moving the whole character it is often better to use a position constraint, but this is dependant on your particular heirachy.

could go on for ages but i gotta go now, i hope that helps you a little.

cheers,
phil

[James Bending]

Thanks alot for those tips phil! I'll look into the position constraint thing asap, and the only animating on frame 2 is genius i wish i figured that out before!

Im still not clear why my mesh is going crazy, but I think that if i use the position constraint thing instead of having a hierachy the problem should be fixed...maybe...


When its done I'll post the movie up sometime :)

Thanks again

James

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