is character studio a good choice ?

[Dave Black]

Easier to do what?

CS is a hugly complex and powerful tool. What portion of Max's existing toolset do you find lacking?

-3DZ

:D

[sam]

CS 4 is an excellent tool, but like anything else, expect to spend a good amount of time learning how to use it or to at least be able to use it to its full potential.

However, right off the bat, without much fuss and hassle with learning anything too deep, you get a real nice FK/IK rig with pivot points, exportable animation clips, and pose to pose animation. The other stuff like its NLA, crowd system, and motion capture filtering you can eventually grow into and pick up on the way.

The big benefit to CS is that you get to use a fantastic pre-built rig without having to have a dedicated TD around your studio to build it for you. The other option, besides CS, that is also definitely worth a serious look is Kaydara's motion builder. Both CS and Motionbuilder get you animating right away.

sam

[Dave Black]

Could not agree more...

CS rocks. Been using it for years, and IMHO, it's great in a development pipline. Physique alone, to me, is almost worth the pricetag.

Still, please give us some more info on what you want to do with CS.

Sometimes a custom rig is a better way to go. CS does have limitations, and it's important to know them before you purchase it, as it's not cheap.

-3DZ

:D

[Supernova]

3DZealot, can you tell what makes Physique better than max normal skining and Sking Modifier?

[Bob27]

I've just started reading the CS4 manual , though I had
workde a bit with former versions and it seems great....

[Dave Black]

Ok, the difference between physique and skin:

Physique's envelopes have an parent overlap and child overlap. These allow you to tweak the joint blending with ease.

Physique has bulges and tendons.

Aside from features that skin does'nt have, Physique is an overall robust and fully featured tool.

It's subobject modes include envelope, link, vertex, bulge, and tendon sections, allowing for a huge amount of control over the attachment of the mesh to your biped or bones rig.

Hope some of that made sense.

Really the most amazing thing in CS is the motion flow(called motion mixer or something in CS4) utility. Imagine animating a character running, and then saving the animation as a seperate file. Then, animate your character walking, and saving it to a seperate file.

You can then take those files, and merge them together. CS actually blends the 2 animations together(with your control) seemlessly. It's really amazing. And it's even better in CS4.

-3DZ

:D

[Supernova]

Sounds great.
Thanks.:bounce:

[mouj]

Howdy !

might be helpfull to get a glimpse as to how CS works and is used, maybe with this you can somehow compare and see for yourself if it would suit you...

btw, excellent tutorials on CS (thanks 3dbuzz).

http://www.polyfarmer.com/Tutoriallinks.htm

mouj

[Bob27]

I could not find a book on CS in Amazon. Is there a good
book on Character Studio?
What about web tutorials? You can find tons of tuts on modeling
but there seems to be very few tuts on CS.
thanks Mouj for providing a link . Does anyone know other
good tut links for that?

thanks

[sam]

great resources

Michelle Bousqet has a great hub for instructional material and a special section dedicated to Character Studio

http://www.maxhelp.com/

http://www.maxhelp.com/csc/index.htm

Paul Steed has a book out on Animating Real-Time characters that focuses extensively on 3ds max 4.2 and CS 3

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1584502703/qid=1049566642/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/104-5671611-9055905?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Di-o-matic sells some instructional material
http://www.teach-o-matic.com/

Discreet's online store sells a number of CS titles that have been recently released

http://estore.discreet.com/

hopefully these will get you started . . .
sam

[Bob27]

That was great Sam !

[hunter7338]

hey thank you everyone ! That was really helpful,

The tut links are great :bounce:, now I´m sure about "the reading" of all tutorial stuff.

I´m planning to make an animation with cartoon-like characters, so thats why I´m thinking to use CS4, the animation will be a B-52´s music video and I´m now on the modeling process of the band guys :wip:

I´ll soon post some shots of Kate model so far.


thank you again

cocoon

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