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View Full Version : Where are the bones (potentially stupid question)?

shiva14b
01-09-2009, 05:21 PM
So my employer is training me as a rigger/animator since I have at least a little bit of experience with it... but since I'm not formally trained for it with the program (3DS Max 2009) i'm in the somewhat awkward position of being hampered by "what button does that?" syndrome.

I need to do some extra animations for a figure that is already completely rigged, textured, some animations done, etc etc, by someone else. The problem is, I can't find the bones (or whatever I'm supposed to be doing the animation with) in the file they sent me. I've tried doing "unhide by name", and all that appears in the list under scene root is helpers Dummy01 through Dummy04, and when I unhide them I don't see anything appear. Help? Where the heck are the bones, or how do I use the dummies to do the animation, or what? I know they're there... all the bones are listed under the skin modifier, and if i try to re-weight the verts it lets me. The only thing not appearing are the bones themselves.

I know this has to be as simple as changing a display setting or something somewhere...

*somewhat regrets dropping Animation as a second major during her college years*
archanex
01-09-2009, 09:51 PM
Max allows you to use ANY object as a "bone" it sounds like this person you got it from may be using Dummies as controller objects. Have you tried moving those? If the character is rigged with Biped then any object with the prefix Bip is a bone that can be animated. Maybe you should just ask the person you got it from?
shiva14b
01-10-2009, 03:09 PM
Max allows you to use ANY object as a "bone" it sounds like this person you got it from may be using Dummies as controller objects. Have you tried moving those? If the character is rigged with Biped then any object with the prefix Bip is a bone that can be animated. Maybe you should just ask the person you got it from?

Thats what I figured (about the controllers), but when I unhid the dummies I still couldn't find them in the scene... and my whole problem is I can't *find* any of the bip objects.The only thing appearing in the scene is the model itself and those dummies.

I'm trying to track down the original guy to ask him, but he's 1. in Israeli and 2. no longer working for the company (else why would they have sent the work to me :-P).

I'm thinking it really just has to have something to do with the animation display settings, since the bones are there where I go into the skin modifier. I had to reinstall my OS yesterday so I didn't get a chance to look around for that solution, but I'm reinstalling everythig today and taking another swing at it. In the meantime if anyone knows what that setting might be, please let me know...
archanex
01-10-2009, 05:53 PM
"right click>unhide all" should unhide _EVERYTHING_ in the scene. It is possible to make point helpers display as invisible even when unhidden, but if you do an unhide all, and then select by name, they will show up there
shiva14b
01-12-2009, 04:59 AM
Got it! I was right about it being some display setting... had to uncheck "bone objects" under "hide by category". Didn't matter how many times I hit "unhide all" so long as that was selected :-P.
archanex
01-12-2009, 06:01 AM
excellent! anything else I can't help you with? :p
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