The Rigging Questions and Answers

#1

This thread is for all the people out there, including myself, who have either had or are having problems when it comes to Max Rigging and Skinning.

The first thing I think we should discuss are the main differences between “bones” and “biped”.
When do you use which one.

Firstly, you can use basically either one to get the job done, however each contain their own pros and cons.
Biped for one has many nifty tools like MotionMixer, Footstep mode, MotionFlow and even MoCap.

If you have any questions regarding the two and even skinning in general use this thread to ask your questions and myself and CGTalk will help you to our utmost.

#2

3dsmax 8 now comes with some very cool added features for character development.

CS 6 I do believe the new version is, contains a hell of a lot of additions and things to make like 1400% easier via Biped.
Check out the demos on the autodesk site.

But bones will still show through as a very versatile medium to work with compared to the CS Biped.

#3

Alright, thus-far Bones have been voted by you as being better than Biped.

If you declare one as much better than the other then add a brief explanation to why you decided that.

#4

I’d have to say catools =) Actually I picked bones because they are to me a bit more flexible in some situations where a human isn’t what you’re doing or maybe you want to just get a bit more custom. Cstudio (to me) seems to be more of a pain to get what you want. But that’s just my opinion… i still think cstudio has A LOT to offer… and I really do want to learn more about it. I’m glad they keep adding more features to it… they’re really making it evolve.

#5

Personally, I like both ways but I wish their was an easier way to set up stretch and squash to your rig. I’ve been able to use stretch bones in FK but when it comes to IK, it’s more complicated and I haven’t seen anything that accomidates this well. I’ve only learn to stretch the spine on bones with some scripting but I can’t figure it out on the arms, legs and head. Now if Biped could do that, I’d be very happy. I’m not sure about the new version in 8.

#6

can you make a fish rig with biped?
i guess its very hard

thats why i choosed bones :slight_smile:

bones are extremely flexible, you don’t just rig characters
u use bones to fold a sheet of paper… to flap book pages… to create some animal rigs like fish and butterflies

#7

I have been working in max for 6 years and just recently have got into characters. Bones were very complex to get into. Biped was a much easier place to start. I understand that bones are more flexible and can acheive more complexe motions, but the initial rigging is coplicated and confusing. I would like to go that way some day, but for right now CS is a great introduction.

If some one has examples that they can share, I would get a lot out of examining the way that they used bones to rig their characters.

#8

I’m working in max seven and the character studio’s curve editor is occassionaly troublesome. It doesn’t seem to be possible to use custom tangents on the curves, only TCB options are available. Is this still the case in the newer version of character studio? I’d be very interested to hear.

#9

While I wanted to vote, I’m afraid I just couldn’t. Both bones and Biped have some pretty extreme pros and cons. Like it has already been stated, it would be difficult to use biped to make a fish. (Though tentatively, I want to say it could be done.) Then again, I dare anyone with no character experience to dive into bones and rigging, and get results half as good as 15 minutes of CS time. I wish I could say I use bones, simply because with bones, your possibilities are endless. But untill I can turn out a resonably nice PEN-ish rig I’m gonna have to stick with the relatively simple biped.

Oh, and tleave2000, Bezier Curves for Biped in Max8!

#10

I’m going for bones as an overall thing for a few main reasons:

Ease of use of rigs, function curves and expandability/customization.

Character studio is really handy with an instant solid rig with seamless ik / fk and motion capture stuff built in but I don’t like the way it handles function curves and controllers. Adding other bits on to a cs rig is a bit of a pain too.

Bone based rigs offer a huge amount of control but again it takes a while to set up a solid one so you’re losing time there. It does however make a much more pleasant rig for an animator to work with however so you’ll gian back time there. Also if you want to do anything different, someone mentioned a fish rig there, cs kind of screws you.

I totally agree that the learning curve for bones is much higher but anything worth learning ain’t easy. There’s a lot of controllers in max all with their own quirks so it takes a while to learn those. Then with all of the problems with parenting and gimbal lock there’s a bit more time learning. Lastly, the most flexibility with rigs comes from scripted setups where you have some kind of system or set of tools that will build your rig based on a set of moveable helpers. Again that’s more time but not as difficult as it seems.

#11

joconnell said exactaly what I was about to say… :slight_smile:

And I would advice to anyone new to the rig stuff to start practicing and soon you will find out that it’s not that hard and the flexibility you got in custom rigs is priceless. This flexibility will show up in an animation, especially when CS forces a move that you don’t want. So I stay with bones and custom rig. :wink:

#12

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