Is there some kind of Animation Manager in 3dsmax ?

#1

Hello,

This is my first message here and first of all i am sorry if my question have ever been debated in other posts or tutorials, i tried to search in the 3dsmax helpfiles and forums but i didn’t really find and i need to be sure… I have few years of basic use of 3dsmax as self-educated, but I never tried the skinning animation part so my vocabulary is quite poor.

I want to do a really simple sequence with simple objects (boxes) : i did a walking cycle (box is walking like an human with Skin modifier based on spline for legs) + the box jump and bouncing.
I 'd like to apply this principle of animation (1. walk, 2. jump and bounce, 3. walk again) to a lot of boxes (around 40 for now) but i want them to walk with different rhythm (some slow, some fast…), and start jumping at different moment.
I’m sure there is a lot of way to do that, and i know i can do it with complicated way and spend time to manually tighten or extend the whole key frame of the walking cycle… then adapt the speed of the box… then… etc for every 40 boxes…

So my question is…

Is there some kind of “animation manager” which can help me stocking my 1. walking cycle keyframes + my 2. jump keyframes, and permit me to change the speed according the legs movements, and make happened the jump when I want ?!?

I thank Motion Mixer could perfectly do this but from what I understood its only works with Biped and not with keyframe animation. So, am I wrong ? Is there a tool like that in 3dsmax ? Or no… and i just need time and patience to modify every moves from every objects

Thank you for your help !

#2

Motion Mixer does not only work on bipeds, but on any object as well, so it should be fine for you. (Motion Flow is the one that is meant just for bipeds).
Maybe you would like to take a look to the Motion Mixer help topics on the Max reference. I think things are very well explained there. Of course, it takes a bit of study, but, c’mon, what does not?
Good luck with your walking boxes!:smiley:

#3

Thank you very much for your answer ! You are right, Motion Mixer seems perfect to do what i want. The first try i did, my boxes was animated by the skining modifier bases on a spline used as a bone, so i could not map the animation of the vertices. I think i need to use real boned animation to export the xyz tracks. I have time to try and retry until success… If you have some good tutorials about this, you can post the links here.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP !!

#4

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