Reaction Manager Completely Broken

#1

In trying to setup a relatively simple foot-roll control, I’ve smashed headlong into a brick wall of completely broken engine mechanics.

As I attempted to apply values to the rotation of my three foot bones, it started to feel like Max was playing keepaway with me. I would set a number into the values for one bone in one state, move on to the next and then find the new value would apply itself to every bone BUT the one I typed into, and attempting to zero out the values has no effect on things.

I’ve gone to a number of places for help and even tried downloading and installing every hotfix and service pack released for Max 2011, to no effect.

This isn’t acceptable. The reaction manager is a major asset in rigging and animation, and I need it to remain unusable like I need to contract syphilis.

There’s got to be something I’m simply doing wrong , there’s no way it could be messed-up this bad.

#2

Welcome to the wonderful world of half baked features in Max. RM never worked right, its also pretty slow. Use wires for this kind of stuff and you good to go.

#3

How in the name of Jupiter’s gnarled and wadded boxerbriefs can you set a specific series of poses with parameter wiring?

The good news is I figured out that the reaction manager was actually working, but the value readout was borked, but I keep hearing this insistence on wiring as a replacement, as if it’s in any way equivalent to the reaction manager.

But parameter wiring is controlling or synchronizing a pair of values by entering a math equation to specify the nature and degree of the reactionary effect.

What kind of math equation and wiring would make one bone move according to one point at a slider, then stop moving when the slider reaches the point where a different bone is intended to move on its own?

At any rate, even if you COULD use it to recreate the reaction manager’s effects like this, it sounds like it would take about twenty additional steps per!

I mean damnit, I’m a doctor, not a programmer! I appreciate that the program has fewer calculations to do with wiring, and I’m all for optimizing performance while I animate, but if it’s four times the trouble then I don’t see what the point is.

Like the lady says, ain’t nobody got time for that!

#4

You talking about a reverse foot rig controlled by a footRoll slider via customProperties right?
I havent worked in max for some time now but i opened an older file of mine and i was wrong.
I used a script controller instead of wires and put some if statements in.

Not entirely sure but you could do the same thing in wires to with a couple of if statements. Anyway if you got RM working and speed is not an issue for you, go with it.

#5

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