Ps4 Biped

[Reney Shammo]

Im new to 3DS Max from using Blender and I am now at a point where I am getting the hang of creating bipeds. I can bring one into the scene using the drag height and drag position, but once I click elsewhere I am unable to get back to the scaling option to resize the biped, and its individual bones for that matter.

I am fairly comfortable animating with Biped. But sometimes I need the Biped rig to be a better appoximation of my character, whether it be that I need to render the Biped for a client to get a sense of what I'm doing, or just because the finger and feet bones need to better communicate how the mesh interacts with other scene objects.

But I seem to recall from my days at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh that it is indeed possible to select a biped object and somehow pick scene geometry to replace it, thus allowing me to custom model a biped by proxy.

However, when I try to google this, I get a bunch of results that aren't what I'm looking for. This isn't something particularly easy to phrase for a web search, and being a deeper Max thing, I figured this would be a better place to ask.

That said, I remember being told resoundingly while at AIP that converting Biped objects into Editable Poly objects is a big taboo and that horrific stuff can result, as all kinds of internal max stuff gets wonky or whatever the reasoning was. I did it in college before and it just destroyed the file.

Yeah I've seen that too. My animation lead did it sometimes at the gaming company I used to work at. Can't remember what he did though (I never asked!!!) and I don't have any contact anymore, but let us know if you find the answer!

If you put an edit poly on the foot, be careful. Make sure your pivots align on the original biped bone or you'll have problems later. Specially with a good foot-roll. Like my problem... Right now !!!!

No, I'm really very wary of applying modifiers to Biped objects. I don't fully understand all of the attributes involved in the Biped system but I am aware that messing with it can have unintentional side effects.

On a slightly unrelated note: Is there away to turn an Editable poly into a non-editable object, as in locking the object so it can no longer be altered at the sub-object levels. There's nothing wrong with using Editable Polys as bone objects in a rig, it just seems a little superfluous to me.

It is completely safe to add an edit poly modifier to the bone and delete the old biped ellements and attach your own new ones.

give it a go and let us know if you find any errors (I think you will not find any).

I have a rigged and skinned character. I turn off figure mode and pose the figure. But if I return to figure mode to tweak the skin, the pose is lost. To preserve the pose, would the correct workflow be to create a key for all bones after posing, or create a collection and save the pose? Or either?

The general workflow that I am accustomed to is to create a keyframe of the biped in your starting or symmetrical pose on frame -1 (that's negative one) since you don'want it included in your animation. You would then create the actual animation key in frame 0. This allows you jump back an forth by just scrubbing to -1. Keep in mind that this is not done in figure mode.

Also while skinning it's helpful to make a animation of the arms and legs bending so that you can scrub to interactively see the effects of your skinning modifications

The Move All mode doesn't allow rotation around the x and y as this would effect Max's understanding of where "down" is which would mess up things like the footsteps and auto-balance. If you want to rotate the whole body (doing a flip for example) use the "Body Rotation" tool under the Track Selection

If you're using the same character for every animation then there's no need to tweak the skin. You could always just make a base file with the character skinned and ready to go. So it would be the kind of thing you do only once.

There's always a risk that certain poses will "break" the skin. I would have to see the problem(s) to give a more specific answer but often I find that extreme bending in the arms/legs will give undesirable results.

With the Biped you could use the Joint Angle Deformer or position constrain a dummy to the two bones of a joint (Upper arm and lower arm for example) and then include the dummy in the skin. As you bend the arm the dummy will move away from the join and help keep it from kinking.

I have created a model of an alien, and I wish to rig it upto a biped. The reason I would like to be rigged to a biped opposed from using bones is because I wish to apply motion capture files to the biped from iPi Mocap.

However, the problem I am having at the moment is that because my model is an unorthodox shape, and does not follow the figure of a human, is how do I modify and change the sizes of each individual bone? I've tried using the scale tool on the bones to no avail, as well as searching through the options. Are there values I can change to make them bigger?

In the picture I have attached, you can see that the hip on the biped, is significantly higher than the model, meaning that when it comes time to skin the model, it'll think that the aliens body are part of the legs.

I made a post on reddit, and to anyone who sees this and has a similar problem I'd suggest checking out what reddit said! They're much faster to respond and gave a very personal responce. I'd also suggest using their reddit page for any future problems, as this place seems pretty dead =/

I've got some mocap on a biped of a character 'pushing' and I need it to loop as it would were I able to apply the Out-of-Range-Type: Relative Repeat. How do I do this?

From what I have read so far, out-of-range-types do not work on Biped. I have also tried using biped motion mixer to loop the animation by repeating the animation clip multiple times within the mixer however it places the biped back at the starting location at the beginning of each clip like Out-of-Range-types: Cycle would do and that isnt a looping solution that will work for me in this case.

You are right about biped and Out of Range types; Out of Range are not applicable for biped.

You are on the right track with Motion Mixer, it is the tool for what you are describing.

In Motion Mixer, create a 'Transition track'.

This is the track to align animation clips one after the other so they are relative one to another.

OH WOW SUCCESS! You have helped me out tremendously, thanks! I was wondering why those buttons were always grayed out but I was missing the step of selecting the biped name as you showed in those images. Thank you thank you!

Ok so I have encountered yet another issue that I was hoping you might be able to shed some light on.

I have been using a Mixamo walk cycle animation on my biped character and that is what I used in motion mixer to extend the walk cycle to about 1500 frames from the original clips 53 frames. Somewhere in this process, im not sure if it is the original animation or if it is the transitions that are generated in motion mixer, but my characters walk begins to deviate from traveling in a straight line. I am not sure what is causing this or how to fix it. This deviation becomes worse with each loop of the clip until the biped look as if its going to complete a full circle when I really need it to be traveling in a straight line. Hoping you might have some suggestions.

So far i have been thinking I probably need to set the biped com to Euler and edit the key values in Workbench but in doing so I havent been getting great results and my deadline is quickly approaching so reaching out for help on this.

Thanks!

Hi again!

So the problem you are describing is exactly what I am seeing on my end. After that first loop the character just starts gradually going off course.

I am following along with your video instructions, however my first and last keyframe are showing that they are the same value in world rotations so I have not been able to solve the problem on my end yet.

I went ahead and attached a max file with a biped and the animation applied to it. If you could possibly take a look at it and see where I am going wrong it would be very much appreciated, thank you!

Hey there just wanted to provide an update. Still trying to follow along with your example but I am really stuck at the part where you mention to copy your world rotation values from first keyframe to the last keyframe because my values are the same. I have tried looking at other bones as well but their first and last keyframe rotation values are all the same too so I am not sure how to move forward with this. Anyway, I did provide max file in last post and if you have any time I would really be thankful if you could take a look at it and see if you can see what is going wrong. Thanks again for all you help!

As usually rotation is the issue, I totally forgot to say to check for the position too, sometimes it can be the position that is the issue too. In your case, the position is also perfect, only on a single axis (forward) there is a difference, both other axis are identical. This is perfect.

If this does not help, would you have the data that still causes the issue, motion mixer and its .bip animation file ?

Hi again!

Thanks a ton for the follow up! It looks like I was missing the step where you edit the small transition track that occurs between the main copied tracks in motion mixer. After making the edit my animation is now working how I want it to! Thanks again for all your time and detailed responses it made solving this issue very easy to follow!

Several groups of modern species are habitual bipeds whose normal method of locomotion is two-legged. In the Triassic period some groups of archosaurs (a group that includes crocodiles and dinosaurs) developed bipedalism; among the dinosaurs, all the early forms and many later groups were habitual or exclusive bipeds; the birds are members of a clade of exclusively bipedal dinosaurs, the theropods. Within mammals, habitual bipedalism has evolved multiple times, with the macropods, kangaroo rats and mice, springhare,[4] hopping mice, pangolins and hominin apes (australopithecines, including humans) as well as various other extinct groups evolving the trait independently.A larger number of modern species intermittently or briefly use a bipedal gait. Several lizard species move bipedally when running, usually to escape from threats.[5] Many primate and bear species will adopt a bipedal gait in order to reach food or explore their environment, though there are a few cases where they walk on their hind limbs only. Several arboreal primate species, such as gibbons and indriids, exclusively walk on two legs during the brief periods they spend on the ground. Many animals rear up on their hind legs while fighting or copulating. Some animals commonly stand on their hind legs to reach food, keep watch, threaten a competitor or predator, or pose in courtship, but do not move bipedally.

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