Animation the 3ds Max Biped

animating the 3ds max by iPad or some alright huge emphasis on beyond something because I tried doing a scripted tutorial on this I tried to record it a couple of times it didn't quite pan out the way I wanted it to so I figured the best thing to do would be to do a live demo or it will not live recording it obviously but and just talk and explain what I'm doing as I do it so again this tutorial isn't really meant for beginners it's I'm doing it by special request so it's not really for beginners to 3ds max so much as for people who are already familiar with the program and just want to get into the biped animation system a little bit so let's take a look at some of the the basics on how to do that and if you're not aware alt W is what's making this Windows bigger and smaller I like to work on big perspective you so anyway and the create tab the forget what it's called this big right bar here the toolbar on the little cog area there's by pad you can click and drag that out so you can have one there and I like to Center it 0 and 0 so there's our by bit yay if you want to customize this thing what you do is you go to the what is it's called emotion you go to motion tab on the right toolbar and you click figure mode figure mode is why did you okay so figure mode is where you make all your edits to your biped all these structural changes any positional change it's probably the reason it moved over there is because I clicked on that like I repositioned it without opening figure mode so now recenter it and there now he's centered down here under structure the structure rollout you can pull up different kinds you have the the skeleton you have mailed you have female and then you have classic personally I like to use classic I think most people like to use classic one thing to remember about the 30 is max pipet is that I think it's meant to be used mostly with motion capture data not so much with direct animation which like you can animate with it but it's not great and we'll get into that in a bit but first let's take a look at how to customize it so first things first let's you know usually when you get a rig back from the riggers it's not going to look like this it's gonna have a little bit more going on so how do we set that up just for the sake of authenticity the first thing to do is you hold down alt right click and select local and you'll see that the little get some over here changes orientation and that's because local means it's now aligned to that object so if I rotate that the gizmo follows you can also change it up here in this little menu but I prefer doing all right click because it's quicker it's more direct so let's like fold that out into like an a pose let's select that spine and make it three spines joints let's come down to the hand and I'm sorry about that phone ring let me turn that off there we go let's do three fingers and three finger links and so one thing that's useful about the the changing the orientation of it is that one let's say that I want to slide this finger over to so it's closer to the edge right if I just take that and move it you see that it becomes weirdly offset to the hand but if I said the orientation to local then I can literally just slide it because it's already aligned another thing is if you so if you double click on a bone the entire hierarchy will be selected so if we get at the scale mode and and local we can widen that out and make it look match better so I what I'm going to do is go over like those make them a little bit wider as well so there's gonna be one of those rigs where the index finger is unique but then the other three fingers are mapped to the same bone chain so that's so bad make them a little bit bigger I guess for visualization purposes and rotate them into something like that yeah that's come down to the foot and I don't know why the pipe it starts out with three toe links seems like a waste and then just make that bigger not a waste but most rigs if they have shoes they're not going to have multiple like toe links it's bizarre that the hand only starts out with two nubs and then the toes are like super detail for no reason so the way we get this information to the other side is to select the end of the entire arm go to the copy/paste rollout make any a collection with this little plus button copy that with this little person button and then two buttons next to it you go paste opposite and then we can do the same thing with the leg paste opposite and so this is looking more like what it'll be like when a when you get something from a rigger and they tell you to animate something one thing I like to do is to select this pelvis joint I don't know what to call it bones I guess you'll notice that I can't really move it I think I can rotate it yeah I can rotate it and now whatever I did that's it's not super important so what I'd like to do is to just right click go to properties freeze it and make it see-through the reason for that is because the whoa okay this is super important and I almost forgot to do it you want to turn off figure mode before you start doing any kind of posting figure mode is where you edit the basic structure of your skeleton if you move and edit things during like wild figure mode is on you're gonna be in trouble because it's gonna be hard getting everything back to to zero so turn that off this core thing right here the bit zero one is that's how you control basically the biped center of gravity this is probably the first thing you're going to be animating followed by the legs and feed followed by the spine in the arms and the head and that's about it in terms of editing the biped and setting it up and this is now ready for animation in theory something's gonna break I promise this is the reason I had to switch to just recording a live demonstration because something is going to break at some point and I guess we're going to troubleshoot in real time one quick way to avoid a peg headaches down the line is okay so first let's say that we have a random pose and you're like oh no I something something's wrong thanks are way too wacky I need to go back to zero if you click the figure button everything snaps back and if you click out of it again you basically have your your pipette set back to zero I think the the only I think the only time that doesn't happen is if let's see if there's like a key yeah so so I don't fix that let's get rid of that set it back to zero one thing you can do is if you double-click the bibs zero one and then you hold on alt and right click and go set s skin posts it's gonna ask if you really want to do it you say yes and let's say again that I have a word post going on because I'm in the middle of an animation moving and then this arm is open yeah and let's say that I want to reset the spine but not the arm or the leg well if you select all the spine joints and then you go to alt right click assume skin pose the spine will snap right back to zero and everything else will be left behind and this will also create a new key if you have Auto key turn on so that's a if you need to reset you any any part of your body you can just do that right-click assume skin pose I think it's a little bit finicky with the limbs regular custom skin pose yep another way to do it is try not to rely on on turning figure mode on and off that's more of a more of a fail-safe more of an emergency but something else that you can do is if you the right click or not right click if you double click the the the bit zero one they're over in the copy/paste role I'd you can make a new collection and copy the whole thing and then actually I'm not sure of copying the whole thing is sound we will check if you don't click the arms I believe wait I didn't do the thing copy paste this okay so that copies the entire post so that's not great and so what you can do is if you just double click the shoulder you can make a new thing over here and so now you do have a situation where it's like oh I need to I have a pose and things are weird I need to get this arm back to normal without affecting the rest of the pose now you can just go to copy paste and then paste that arm and that arm has been reset and if you select everything you can go into this little drop-down menu select your thing and then paste it up and it goes back to zero and you can also name these by the way like reset those and so when you open that the roll out there is we suppose so I think we're ready to do some animation with this thing the first thing you're gonna want to do is open up your key info roll out this is where I think you're gonna be spending the most amount of time and select the feet and where did it go there is and set a couple of sliding Keys sliding keys basically make it so that if you select bit zero one and you drag the model around the feed will stay exactly where you want them to be or exactly where you set the key at the there is also free key and that is like it sets a key for the foot and where the foot is relative to the rest of the body but if you move the bit zero one this goes with it so in any case that's so quick boosts start with setting sliding keys and both of those so like that move it a little bit down so the knees are slightly bent set a key there let's strike these sound rotate them Oh turn on AutoKey that will help and that didn't help and this is why I don't like the radius max well it's the by bit well here's a good opportunity to showcase another feature on this that's neat if you right-click I think yeah if you if you have a foot selected and then you right-click there's gonna be a little thing here that's a select pivot if you click that you'll see this little blue dots appeared at various points around and I think yeah if you go into wireframe mode which you can access by pressing f3 you can see all the dots if you click one of them and then right-click again that has now become where the foot rotates from and that's what I want it to rotate so the leg the angle of the leg matches the foot better select the shin and then rotate it accordingly I'm gonna go ahead and gonna change the pivot for that as well move it out rotate it out slightly shin match tweak the position of the pelvis right Oh a little too much rotation there and if you select the whole thing and you rotate or do anything like the the hierarchy will follow so that's really useful most 3d programs do that by default so that's great so look the hand move it into place I'm not really gonna worry about the finger movements for this and it's pretty straightforward I might do something at the end with it if you select the forearm and then just rotate anywhere in the Indigo's mo you'll get this nice like oh you can tweak things so like the shoulder whenever you're animating characters don't forget to like move the shoulders it's the thing that will make things for flexible so that's so there we have a pose right and it's not it's not a great pose but whatever we're not really worried about like quality right now we are learning fundamentals let's say that our next pose is winding back like this and you need to rotate that way so that you're let's angle you a little bit that way and here's the thing that is legitimately neat about the three is mix biped is that because of the how its set up its primed to like roll the feet properly so because I selected that pivot back there this happens and let's actually move this back so that I can get a something like that and select the entire spine bend it forward a bit let's rotate this sound whoa whoa whoa chills select the upper arm and rotate that instead whenever you're moving things in the biped by the way you want this to be set to world the other ones work but like if I said it's a local for instance I think it like wigs out yep so it's it's better if you move things under in in local space when you're rotating I prefer to use local or gimbal local is usually good enough okay so that's our second pose and I think everything is key right yep and let's go to a third pose and let's I'm going to do is I want to select this key the first key then hold shift and drag over to the third key so that the key has basically been copied over gonna move this back over here and what I'm gonna do with this is I'm gonna one I'm gonna rotate it slightly and I'm gonna right-click select pivot and then select this front one here and what that's gonna do is if I rotate this in the z-axis now the foot is bending forward so that's the one thing about the vibe that's actually really nice said it just has that built in you don't have to set it up yourself that's rotate it that way trying to get something like a very specific yes let's make it so that you're more more straight stick the hand bring it back here up just a hand not the fingers Thank You shoulder down a little spring this hand forward and rotate the shoulder appropriately and and finally the head and for this I will go in and select all this finger joints and rotate this and to make a feast that was not what I want it select those stretch them out in an accusatory pointing manner right then we can also maybe rotate this that way [Music] and this it low this is mostly what this first chunk of the process is is just finding good poses oh I don't like the way that looks so rec looks like pivots like that back one rotate it so that it's a more facing forward so what we're looking at now is this animation where the character okay I'm sorry I know I said I wasn't gonna do what I think with the fingers but I like quality you're here to learn this is this is how you learned let's relax that it's like the whole thing thank you and I'm gonna do is I'm gonna actually go ahead and call control drag on this fingers we're gonna go over here to copy paste and they copy that select everything thank you and we're gonna selects the other fingers and paste opposite so now we have a nice relaxed pose and then the next one I'm going to select adjust that first one move it or rotate it back like so then select the next two and then curl those in I'm gonna do the same thing for that but less dramatically there we go and I think I'm gonna go ahead and copy copy of this over again there we go so now we have a winding bag pose or a step at the beginning pose winding back pose and then pointing Jack Hughes kind of pose and you'll notice that I didn't set these said like various different times I just kind of right now I'm just worried about the posing not the timing now that we have this part set up we can worry about the timing so if you select everything you can start dragging things around like say the first one is gonna take I'm animating at 24 frames per second by the way that you should probably all realize that 24 frames per second means that there's 24 individual images in a full second so a full second is about yay much in the timeline so this animation will say that it takes about 12 seconds let's see one two no so that it takes about like 18 frames to wind back and then oops just like that and then it takes like maybe five or six frames to snap forward okay so you're gonna notice that the thing is moving but it's not very good so how do we fix it well first of all I'm actually gonna give this a little bit more space at this frame we don't want it to hit that value and then immediately go back into the other one we wanted to like hold there for just long enough that the I will register the pose and see it as like as a clear pantomime pen till I'm and one relatively reliable way to do this is if you select that frame and then once again you shift click and drag it a couple of frames forward now you have like a bit of a whatchamacallit hold a moving hold so if I play that that's actually way too slow on the on the wind up so let's sound like frame 9 move that back okay so the whole that is too slow let's change the timeline to be 24 okay so there's a couple of things missing here I mean I move this up to 35 actually one immediately as soon as the this lighter starts moving it's already moving back into space we don't quite want that usually I'm gonna go over to frame 4 and I'm gonna copy that frame over and what I'm gonna do instead is I'm gonna take this I'm gonna move it forward a little bit and I'm gonna very subtly relax everything else about that so what's gonna happen is there's gonna be a little bit of why is the foot sliding all weird what the heck what's that change and I wasn't informed no it's not the sliding key well here's another example of a thing breaking all right so one quick way to resolve this issue is if you go one frame before that and then just like copy the key so now what oh okay I see what's happening the reason this is happening is literally because I'm stretching the biped like you went when this ridges when this becomes straight the foot will start getting moved so I'm gonna lower this a little bit and maybe rotate it no it's still doing it and I have no idea why okay well it's okay so now it worked this time because the leg wasn't straight so if you just copy the frame like one frame before it you basically clamp the the curve and I'll get to that in a few minutes that's the same thing for this one and let's have you reach let's copy that right move it forward a little bit we're gonna select the pivot and go over to the ankle rotate that like that a little bit and what that's gonna do it's gonna change the timing and I'm gonna move one frame forward and you can see how that looks a lot more natural and I'm gonna copy that over here as well and here so we're gonna take a look at what's happening under the hood in a minute and why am setting up all these keys the way I'm setting them up well okay let's just copy that okay so that's staying that one why are you being weird oh I see we are being weird so again once the leg straightens out the foot gets dragged with the rest of the leg so the fact that the pelvis is moving all the way that far is a problem I will resolve that in a minute but first let's take a look at this copy that frame and then one more okay so there I'm satisfied with the with what the the feet are doing I may select this and let me check something real quick no don't save do save on your end for God's sake do not forget to save the fact that I haven't saved it's terrible please save when you're wrong stop get out of there oh okay all right all right 3ds max geez I will be back in a moment okay I'm back I had to fix it so I open the graph editor and you can see the curves over here do you feel familiar from the previous video this is just like values changing over time and you will notice the first thing is that these things do not have handles because the radius will not throw you as Max the pipet is special and it has to work its own way so if you want to control the curvature of these things and specifically there's one thing that I wanted to do here which was to select this and no not that what the heck where's the where's the scale and rotation positions oh no Arthur just rotations they are just rotations well crappity okay introducing my first major grief with 30s max at least with the biped system take that and give it a you can't control the sorry I'm distracted already I wanted to fix that post to make it not terrible alright so what we're looking at here and the graph editor is rotation information so if I grab that and like move it around that changes the rotation of it but it I don't have access to the position once so if I wanted to move the if I wanted to change the position of that I have to do it manually on the screen because the way that these things are being keyed has nothing to do with the actual position of the foot and everything to do with the rotation values of the thigh and the shin which drives me crazy and again no other program no other animation system does it like this but that's that's now we have an almost finished pass of the feet I do want to let's see at this point you should still be dragging behind like this we're gonna rotate you like that and we're gonna rotate you look nope select pivot yep yes so leaving so getting that foot to stay behind like that and then getting dragged all the way to the end okay so now we have a functional lower body that's I'm gonna move this out of a way for a sec and everything else is actually not looking too bad on its own yeah okay yeah I don't really feel the need to make any particularly hardcore changes to the upper body with the exception of stop playing thank you oh this is okay all right we do need to fix something let's take that and you you you really need to go like side all right okay so I added one more key just to make sure that the the arm was rotating in front of the body and not in fourth dimensional space behind it yeah yeah now the the the problem that I was going to talk about is how he just completely stops moving and you don't want that usually you want to have like an extra pose where maybe four frames in slightly and overcompensate a little bit yeah so again there's gonna be an issue with the feet because here's a fun little tip over on the key info if you turn on trajectories you can see you can visualize what the object that you have selected is doing which is great because that's how you really make sure that you have nice arcs working Christina animation so the problem area here is right here when the leg straightens out the foot is getting direct so that's why it looks like oh no it's sliding slightly so how do we fix that well normally in a sensible 3d program you would be able to select like the object and then just go into your graph editor and start like messing with values now I don't think I can do that here because yep that's just rotation all right so the graph editor is completely useless to us while working with the 30s mix by bit unfortunately the way that the program wants you to handle this is if you look at the key info roll out over here you can see this little graph the red represents a key not your key just a key and the line represents the interpolation that's coming in and out of that key so if you change the tension continuity and bias you can change what that curve looks like and you are the one who has to basically guess on what exactly you need that curve to look like and unfortunately you can't even edit keys that are behind you have pull no you probably can you probably can but I don't know how so let's instead oh here's another weird thing with 3ds max is that the the horizontal and vertical motions are separate channels I don't know why that is so spread those out as well and nope I think what I ultimately need to do is to just and this is completely fine to do by the way it's just manually manually go in and clean up the poses let's copy that across these three and you can see that that's having trouble as well back there oh and something you're gonna have to do every so often is if if if this is happening and you want to set a specific key with that leg you might have to copy it over and over because it's it's only going to be able to correctly copy the key based on the distance to the bit zero one so you can see that me copying that key has like slight it makes very slight tweaks and that's because it's based on the on its position relative to where the bib is it's very annoying like that and copy that again actually let's preview that the stopping is still a little bit too Jabby like it's a little to shoot and then completely stops moving so what I might do is I'm gonna sit where's the last key for that I'm gonna go like 1 2 3 4 5 6 it's like 7 frames and ever so slightly relax the pose back in very slightly maybe that's too much that's still too much mmm it's not who I doing what I would like it to do which is just sort of settle a little bit okay what's happening there let's copy that and back and up not that much all right that's not perfect but it's working so that's what animating with a 30 days max pipe it looks like you don't really have a whole lot of reliable access to the graph editor which is unfortunate but the way you get around that is by figuring out your main key poses and then timing them out and then basically manually creating enough breakdowns and in-betweens and if you don't know what that is I will have another video explaining all the basics of animation to get like the right timing and the right performance for your character so if you can imagine it like I can basically save this out and if you have a rig that matches the structure in a video game you can just like copy that over so this is for all intents and purposes a fully functional video game animation one thing I want to mention is that for every single will for every single one of these keys for the feet I use the sliding key which I prefer to plant it I think I already mentioned this earlier in the video but planted key makes the feed really stick to the ground and when sitting keys like across an animation they start behaving a little bit weird I recommend using sliding key I think the benefit to using planted key is that you don't have to do this the in fact I mean let's test that theory if I said I planted key there and they sent a planted key there nope okay so that doesn't actually fix it so that the difference between planted key and sliding key is minor and it's only ever going to come up if you're trying to switch between the two made animation personally as you see is almost exclusively sliding keys unless like if a character jumps and you need to animate things in midair I do you want to use free keys because that way the feed will follow the rest of the body but yeah that's animating in 3ds max I hope that was useful and if it's was only partially useful because I wasn't super clear and some things feel free to ask on the internet below and let me know if there's any anything that I could be more clear about anything that I could clarify maybe make another video about so thanks for watching and good luck animating take care

Channel: BMBrice

Views: 12,193

Keywords: tutorial, 3ds max, biped, animation

Id: T5P4U9ZIEPo

Length: 44min 30sec (2670 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 28 2019