CAT Layer Blending Tools in 3DS Max for Animation

hi in this video demonstration we're going to take a look uh a little bit further into the cat motion animation tools uh and I'm going to show you how to blend between several layers of Animation uh up to this point we've taken a look at cat motion and how to get our characters kind of walking uh really rather quickly with some procedural tools we've also taken a look at using absolute uh layers to create POs to pose uh animation uh directly uh into our timeline uh today we're going to take a look at blending between one or more layer two or more layers of cat motion animation uh first things first we're going to go ahead and select our our rig node here and kind of come over to our motion tab where all of our tools uh exist in this location uh just a quick reminder the setup bo uh setup SL animation toggle button here is this nice big red guy uh will not work until we've actually added an animation layer uh to our layers window here uh so we're going to need to go between setup and animation mode setup for building the bones and you know customizing shapes and and building your rig in the first place and then we need to swap over that animation mode in order to do any of our animated uh actions uh in order to do that we add one of these down here uh animation layers and we've got four to choose from we've talked about the cat motion layer we we've also talked about absolute layers we've even added a local uh or World adjustment layer to uh bring our arms down to the side you know kind of adjust some of the actions for things like our cat motion layer today we're going to talk about creating one or more of these layers and blending between them uh so first things first let's add an absolute layer and go ahead and turn on that animation mode uh I had some mcoloring on my rig here so it kind of reverts back to uh the generic colors that it had there uh that's okay uh if you've added any sort of textures or anything like that to your bones uh which I do every now and then just kind of get those custom colors uh rather than using the bone color itself uh for this you may want to remove those Textures in order to see some of the great tools that cat gives us uh in order to do that you just uh maybe double click the pelvis node your your center of gravity and you can remove any materials you've added by coming over to the utilities tab uh clicking on more and finding the uvw remove uh selection here oops I just removed it from the window it was already there okay and then down here you'll be able to remove uh any materials that were originally on those bones okay just a quick little extra uh back to animation let's go to our motion tab here we're on animation mode which means now that we can start uh doing some form of Animation uh if you're going to be adding more than one layer in your animation it is good practice to go ahead and re name that layer uh let's call this one uh uh head scratch or something silly for right now and you've also got the option to change the layer color here which is going to help us out uh seeing for our blending here in a moment if we go ahead and choose kind of a nice bold color let's choose like a yellow uh to get us going and uh say okay in that color swatch location uh then we can come over here turn on our auto key and just kind of maybe pull his uh arm up and up to his head and we'll get him to make it sort of look like he scratches his head oh before I go too far I'm going to undo those actions uh I want to move my key frame slider down to another frame let's go about frame 20 to do this and then start rotating and moving uh my character's arm uh into into place here and maybe his hand his palm will move down there a little little too high so we can we can adjust as we go little Carri it away there there we are and then maybe his palm got a little bit too far so we'll just kind of pull that back up and in and out and we're not going to do you know any fancy animation today because the point to this is our blending of our layers but now as you can see we'll have uh kind of uh an animation going going on from his T pose there to his head we might even come back to frame zero and uh pull this all the way down to his side uh so that he's not uh completely crazy and then maybe in the middle here we'll uh we'll start moving his uh arm little further back so he doesn't cut through his head that's a little bit better we get some some decent arcs happening there we go I'll probably also go ahead and frame zero I'm going pull the other arm down so he doesn't look so deposed uh and then we can go ahead and turn our our animation off and we've got part one to our animation here uh now doing one action is great keeping things separate on layers is a wonderful uh little thing there looks like my animation name didn't hold there head scratch rename that just to be sure uh so that so that we've got our single animation but only one thing's Happening Here uh on our our layer uh in future we would probably do some other things like kind of you know move his head uh uh back or forward like he's a little bit puzzled and we could have you know quite a bit of stuff up happening we can even turn his legs and his uh his whole body like what's going on and we get some some new and different uh things happening that's good enough for our demonstration purposes today however now along with his head scratch perhaps he's going to put his hand out to to shake another character's hand here uh and we can put that on entirely different layer now if you want to add layers uh to do this right you'll want to go down and select the available option underneath our layer otherwise you start adding to the layers more like adjustment layers and and things can get a little bit confusing so I like to select that available come down and we're going to add another absolute layer underneath there uh you'll notice this one you know renames the default animation layer and gives you another color and all that stuff uh so right away I'm going to come down to the color swatch and let's make this another uh bold Choice maybe uh from yellow to red here uh two very bright very bold colors will let allow us to see some of the changes that we're about to to make here and we'll call this uh our hand uh handshake or handshake layer there one word there handshake good and we'll we'll name that layer as well now the way cat works is any animation I do underneath here is going to kind of override uh the animation we did in the first layer uh we build from top down here in 3D Studio stud uh cat so whatever animation was here it's going to load up first and then it's going to override it with whatever's here in our new animation layer which right now is absolutely nothing but if we turn on our auto key and perhaps I uh pull his arm out here and twist his palm out Oops I did that again let see let me undo this I want to move my uh timeline out a little bit first otherwise we don't have any animation wrong B There we go uh arm and maybe adjust his palm to uh see that I can select all of his fingers at one time and we can uh kind of open them up like like he's offering his hand there and then maybe at about here we'll kind of pull his fingers all all in there so that we get some some good uh solid things happening here maybe here I can kind of uh bend that arm up halfway and back and we can start to you know kind of get uh things happening not all at once but over a fair amount of time so here we go we've got our guy he's offering his hand to uh the next character here as well uh maybe even uh turning out uh his his pelvis to to meet or extend his arm out uh even further there uh and so we get kind of a fun different Reach Out animation you might even Lean Forward all kinds of stuff that we can actually do here and look as look as uh new meat in the eye here so we've got this animation happening that's not too shabby we can do deal with that this animation happening here on this layer nice to meet you uh but the other animation his head scratch was kind of oh I don't know who you are and then nice to meet you uh we can blend between these two I'm going to turn off my auto key now that we've got our keys made for the two different animations several ways we can get this going right now we've got uh our first layer and our second layer we've got the uh ability to use these weight settings down here we can animate all of these values uh any way we like and we've got two options Global weight and local weight now global weight's going to do everything so if uh you know by frame 20 by frame let's say 10 uh I want the global weight for the handshake to be at zero you'll see that uh uh my first animation kind of comes back move it all out to zero if I turn on my auto key and then from let's say 0 to 20 I want to raise that to 100% he'll start start to reach for his head and then oh wait no ah never mind here's my handshake I can go ahead and wait until frame 10 to start this and we can do some oh hey and we can get some two different actions kind of Blended in the same manner here uh one thing that's really nice about this is that we can actually color our skeletal structure here our rig by the color of the layer uh this button up here is our rig coloring mode looks like the little stick figure of our bones if we click and hold that we've also got the option to choose by layer at frame zero here we are all yellow all that first head scratch layer and by the final one we start to see that blending take place and by frame 20 we are 100% into the handshake mode there so there's uh two ways to blend layers and you know different uh timing down here on our timeline would uh make that a little bit more successful we we've also got the ability to blend locally and because I did animate everything between frame zero and frame 20 uh we may want to use our local weights there this way uh if I go ahead you know I can always kind of come down to the handshake layer here and select my key frames and move them out to not even start uh until frame 20 I would have to make sure that I select the entire skeleton here move those out to about frame 20 so that you know what's going on here oh hello pelvis what' you do there we go okay we get that uh kind of head scratch and then moving out just like anything we'll have our whoops our our Blended layer here uh that we've got starting at 10 we may want to keep at zero all the way up until 20 so we'll go from zero and then at 40 we can raise that Global uh weight layer and then we get the the double action here but it takes over completely and puts all things back to where they were when we use our Global weights the entire skeleton is uh is done there let's go ahead and we can actually jump into our curve editor by clicking the little button next door here uh and go over to these uh different curves for our head scratch or handshake and I can actually get rid of all of the blending uh blending key frames that we've done there so far so that right now we are back to our just our our head Scrat uh because it's set to a global weight of zero putting that up to 100 and we'd be just in our key frame handshake I'm going to take these uh these weights for my entire skeleton select all of them and move them back to frame zero as well so we can show you a couple of different tools here all right we've also got the option to do local weights now if I go ahead and I say that the local weight for my handshake layer here uh for the root bone of any part of his body if I take his shoulder here that's going to change everything for his entire arm shoulder all the way down just like his pelvis would do the whole body his leg would do each leg uh all the way down so we don't have to do this for every single bone of the body we can take this first one and I can take the handshake layer local weight down to zero and you'll see that uh rig color change to say okay this arm is now controlled locally with nothing for our handshake layer so we end up getting both of these guys uh together at the same time which allows us to blend uh different animations create different animations and then later on we can use those animations uh together to create uh entire new shapes here we can animate the local weights uh as well uh to to take over only partially uh here and there we can do it for different points of the body all over the body and then have all these weights kind of blend together uh at our own times here we've also got the ability to uh do our layer ranges uh so if I don't want just like we have our animation both uh layers between frame zero and 20 here we've got the ability to kind of move the ranges uh over as well so for our handshake layer if I don't want it to really start until frame 20 I could just uh reorder the keys that can take uh some doing if you've got a whole lot of bones with different animations on them or I can come in with these cat features and kind of open up in my uh dope sheet uh here to just take the transform the position uh or those weights and and tell them to kind of uh scale a little bit differently for our handshake layer I can kind of pull this so that nothing happens until frame 20 without really messing up any of that other animation get rid of that so you can see now we're starting at frame 20 regardless our key frames get moved over uh without worrying about it we've also got the ability to do the same thing by grabbing the entire range down here underneath our timeline as well so we really can do some some fun things blending between the layers uh as well do uh more than one animation in a single C uh layer group and play around with some of the uh Global weights and local weights to get them happening all at the same time all right

Channel: Clint DiClementi

Views: 27,258

Keywords: Autodesk 3ds Max (Software), Tutorial, Animation (Professional Field), Animate, Animating, How To, CAT, 3D, 3D Modeling (Profession), Animated

Id: 7KshKb6PQaQ

Length: 15min 45sec (945 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 22 2014