i hate biped!

[super gnu]

got a purchased (biped) rigged character who i need sitting in a moving car. he needs to be (basically) animated as car moves, with cam inside car.

i posed the character nicely, and linked the biped "center of gravity" to the car (i believe thats what they call the little diamond in the pelvis?)

i read this is the correct approach to link a biped to a moving vehicle.

i can grab that and move the character fine, but linked to vehicle, it does not move when vehicle is animated.


i then saw i had posed the character in "figure mode" which is meant for posing the biped before linking to skin. so maybe not the correct mode for animating a character.



turning this off lost the pose i had done (mostly, for some reason hands and one arm remained posed...) , but then the biped follows the animated car as required. .

so, i redid my inital pose with figure mode off. then hit play... character stays with car .. but.... poof! character returns to some half hearted t-pose like i did no posing at all.

any change in frame number and i lose the pose ive just done. tried adding a set-key on frame zero for all the bones, in the initial pose i want... move time slider, boink.. pose dissapears again.

I also lose the pose if i clone the character, on the copy, and the original. undo does not work to get pose back.


can somebody please tell me the correct biped mode for keyframing a character, and have it linked to a moving vehicle?

on a related note the character is at some wierd ass scale, totally at odds with the big scene i need him in. is there any way to actually scale a skinned biped? selecting the biped, or the biped and the skin, and scaling , messes everything up.. as does changing biped "height"

[fixeighted]

Biped is a bit weird, quirky and annoying but I have used it quite a bit in the past.
I have probably forgotten much but will refresh my memory tomorrow when I get a moment, unless someone else
responds with a workflow sooner

Regarding the scaling; if I remember correctly it will fuck up if you try to merge with different scene scales, so you need to scale it up in the original file, change the units to match your destination file and then it 'should' merge fine.

This may help https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-m...x/td-p/3955577
This also https://forums.cgsociety.org/t/attac...mation/1230671

[super gnu]

yeah biped is very wierd. infortunately im forced to use this specific character model.

i gave up on scaling the biped... tried every method i found online and all of them screwed up the mesh. ended up scaling the scene to fit him. eww. hope that wont bite me on the arse later. .


i got the linking to the vehicle working. (i had not properly added a single keyframe , which is necessary to get the pose to "stick")

now im trying to link the hands to the steering wheel using the keyinfo/ik/ object link thingy in the biped rollout.

frustratingly one hand/arm works perfectly, but the other, after linking the hand bone, the arm moves as if its linked, but the hand bone and consequently the fingers, remain static. typically its the arm that is in-shot which doesnt work.

no idea, they are literally two identical hand bones on the same biped, both with a single keyframe at 0 .

in fact, i have a copy of the same character sitting in the passenger seat... the hand which doesnt work on the driver, links ok on the passenger.. they are copies of the same biped!

edit ; actually even the hand that works fine, if i actually keyframe the steering wheel turning, it ignores the motion. it only follows it when i turn the wheel in the viewport.

i think i might not bother!


ok so, appears in *some* way the not-working hand is working...kinda.. if i turn the steering wheel, it doesnt move, unlike the other which follows the wheel. however if after moving the wheel, i change frame, the hand jumps to the correct position.

still dont know why, or why actually keyframing the wheel doesnt work at all.

[3dwolf]

Double/Triple-Check in the Key.Info IK-Section:
IK-Blend is set to 1.0
The radiobutton is at (o)Object
The object's name is shown

When I tried that right now, the buttons resetted sometimes or the object wasn't picked.

[super gnu]

Double/Triple-Check in the Key.Info IK-Section:
IK-Blend is set to 1.0
The radiobutton is at (o)Object
The object's name is shown

When I tried that right now, the buttons resetted sometimes or the object wasn't picked.

THANKS!! it was the IK blend.. it was set to zero. i still have the weird issue with the rogue hand not updating when i move the steering wheel, but when i scrub the timeline it now updates with the keyframed object.


out of interest, Biped is ancient and crusty, CAT is not much newer, both have barely been updated for a decade.. what on earth do people use for character animation now? just ditch max and use maya?

[fixeighted]

The scaling part is really very easy, if you want to keep scales correct.
Just select the meshes that have the skin mod and turn off 'always deform'. Do that for each part if lots.
Scale all those meshes to the correct scale.
Select the bip bone and scale that to the same % as the mesh, then just align the mesh to the rig and turn back on the 'always deform'.

I did just do this on a rig/mesh to make sure it worked

I'll figure out the steering now...I have a feeling I know what's happening but just need to go through the motions...oh actually it seems you got that sorted. I'll do it anyway as an exercise
to get me away from bleedin' saunas

[fixeighted]

Ok, so that all worked as expected and updates just fine when just rotating the wheel and when timeline scrubbing. Shout if it still won't work for you and we'll figure out why
That was fun.

[fixeighted]

And on the subject of who/why uses what...this funny guy likes CAT very much, and I can see why https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Nm...C3%BDAnimation
Horse for a course I guess...beats switching to Maya or anything else, though I'm sure many are very capable...Blender for instance appears to have very good tools for this.

[^Lele^]

out of interest, Biped is ancient and crusty, CAT is not much newer, both have barely been updated for a decade.. what on earth do people use for character animation now? just ditch max and use maya?

My meories of Biped are from a *long* time ago (say, 2003-5), but Maya, Lightwave, projectMessiah, and others were on the market, and going strong, already.
I was working at a Lw/Pm facility, and they brought in a guy from the game industry to animate some character for an advertisement.
He was adamant he'd use Max and Biped, so i made it a point to go snoop.

To this day, i cannot recall *anyone* being quicker from the ground-up.
Anything he did was *insanely* quick, so much so they started poking fun at him, and asking -as a joke- for the craziest of changes.
As a joke, *while producing*, he'd also make them the variations.

It's fair to say he blew the entire facility out of the water, somuch so they decided to use Max and Biped for their next job.
The guy, however, wasn't available, and if i recall right, they near-immediately went back to Lw/Pm, building rigs from scratch and animating at normal speeds.

I suppose i mean to say it can be quick, but the entry point may be a bit high.
I, for one, could never go beyond dancing characters and presets.