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Chapter 39: Animating with CAT and Creating Crowds
handle, and several interior handles are also available for deforming the muscle. You can hide the corner
handles or the middle handles, or you can set their size using the settings in the Command Panel.
FIGURE 39.16
Muscle strands provide the bulging effect of muscles.

Just like muscle strands, you can specify that the CAT muscles are either Bones or Mesh objects. The resolu-
tion of the muscle plane is set using the U and V Segs, which can be increased for greater resolution. Once
the CAT muscle is in place, you can link its corners to the rig bones, and the plane deforms as the attached
bones are moved.
CAT muscles include another really nice feature: collision detection. This lets you place objects underneath
the CAT muscle and add them to a list of objects for collision detection. The result is that the muscle is
molded to fit the underlying object. The collision object can be any standard object or even a muscle strand
object. Figure 39.17 shows a CAT muscle that is being molded by an elongated sphere. For each collision
object, you also can set the Hardness and Distortion values.

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