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Chapter 40: Skinning Characters
Using Character Animation Techniques
When it comes to character animation, several techniques can really help. Keeping these points in mind as
you animate characters can make a difference:
l Use Biped: Manual rigging is useful for those cases where Biped won’t work, but the tools and
features found in Biped make it silly to look elsewhere for human characters.
l Use dynamics: Dynamic packages like reactor can provide incredibly realistic motion based on
physical properties. Learning to use this powerful tool for even the most basic animation
sequences is worth the effort.
l Learn by example: If you’re working on a cartoon character, then by all means, watch cartoons.
Traditional cartoons understand and invented the language of cartoon motion, including squash
and stretch, exaggerated motion, or scaling eyes large to indicate surprise. If your character
motion is more realistic, find the motion, videotape it, and watch it over and over to catch the
subtle secondary motion.
l Use background animations: The Viewport Background can load animation clips, which can
make positioning characters to match real motion easy. This is a poor man’s motion capture system.
l Include secondary motion: The primary motion of a character is often the main focus, but you
can enhance the animation by looking for secondary motion. For example, when a person walks,
you see his legs take the steps and his arms moving opposite the legs’ motion, but secondary
motion includes his hair swishing back and forth and shoelaces flopping about.
l Use the Flex modifier: The Flex modifier gives soft bodies, such as tails, hair, ears, and clothing,
the realistic secondary motion needed to make them believable.
l Use the Morph modifier: The Morph modifier can be used to morph a character between two
poses or to morph its face between the different phonemes as the character talks.
l Use IK: The next chapter covers this in detail, but here’s a quick tip: Having a character move by
positioning its foot or hand is often much easier than pushing it into position.
l Use the Spring Controller: Another good way to get secondary motion is to use the Spring
Controller. This controller works well with limbs.
l Add randomness with the Noise Controller: Often, perfect animation sequences don’t look
realistic, and using the Noise Controller can help to make a sequence look more realistic, whether
the Noise Controller is applied to a walking sequence or to the subtle movement of the eyes.
l Use manipulators: Manipulators can be created and wired to give you control over the animation
values of a single motion, such as opening and closing the character’s eyes.

Summary

Characters are becoming more and more important in the Max world and can be saved as separate files just
like Max scene files. Combining a detailed skin mesh with a skeletal biped lets you take advantage of
Character Studio’s unique animation features. This chapter covered the following topics:
l Designing your character before building
l Working with the Skin modifier
l Reusing animations with Skin Wrap
l Bulging muscles with Skin Morph
In Part X, “Dynamic Animation,” you’ll examine the dynamic animation features, starting with particle systems.

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