Page 995 - Kitab3DsMax

Animating with CAT
and Creating Crowds

ax has always had a great way to create and animate characters, but in CHAPTER
early versions of Max, it was available only as a separate plug-in known IN THIS CHAPTER
Mas Character Studio. Happily, Character Studio has been integrated into
Max to the point that it isn’t distinguishable as a separate package. Character Learning the basics of creating
Studio was a good first step, and it still exists in Max, but it has lots of shortcom- characters
ings that make it difficult to work with. Creating and editing a CAT
Another plug-in package known as Character Animation Toolkit, or CAT for preset rig
short, has been embraced by many Max animators, and now CAT is embedded Creating a custom CAT rig
within 3ds Max. CAT offers a simple interface that gets great results whether
you’re building your own custom rig or animating an existing preset rig. Animating using CAT
Although Max includes other features for rigging characters, if you plan on animat- Working with muscles
ing a character, then CAT is definitely the way to go. It’s an incredible time-saver.
Using Crowd and Delegates
Nobody likes crowds (except for certain types of bugs), but with the Character
Studio’s Crowd Animation tools, controlling crowds can be lots of fun. The fun
comes when you realize that you would spend weeks animating by hand all the
actions that are possible with the Crowd animation tools.
Characters included in a crowd simulation are called delegates, and these dele-
gates can have assigned behaviors that tell them to follow a certain object or a
certain path and to avoid designated objects. As you begin to simulate crowds,
you’ll delight in how much it is like taking the whole family shopping together,
except the delegates actually do what you say.

Character Creation Workflow

A typical workflow for creating characters in Max involves first creating a skin
mesh object. After the skin mesh is complete, you can create a skeletal rig to
drive its animation. The skeleton consists of a pre-rigged set of bones that pro-
vide an underlying structure to the character. Animating these bones provides an
easy way to give life to the character.

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