3ds max help

[BuddyB309]

Well this is the perfect thread to start help topics. The AVA season is just around the corner and I'm pretty sure that many students will have lots of question and we will be here to lend a hand.

Now for contraints there are plenty of them. There are some to make an object follow a path, and another to make an object contantly point its pivot axis at another object. But what i think you're looking for is the constraint that attaches one object to another. That would be the link constraint. Its located in the main toolbar>animation>constraints>link constraint.

I will tell you this though, i find that a lot of people coming from using inventor to 3ds max try to make all their models exact to every little detail. You must realize that your dealing with 3ds max and your final product will only be viewed from one camera angle. So the little detail that you put into it that is never seen, will be a wasted effort and time

[Jeff 801]

Originally Posted by BuddyB309

Well this is the perfect thread to start help topics. The AVA season is just around the corner and I'm pretty sure that many students will have lots of question and we will be here to lend a hand.

Now for contraints there are plenty of them. There are some to make an object follow a path, and another to make an object contantly point its pivot axis at another object. But what i think you're looking for is the constraint that attaches one object to another. That would be the link constraint. Its located in the main toolbar>animation>constraints>link constraint.

I will tell you this though, i find that a lot of people coming from using inventor to 3ds max try to make all their models exact to every little detail. You must realize that your dealing with 3ds max and your final product will only be viewed from one camera angle. So the little detail that you put into it that is never seen, will be a wasted effort and time

Thanks this helped a lot

[fireball3004]

Hey can someone give me a quick run through of mouth mechanics... I'm assuming I need to use the morph modifier, after having tried to get it to work with bones for the past 2 days... but I could use some more info... quick summary would be nice. sorry but finding any of you on aim is made difficult by the fact that hawaii time is off by at least 3 hours.

[Testament-Doom]

You are correct in assuming that the Morph modifier is for the mouth movement. It's best to have whatever you're trying to morph all ready for animation and whatnot (no further changes after morph internally) before you attempt to morph the mouth, because then you would have to do the same with the morph targets, and that's no fun at all.

So, you have your object with the lips and whatever you have with your morph modifier applied and ready to go. Make it so that the mouth is resting normally, like our mouths are right now. Now the channels from 1 to 100 can hold a different state, a morph target if you will. The best way IMO to get these targets is to clone the whole object, and delete the morph modifier from the cloned object. You edit that object to have let's saayyyyy, the O shape when your lips make the O sound. Once that cloned object has an O shaped mouth, you can go back to the original object and select your first channel, rename it to whatever, and then it should say something like "pick morph target" or something along the lines of that. You select that button, and pick your cloned object, the one with the O shape. Congratulations, you have your first morph target. You can freely move the slider from 0 to 100 to see the effect. Very useful! You could also take it a step further, go into the global parameters tab, and change the upper and lower limit to -100 to 100, or -500 to 500 for very huge extremes. The negative numbers works well for instances like if you wanted a smile, the negative values would give you a frown. To make more morph targets, you would have to clone yet another object from the source, delete the clone's morph object, yada yada. Basically you're going to have x amount of clones for x amount of channels you're going to have. There's more to talk about, but that's the gist of it. Best of luck and happy modeling!

[BuddyB309]

Originally Posted by Testament-Doom

blah blah blah blah......

So, you have your object with the lips.... blah blah blah..... 500 for very huge extremes.....blah blah....hippo....blah blah.....Best of luck and happy modeling!

David brings up the basic about setting up morph modifier he's missing a few key points that will make your life easier. If there is anybody to tell you about character rigging, and animation, I'm your man. I have a couple of tips and rules to look out for when I'm setting up the morph modifier.

1: The morph modifier will only work if the morph targets it is pulling from, have EXACTLY the same number of polygons and vertices's as the original model. So MAKE SURE YOU ARE DONE WITH MODELING YOUR CHARACTER BEFORE YOU ASSIGN MORPH TARGETS. I even go as far as animating my entire character so the morph modifier is the last thing i do. I tried copying objects as references but they never seem to work like i want them to so i always have to go with actual copies.

2: Place the morph modifier BELOW the skin modifier on the modifier stack menu. You really don't need your computer spending all that power trying to animate every single morph target.

3: Hide your morph targets, DO NOT DELETE! I have seen some animations where they did not hide the morph targets so you had random people floating there in space. I have also had the experience of deleting a morph target and then later on down the road the morph mod does not work anymore. Never good.

4: Think about how your character will talk. Everyone talks differently, For instance my character, Narf, says his "O"s and "AH"s out of the side of his mouth. Think of a style that might fit your character, like he could spit every time he says his "B" and "P"s

5: Jaw bone. Yes done forget about the mandable, Lots of people do. Sometimes its best to rigg a bone to control the opening and closing of the mouth. especially for characters that have a snout.

6: Set up a control board. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE SET UP A CONTROL BOARD! this makes life a lot easier. A control board is a series of nonrenderable shapes that are line via wire parameters to the value of the morph modifier, it kinda looks like this.
It makes animateting so much easier. Rater than going into the morph modifier menu and try to key everything from their, you can just grab the series of splines I set up and yank them into position.

7: break down of lip synch. Alright here we go, Most people's mouth just really stumble through out the words with out really making a distinct shape all the time. However, you must hit your M's, B's, and P's a frame or two before the actual sound. NEVER LATE!! otherwise it will look like a badly dubbed Japaneses film.
The teeth normally show at S's, E's but not always, and O's can come in many shapes and sizes. You just really have to listen to your recording for your characters. which brings me to another point.

8:recording character voices for animation. This is by far the most overlooked area in AVA entries. BE OVERLY DRAMATIC WHEN VOICE RECORDING!!! Throw your voice through a roller coaster of pitches, you will think you sound incredibly dumb, but when you play it back through the animation, if will sound normal. It WILL sound badly if you speak in your everyday normal voice or worst reading from a paper in mono-tone-to-close-to-the-microphone-so-we-hear-your-breath-against-the-microphone voice.

[Testament-Doom]

I just loooooovvvveee when people make the mono-tone-too-close-to-the-microphone-so-we-hear-your-breath-against-the-microphone voice, ;D

[fireball3004]

OK so I set up the morph mod. and got it running, but I must have done something wrong/ stupid, because every time I set it to morph it moves overone... I end up with a weird looking talking head moving sidways. I think I'll just set the camera to move with it if I can't figure out the problem with some more tinkering cause I need to finish it tonight, but can anyone help me figure out why this is happening?

[Testament-Doom]

My only guess would be that you captured the morph target when it was at a different rotation than the current one. They have to be the same rotation when you're capturing the morph target I believe. Don't know if that's the case, but that's the theory I'm coming up with right now.

[BuddyB309]

Originally Posted by fireball3004

OK so I set up the morph mod. and got it running, but I must have done something wrong/ stupid, because every time I set it to morph it moves overone... I end up with a weird looking talking head moving sidways. I think I'll just set the camera to move with it if I can't figure out the problem with some more tinkering cause I need to finish it tonight, but can anyone help me figure out why this is happening?

Picture would help, capture your screen. Get you model, the morph targets, and the morph modifier in the sceen

[popo308]

Also keep in mind when you are recording it is good to have a semi-high quality microphone. I'm not saying to go spend 300$$ on one. But don't settle for one of the cheap ones that come with a karaoke machine. Also it is good to use more than 1 microphone when you are recording. Last year we just used two microphones aimed them at the speaker from different angles and it sounded amazing when we put it into the animation. Finally it is a good idea to have windscreens on your microphones. It will greatly enhance the quality of sound your getting from your microphone. It is not necessary but it does make a huge difference.

[fireball3004]

Lol, our sound guy does prefessional sound for oour school plays and stuff, he also does this for his church. long story short, the animation is terrible, but the sound is good.

[popo308]

Originally Posted by fireball3004

Lol, our sound guy does prefessional sound for oour school plays and stuff, he also does this for his church. long story short, the animation is terrible, but the sound is good.

Ya we have a sound guy at our school that does work for the play/musical he has some really nice Peavy Omni-Directional microphones. If we can get a hold of them they are very nice. But he is a very busy man so were not always we can get them.

Its just annoying when someone has a decent animation but they blow it when you can't hear the words and its full of static.