Dem damn bones!
2 messages in this thread
Hello once again…
I tried what you said with better results, however not satisfactory. I seem to
be having trouble getting the animation to look how I want. I have spent quite
a bit of time with bones and bend-aid, but I am either doing something all
wrong, or I am expecting too much
from the program.
What I mainly have in mind is similar to the file that was uploaded (I can't
remember the name of it or who did it) of an arm and hand that flowed very
smoothly with all vertices staying where they should. I haven't been able to
acheive that result yet, and I am on the verge of giving it up all together.
I'm sure I'm making it way to hard on myself, but lack of experince and docs
with examples (namely existing projcet files I can study) hinders me from
getting results that I need. I've put in a number of hours with the programs,
more than I probably should have, but can't seem to get the hang of it.
Thanks for your time, I appreciate your patience and help. If by chance you
could make up (or anyone else for that matter) a small project file with step
by step details using bones and bend-aid, it would sure help me and anyone else
having trouble. It would seem, however, that I'm the only one having the
trouble anyway.
Thanks again, keep up the good work, I'm sure most folks will find your
program(s) very useful.
Greg.
Hi,
<< (namely existing projcet files I can study) >>
Actually, there is a project file and step by step instructions already
available for download. I am attaching the step-by-step with some additional
comments. The zipped project is in LIB 3 and called bonchv.zip. It does not
cover bend-aid, but Glenn Melenhorst did not use that for the arm anyway.
Sorry I could not do a special project file for you. I know the Chevy is
not exactly like an arm, but it should help. I am slammed with work right now.
If you have trouble with it drop me a line.
Joe
——————– The chevy.prj project is designed to be a quick demo of
the BONES IPAS set. It has a number of bones specified in a roughly humanoid
pattern and the '57 Chevy that came with your 3DS3 package. Here's how to use
it with bones:
1) Load the project, press F4 to go to the Keyframer.
2) Press F12, select BONES1 from the KXP window. Click OK, then click on the
base bone in the skeletal hierarchy (the linkage tree). This is the
lowest spine bone. (Directly above the hips.)
3) Press F3 to go to the 3d Editor. Press F12, select BONES2 from the PXP
window.
4) In the BONES2 dialog box, set #bones = 4, Tension = 4, prefix = chev.
Click OK, then click on the '57 Chevy mesh. This part may take some time
as the morph targets are generated. You will see messages at the foot of
the screen telling you each of 6 Bent Objects are being created. When the
routine is finished, the message 'PXP routine terminated.' will apear.
You will probably not see the morph targets in the Editor; they are
automatically hidden in 3DS4.
5) Press F4 to return to the Keyframer. You will see the morph targets here.
Be sure to press F12 and select BONES3 from the KXP window. (If you don't
do this part, you won't see the morphing happen.) Be sure to hide
everything, and then unhide the Chevy main object.
6) Render your dancing Chevy from the Camera 3 viewport. (Or make a preview
to see that it did work.)
The Bend-Aid utility is designed to help you control how local areas of your
mesh follow your skeletal bones. This will help you to avoid undesirable
effects such as "bat wings" that result when you tell vertices in the 50P-Man
mesh, for example, to follow 2 bones (# of bones using Bones2) and then you
lift his arms away from his body. follow