3ds Max 2012 Bible - Kelly L. Murdock [428]
Tip
If you don't have the model physique, then a copy of Gray's Anatomy can help. With its detailed pictures of the underlying muscular and skeletal systems, you'll have all the details you need without having to pull your own skin back. •
The curse and blessing of symmetry
The other benefit of the human body is that it is symmetrical. You can use this to your benefit as you build your characters, but be aware that unless you're creating a band of killer robots, it is often the imperfections in the characters that give them, well, character. Positioning an eye a little off normal might give your character that menacing look you need.
Dealing with details
When you start to model a human figure, you quickly realize that the body includes lots of detail, but before you start naming an object “toenail lint on left foot,” look for details you won't need. For example, modeling toes is pointless if your character will be wearing shoes and won't be taking them off. (In fact, I think shoes were invented so that animators wouldn't have to model toes.)
At the same time, details in the right places add to your character. Look for the right details to help give your character life—a pirate with an earring, a clown with a big, red nose, a tiger with claws, a robot with rivets, and so on.
Figure 40.1 shows two good examples. The ninja warrior on the left doesn't need the details of a mouth or teeth because they are hidden behind his mask. In fact, if you were to remove his mask, it would leave a large gaping hole. The Greek woman statue model on the right includes many necessary details including fingernails, toes, a bellybutton, and, uh, well, uh, other details.
Note
You can actually find these two character models on the CD at the back of the book, compliments of Viewpoint Datalabs. •
FIGURE 40.1
These two characters have details modeled where needed.
Animated Skin Modifiers
Of all the animation modifiers, several specifically are used to deal with skin. The Skin modifier is a key modifier for enabling character animation. The Skin Morph modifier lets you deform a skin object and create a morph target. It is designed to help fix problem areas, such as shoulders and hips, that have trouble with the standard Skin modifier. The Skin Wrap offers a way to animate a low-res proxy and then apply the same animation to a high-res wrapped object.
Note
A Physique modifier left over from the Character Studio suite of tools has been integrated into Max. The Physique modifier also is used to bind skin meshes to skeletons, but the Skin modifier is easier to use and more powerful. The Physique modifier remains for backward compatibility. •
Understanding the skinning process
Unless you like animating using only a skeleton or a biped by itself, a bones system will have a skin attached to it. Any mesh can be made into a skin using the Skin modifier. The Skin modifier is used to bind a skin mesh to a bones system and to define the associations between the skin vertices and the bones. The first step is to bind the skin mesh to the skeleton object. With a skin attached to a bones system, you can move the bones system and the skin follows, but just how well it follows the skeleton's motion depends on a process called skinning.
Cross-Reference
Creating a bones system is covered in more detail in Chapter 37, “Understanding Rigging, Kinematics, and Working with Bones.” Bipeds are covered in Chapter 39, “Animating Characters with CAT.” •
Skinning is where you tell which parts of the skin mesh to move with which bones. Obviously, you'd want all the skin vertices in the hand to move with the hand bone, but the skin vertices