** NOObie's... all appz all questions **

so how do i use the biped or bones function? with the character

 

Go to the user reference in 3ds Max and look up Biped and it will tell you how to use it.

 

I'm done with rigging, I think. I've started to animate, but ha ha, I have another problem. I would like to have an army (around 30 people) all lined up in box formation. I made another copy of the character (instance and reference. I tried both), so that I can just control one of them and the rest would do the same movement by itself. The body mesh will move together, but it's not in the correct position. It appears near the original, but not in the armor.

Here's a screenshot:
http://img174.imageshack.us/my.php?image=clonevp0.png

The middle guy is the original. The empty armor is where I dragged the copy.

 

Try grouping the character before copying it.

 

How do I make it so that one character is the same height/size as another? When I merged the stormtrooper with Vader, Vader was the size of the stormtrooper's hand.

 

You can either group it (I think that'll work) and then resize it. Or you have to remove the physique and attachments on the mesh, resize the biped and the mesh and redo the physique. The characters don't work well if you're trying to resize them after already rigging them up.

 

In 3ds max I'm creating a planet and I want to make it so that the lights on the planet, which I made in photoshop and look all nice and stuff, only show up on the dark side of the planet. Is this possible? Thanks.

 

Oh.

 

Hi,
im about to do a matrix clip where he dodges bullets in slo mo.
how do i get a bullet trail? i've no problem in 3d, but in LIVE ACTION
its really hard. i heard about a guy "Ryan" who got a rig for it a qhile back
but i cant find it

any hlp appreciated

 

I am having a problem with the empire shuttle tyderian or what ever it is called. Basically When I rotate it the wings and parts all come apart. Now if i group them it kind of solves it, except when I try to animate the landing and take off part where the wings retract. so is there anyway to sort this so that i can retract the wings and rotat the craft without the whole thing coming apart

 

Link/attach the parts to the part you are rotating rather than grouping them together. When you group them together it changes the Pivot Point so it won't rotate the same way as before.

 

I have just noticed that I am having a problem with some of the Max models. Basically I have more than one ship in my scene and I get confused because i "open" the first ship up and it is perfectly fine, has all its textures etc... But if i "merge" another type of ship or a planet for that matter, the object gets merged without any of its textures. So what causes this and how can i prevent it from happening, because alough I am getting used to mapping objects I am not sure how to add them to ships or objects that have already been mapped.

 

nobody replied to my last post so i made a video to show the problem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS9Lr2_5CcQ

 

Right My video didn't seem to get any help either. 3rd time lucky with this question I was told by somebody that if i merge a file to select the "retain textures" option. However I can't find this option anywhere, i have looked in the max manual tutorials everything, so how do i keep my textures when i merge an object, this should hopefully solve my previous 2 questions

 

two questions

1.what are bip
2.what are IK

 

BIP is a shortened form of Biped, which refers to a creature that walks on two legs. For 3D animation the term is used for a character bones system in 3ds Max that allows you to instantly create a character animation rig to be able to animate a character.

IK is Inverse Kinematics which is really quite simple. Basically Kinematics refers to where an object is moved by another object, so for instance, your upper arm moves your lower arm which moves your hand--that's Kinematics. But luckily in any 3D animation program there is a thing called Inverse Kinematics where it goes the other way around, if you move the hand it will move the lower arm which will move the upper arm. It would be like just going up to someone and grabbing their hand and placing it somewhere and the rest of the arm stays connected and moves with it. It's quicker because you don't have to rotate each part down the line to get it in the right position, you can just move the hand or foot where you want to.