How to do a cartoon limb-stretching effect (3DS Max)

[J-Dude]

I've been doing cartoon characters in Max for some time now, and now that I can get to the point of animating them, I've had problems with certai animation attributes. Basically, I mean the ability of a cartoon character to stretch its normally inadequately lengthed arms or legs to kick, grab or make some other exaggerated gesture.

I currently use the biped in Max and have wondered for a long time how I would do this in an efficient manner. I doubt its easy, but I've been wrong and overlooked useful tools before. I'm sure anyone whose ever animated Majin Buu has run into this. If anyone knows how this might work, please tell me!

Thnx in advance!

 

[Almighty_Gir]

just scale the bipeds limbs within a keyframe period, and the weighted/physiqued mesh should do the same.

 

[J-Dude]

You can animate scaling with the biped...? It never allowed me to do that before, other than in figure mode.

Edit: Yeah, I just checked, the biped won't allow scaling to be animated, it can ONLY be done in figure mode. Anything else? I told you this was a difficult problem.