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Let me cut right to the chase here. I use 3dsmax 7, and I like using the biped skeletal system for characters because it's convenient and also because it's the only way I can keep hands or feet planted in one spot while the rest of the body moves.
However, Biped also tends to seriously piss me off.
I love animating with it typically. It uses a sort of smart momentum carrying feature that keeps the animations looking organic, but sometimes this feature goes bat**** crazy.
Let's take a situation I'm in now. Right now, I'm working on getting a character to leap in a frontflip over another characters head and land again, facing the opponent. On paper, this wouldn't seem very hard. I use a spline as a guide for how the character's basic path will be, and then account for slowing curves and such. Well, then I found it was going too fast, and while I needed it to start fast (the character leaping to dodge a projectile fired by the enemy) I needed it to lose a lot of that speed rather quickly. I repositioned the frames further apart, and expected this to work properly. Instead, the biped almost completely ignored the frames I'd set inbetween the low point and the high point (all specifically marked mind you) and flatenned the path. On top of that, it seemed to have invented a frame I'd never set somewhere a few feet below the high point. Basically, now the Biped would quickly move toward this invented point, and then turn around and very slowly float to the high point I'd designated.
Now, I don't know about any of you, but this would, and has, driven me absolutely batty with rage. And I hope not without good reason, as in my mind, there's no damn reason why anything should behave this way. It's almost like it's inventing random ways to piss me off and hamper my work.
Another problem is when I have the biped cover a lot of distance between two frames, in which, somehow, this momentum gets transferred to frames BEFORE as well as AFTER this point. Now, this is easy to fix with tension settings for any of the limbs and head, but this doesn't seem to do a damn thing to fix the problems that tend to occur with the biped root object.
Anyway, the before frames don't matter too much in this instance, since I've already rendered that part out, and the camera just switched places. But still, this happens a lot, and I'm rather desperate.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now, I've made threads like this in numeous places before, and far too many times have I been almost completely ignored save for one guy who offers obvious and utterly useless advice. However, I find I place a bit more confidence in people here at the ESF forums, who are a bit more responsive and knowledgable.
If anyone can help me out, I'd be extremely grateful.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
UPDATE: Well, found out those invisible keyframes, really WERE keyframes...Just for some strange reason, it wasn't listed as a movement transformation key, and was only reachable when I told the timeline to show all keys...So, managed to get things working in a semi-sane way again, but still, I'd love to know what I might be missing in terms of biped knowledge that can help me avoid this sort of thing in the future...
However, Biped also tends to seriously piss me off.
I love animating with it typically. It uses a sort of smart momentum carrying feature that keeps the animations looking organic, but sometimes this feature goes bat**** crazy.
Let's take a situation I'm in now. Right now, I'm working on getting a character to leap in a frontflip over another characters head and land again, facing the opponent. On paper, this wouldn't seem very hard. I use a spline as a guide for how the character's basic path will be, and then account for slowing curves and such. Well, then I found it was going too fast, and while I needed it to start fast (the character leaping to dodge a projectile fired by the enemy) I needed it to lose a lot of that speed rather quickly. I repositioned the frames further apart, and expected this to work properly. Instead, the biped almost completely ignored the frames I'd set inbetween the low point and the high point (all specifically marked mind you) and flatenned the path. On top of that, it seemed to have invented a frame I'd never set somewhere a few feet below the high point. Basically, now the Biped would quickly move toward this invented point, and then turn around and very slowly float to the high point I'd designated.
Now, I don't know about any of you, but this would, and has, driven me absolutely batty with rage. And I hope not without good reason, as in my mind, there's no damn reason why anything should behave this way. It's almost like it's inventing random ways to piss me off and hamper my work.
Another problem is when I have the biped cover a lot of distance between two frames, in which, somehow, this momentum gets transferred to frames BEFORE as well as AFTER this point. Now, this is easy to fix with tension settings for any of the limbs and head, but this doesn't seem to do a damn thing to fix the problems that tend to occur with the biped root object.
Anyway, the before frames don't matter too much in this instance, since I've already rendered that part out, and the camera just switched places. But still, this happens a lot, and I'm rather desperate.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now, I've made threads like this in numeous places before, and far too many times have I been almost completely ignored save for one guy who offers obvious and utterly useless advice. However, I find I place a bit more confidence in people here at the ESF forums, who are a bit more responsive and knowledgable.
If anyone can help me out, I'd be extremely grateful.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
UPDATE: Well, found out those invisible keyframes, really WERE keyframes...Just for some strange reason, it wasn't listed as a movement transformation key, and was only reachable when I told the timeline to show all keys...So, managed to get things working in a semi-sane way again, but still, I'd love to know what I might be missing in terms of biped knowledge that can help me avoid this sort of thing in the future...