whooohoo

[john silver]

first thread in new thingy!!! I hate chacter studio and bones, is there any alternatives.

[DramaticDigital]

Sorry, but no!

[Goig!]

Why, yes you can; I think it´s called joint animation, or something; it only works with models that have some sort of joints, as in a manequin or robot, you place the pivot points on the joints, and then you link the limbs together; for animation it´s royal PITA, but it works.

[Emperor]

HAHA...hate CS n bones...um well you could always have someone do the rigs for u and u anly animate. But there are alternatives, so DD that isn't correct. U have Motionbuilder, CAT and prolly some others to pick from. I hear Motionbuilder is really good.

[john silver]

is motion builder free?

[USED]

NOthing is free

[niki]

another alternative: endorphin
http://www.naturalmotion.com/pages/products.htm

[Downup]

Download the CAT tools.. best animations tools ever!

cost 998$ but the demo is free

http://www.charanitech.com/

Be a member to download the video tutorials

[eeek]

first thread in new thingy!!! I hate chacter studio and bones, is there any alternatives.

Hi John,

In any character you animate, if its a solid mesh character you'll need bones of some sort. As it'll have to be skinned to these for proper articulation of the mesh.

As in terms of CS dont use it, its not a viable solution for any complex animation, and in tems of jobs. Most companies wont touch you with a barge pole!

The the brunt of it all is that your character will need to be skinned to something, even if your implimenting avars, or expression, which drive the skin at a vertex level. Bones also dont have to be as they say, they could be points, boxes, shapes anything in fact. But if you really want to drive the skin at its base level ala pixar style, you gunna have to hard write it in, with some propiertry software.

If you character is jointed, say a robot or a bug then fine, you could just parent the joints/parts together. Set it up and add you controllers.

Endorphin btw is a simulator for physic based animation, you apply results to a character, it does implement a little character nuance too.

CAT (character animation tools) Is in fact a cleaner propiertry based version of max's bones, its a set of plugins. Your'll still need to skin the character.

eek

[john silver]

thanks guys,

I was really set to learn character studio, but now that you've said that I guess I'll just stick with max bones. My biggest gripe with bones though is that I can't seem to save sequences, you know. I create a animation cycle and I want to reuse it, be able to kind've go, load walk5.ani? and bam there it is. Is there any way to do that?

Also I know track view is essential to make any kind of animation that you don't want to look crapy. Everytime I get in to it though it kind've overwhelms me. Is there anyplace that kind've lays out trackview so I can a conceptual understanding of it?

[john silver]

I was rigging a character last night and if anyone had any tips on hands