Animating Real- Time Game Characters-P5: My intent in writing Animating Real-Time Game Characters has been to share my work methods, thoughts, and ideas about animating real-time characters in 3ds max 4™ and character studio 3®. Any factor that affects the animation process using these two tools has been covered. | 108 Animating Real-Time Game Characters option helps you go from an animated to unanimated state. FIGURE Assign all the upper arm vertices to the UpperArm link. think knee and thigh . Vertices that are farther above the elbow will be less influenced by the forearm and vertices below the elbow will be less influenced by the upper arm. Chapter 3 Weighting a Character Using Manual Vertex Assignment 109 9 Whenever it s a certainty that two links will be influencing a set ofvertices like the elbow go ahead and assign them all an equal weighting 1 to the parent link and 1 to the child link . Of course these values won t stay that way for all the vertices but it s a quick way to assign them to the right links simultaneously causing the default Currently Assigned Links Only to be a boon and not a handicap when tweaking the values. Zoom in on the elbow area and only select those vertices that make up the elbow. Bring up the Type-In Weights dialog box click All Links and assign the vertices to Betty R Forearm by clicking on it and typing in 1 the vertices will turn dark green . Toggle Initial Skeletal Pose back and forth by unchecking and checking its box to see the effects the weighting change has on the elbow Figure . FIGURE The elbow here has equal influence on both the UpperArm and Forearm links. E Unfortunately the Forearm link does not immediately follow the UpperArm link in the Type-In Weights dialog box. Several links that are children to the Forearm appearfirst. Be careful not to accidentally assign weighting to a Hand link when you thinkyou re assigning it to the Forearm Figure While the weighting doesn t look bad giving all of the vertices equal influence from both links detracts from the intent of the geometry which 110 Animating Real-Time Game Characters Beware the confusing out-of-order Forearm link. is to portray a thick elbow pad. Therefore a few adjustments need to be made. By toggling the Initial Skeletal Pose box on and off .
