Week 9 : Bones and Magic.

I was absent for the class. The class was about how to rig 3D models in 3DsMax. So firstly we were given a brief about the main phases of the process, which are Rigging and Skinning. For rigging to be done we must first layout what's known as bones. Bones are digital entities used in influence vertices of a mesh such that the changes in the bones transform affects the vertices in a similar way based on the weight assigned.

Once the bones are created and properly named it could then be used skin the mesh so that bones could be made to affect the vertices. 3DsMax uses a modifier known as "Skin" Modifier to help with skinning. it works by adding all the bones to the mesh and then weight painting it in the weight edit mode.

Then we looked into something know as controllers. Controllers are used to edit the transform of the bone so that the bone could be animated using the timeline.

In the above image you could see that, controllers are primitive shapes such as circles and rectangles that are used to control the bones. To set it up. first we need to make a primitive shape then we need to align its pivot to that of a bone.

Click align

Select the bone, the set the property.

After that we need to select the bone, go to animation dropdown and set the constrain to the desired one.

Once that's done, the rig is ready to be animated. I rigged and skinned my chest using the same system and here is the result.