Hey Guys!!
First “real” post on tech artists! (woot) Anyways…
So I’m using biped for the first time, and coincidentally it’s also one of the first times I’ve used Max from start to finish on a piece so I’m in need of some assistance.
I’m getting the hang of animation with biped, but the thing that has me hung up is the curve editing/lack there of (?).
I’ll set some keyframes and have a trajectory as shown in the picture, which isn’t a problem normally, but I am completely unable to make the curve editor or workbench cycle anything.
I’ve messed with multiple functions between Quaternion and Euler, and my main problems come down to; Not being able to edit one curve (In either Workbench or Curve Editor) without editing the rest.
So, if I want my X rotation to be linear, and my Y rotation to slow out, it will just do whatever the last function I pressed to all keys on all curves at that point in time. Same goes for deleting keys as well, deleting one key on the Y curve causes all other keys to be deleted at that frame.
I hope I’m just missing something blindingly obvious that a non-Bip oriented person would do out of habit, or on the other hand maybe I’m just missing that fantastic “Make Perfect Cycle Button” somewhere.
I’ve been google-ing topics related to this all day and have found zero advice on the subject besides “Play with the TCB”, so any advice is good advice, and thanks in advance!!!
That’s biped for you. Biped is evil. It is hated by animators (and riggers) for a reason.
You can set a particular joint’s rotation to Euler (“Quaternion/Euler” rollout). That’ll give you the sort-of-euler curves in workbench, but they work differently - the tracks are not separate, but are keyed together (it’s a bit similar to how bezier_scale controller acts, which has each key of [X,Y,Z] values, as opposed to Scale_XYZ, which has 3 separate bezier_float tracks of single values under it), furthermore, the ways you can edit the tangents are limited - you can’t set the lengths of the tangents to be different. It’s because the bloody Euler option only translates the curves into Euler, if you rightclick a key… surprise - you get TCB options, which means it’s still Quaternion-based.
Your best bet is to stick to quats and do it the hard way… with lots of keys in the breakdowns.
OR… You can add an euler_XYZ in the BipRotationList subanim, under “keyframing tools” enable subanims, enable manipulate subanims, then do the rotation in the actual euler subanim (but you’ll find this one’s curves in trackview, not workbench). The downside is that it can get rather complicated soon, both animating and saving/loading of motion.
Thanks Zhalktis!
Yeah, it seems everywhere I look there’s a strong opinion biped one way or another. I’ll probably just end up doing it the hard way for the animation aspect.
As explained to me via another forum, it seems that the looping can be smoothed out by pasting the keys before/after the time that are actually working on, neat.
Welp thanks again, every post I make about biped is giving me just that extra confidence that I am doing it right, and the system is just… stubborn, haha!
You’re welcome. I wish you patience… :>
[QUOTE=heboltz3;22967]Thanks Zhalktis!
As explained to me via another forum, it seems that the looping can be smoothed out by pasting the keys before/after the time that are actually working on, neat.[/QUOTE]
Ah yes, non-planted biped keys act similar to smooth tangent in bezier controllers. When working with it, it sometimes helps to imagine how you’d animate it in regular euler rotation if all you could use was smooth keys and without the ability to offset the keys of different tracks.
(When you think of it, the repeating keys before and after the animation frames is convenient whenever you’re making a loop, even in eulers: although not to such a degree, the default/auto tangent’s angle depends on what comes before or after, so it would help if you want a movement to carry through the cut seamlessly.)
