March 2006
Intermediate to advanced
304 pages
9h 55m
English
Content preview from 3ds Max Animation with Biped
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Time Between Footsteps
As you may remember from Chapter 1, footstep animation makes the biped react realistically to gravity. This is good if you’re using realistic timing, bad if you’re not.
In footstep animation, when the biped is in the air between footsteps, Character Studio calculates how high the biped would have to jump to stay in the air for that period. If it’s in the air for 80 frames or more, the biped is going to take a giant leap into the stratosphere. Bipeds have infinitely strong legs, and they will leap as high as necessary to stay in the air during airborne periods.
A useful exercise is to have a friend jump up into the air while you time the jump. You don’t need a stopwatch—just use the method of counting “one-1000, two-1000” ...