Strike a pose! A generic character to play with.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello all!  

I thought it might be fun to get a thread to play around with a character and see what people come up with.  It's often hard to show emotion with CG characters, and it's even harder if they have no face.  Take this very simple character and pose him with feeling!  Have fun with it!  What emotion, concept, or idea are you demonstrating with your image?   This model is ready to go and everything is setup, all you need to do is strike a pose!  Or, just download the character for use in your non-commercial projects.  

Find props here!  (Subject to terms of use.)  

This character is rigged with CAT, has FK/IK blend setup, and uses skin morphs to get nicer shaped bending in the elbows and other areas.  The shader in the attached file is a toon shader.  (Not the same shader as renders above.)  Included versions:  2014, 2015, 2016, 2017.

Idea Man (a.k.a. Generic Guy) was created by Dennis Rivera (Rigging/Skinning) and Alfred DeFlaminis (Modeling/Skinning/Morphs).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 

Best Regards,

[-niels-]

Nice! My knowledge of rigging and posing in max is practically zero, the closest I've done is this:

Which i did in 2014... so i'm not even sure if it's in Max... probably ShowCase actually...

The mannequin was made by Sami Kozono, who used to(?) work at Autodesk.

I can't find his model anymore, i'll see if i can dig it up... might be nice to share with you 3DS Max people to add rigging to...

Though i'd expect it already exists somewhere... but that might be me being naive about the 3DS Max side again.

Maybe i'll give this little guy a go and see how posing works, though it feels a little daunting... (like everything else in Max that's unknown to me )

[-niels-]

So... downloaded the little guy and give it a spin...

This whole rigging thing is a bit strange to me, but i managed to get him posed a little with the spear model i made:

Rendered with Mental ray, i did get some VRay related errors on opening but that didn't seem to influence the end result.

Any suggestion for where i can learn to work with a rig some more, i wanted to reset him to his original position at one point but ended up just restarting because i didn't know how...

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @-niels-,

I thought I'd cleared out all the Vray stuff, but I can see I left some Vray Render Elements.  Thanks for the heads up, I have fixed it and reuploaded, replacing my old file.  I also cleared the key frames and put the bind pose keyed at frame -1.  (This way you can get your bind pose back easier.)  

There are some links here that might help with how to work with rigs and keyframing in CAT, although that's a lengthy topic in general.  Maybe I should have posted this in the animation forum, might have made more sense.  Since there hasn't been many replies, I'll go ahead and move the entire thread there.  You are bound to get more tips there.  I'm not much of an animator myself, I do like skinning though.  Dennis Rivera made the rig here and he's got a lot of experience so it might be a bit on the advanced side compared to say .BIP.  

Best Regards,

[-niels-]

Yikes, took a quick glance at the topic you linked...
That really does look advanced... especially since i'm more of a single image renderer... very unfamiliar with animation.

Looks like it could be fun though, but at the moment it feels like a different world entirely.
Reminds me how much of a beginner i actually am with 3DS Max...

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

No worries, I was TD for most of my 3D career so I did everything except character animation, so I know what you mean.  It's not that bad, the key to understand is some of the controllers work when in IK and some when in FK. I think it made sense to move this to the animation forum.  Thanks for posting those images, looking cool!  

Best Regards,

[melissa.lax]

Morning @-niels-,

I'll let our riggers give you a full run down, but here's my attempt to take the "dauntingness" out of rigging in Max. 

In Max, you have a few choices for rigging, all equally valid, all with their pros and cons, but at the end the choice is yours.  

Here are 3 ways to rig in Max: 

Bone rigging - CAT (Character Animation Toolkit) is a character-animation plug-in for 3ds Max. CAT facilitates character rigging, nonlinear animation, animation layering, motion-capture import, and muscle simulation. It requires a significant time investment to learn but is definitely rewarding for those wanting hyper control over their rig. 

Learning Resources > http://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSMAX/2017/ENU/

Biped rigging - Equally awesome, A biped model is a two-legged figure: human or animal. Each biped is an armature designed for animation, created as a linked hierarchy. The biped skeleton has special properties that make it instantly ready to animate. 

Learning Resources >  https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/3DSM...

*An interesting read on Biped by Rodrigo Assaf, LatAm Tech Sales Specialist:

https://area.autodesk.com/blogs/the-3ds-max-blog/populate-animation

Character Animation Toolkit (CAT) Rigging - Newer rigging tool and arguably "easier" to learn for those getting started.

Learning Resources >  http://area.autodesk.com/learning/series/3ds-max-using-cat

And as we say in Canada, if you're an"eager beaver" here's an entire series dedicated to character rigging in 3ds Max:

http://autode.sk/3dsmaxvideoseriescharacterrigging

Max on 

Melissa 

Edited by
Discussion_Admin

[-niels-]

Hey @melissa.lax, it's evening for me but that's ok.

Thank you for the links, sadly only the "using CAT" link works.

The first 2 take me to www.autodesk.com, the blog post doesn't exist anymore and the last link takes me to a page that seems broken.

Still, the one link that works looks like it has a lot of useful information so i'll look into that a bit.

At the moment i'm not really looking into how to create rigs... more on how to manipulate them, so i can use the one provided here properly.

But i do have one question though, is this CAT plugin supplied with 3DS Max or do i need to download it somewhere?

(i haven't really looked into that yet, thought i'd just ask.)

[melissa.lax]

Correction to earlier post, with correct links: 

Hi @-niels-,

I'll let our riggers give you a full run down, but here's my attempt to take the "dauntingness" out of rigging in Max. 

In Max, you have a few choices for rigging, all equally valid, all with their pros and cons, but at the end the choice is yours.  

Here are 2 ways to rig in Max: 

CAT (Character Animation Toolkit) - A character-animation plug-in for 3ds Max. CAT facilitates character rigging, nonlinear animation, animation layering, motion-capture import, and muscle simulation. Newer toolkit and arguably easier to learn. 

Learning Resources >  http://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSMAX/2016/ENU/?guid=GUID-EA1D6D09-A2CD-4204-8093-A7AE5EC5E333  

Biped Rigging - Equally awesome, A biped model is a two-legged figure: human or animal. Each biped is an armature designed for animation, created as a linked hierarchy. The biped skeleton has special properties that make it instantly ready to animate. 

Learning Resources >  http://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSMAX/2016/ENU/?guid=GUID-2F6BC5D1-DD45-4C2E-AC3A-D8C6E0F5DEB1 

*An interesting read on Biped by Rodrigo Assaf, LatAm Tech Sales Specialist:

http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/the-3ds-max-blog/populate-animation 

 And as we say in Canada, if you're an"eager beaver" here's an entire series dedicated to character rigging in 3ds Max:

http://area.autodesk.com/learning/series/3ds-max-character-rigging-series 

Max on 

Melissa 

[-niels-]

First link gives "page not found", 2nd link works now, blog post still isn't available anymore and the page for that last link still seems broken for me.

No worries though, i've watched the first video on that "using CAT" page now... it's pretty interesting and i get the feeling i did the entire positioning on my image wrong.

On to the next video!

[melissa.lax]

---

@-niels- wrote:

Hey @melissa.lax, it's evening for me but that's ok.

But i do have one question though, is this CAT plugin supplied with 3DS Max or do i need to download it somewhere?

(i haven't really looked into that yet, thought i'd just ask.)

---

Evening @-niels-,

Sure CAT is available from the Helpers in Max: 

Here's a link to the help doc>

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/3DSMa...

 We suggest checking out the "base human" to get started. 

Best,

Melissa 

[-niels-]

Also getting a "page not found" error for that link...

@Alfred.DeFlaminis: i downloaded the new version and when i open it i get this error screen:

So there's still something left in there i think.

It opens and renders fine, so it's not that big an issue.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

All set.  

Best Regards, 

[Anonymous]

Hi,

i`m a bit late to the show, anyway:

[video]

[-niels-]

Nice!

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Niels!

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Good poses and animation here @Anonymous, I like it a lot.  Character animation is one thing I need to work on a lot, my biggest weakness.  Kudos for posting the animation!

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Alfred.It was really fun spending an afternoon doing this. It was my first time using a CAT-Rig and i thought it worked quite well and was easy to use.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Dennis Rivera spent quite a bit of time on the rig and controls for it to make it easy to use.  I have to give credit there to him, I mostly just did the materials, skinning, modeling.  We had some fun with it as well, in the end we made something like 80 or so images using him to refine our processes and get a pipeline worked out for some other things we were planning.  It is a pretty easy character to get into, thanks for taking the time to post this!

Best Regards,

[melissa.lax]

Hi @Anonymous,

Love the animation! I had the impression your little man was going to pick up a puppy. 

Was surprised to see it was a Max teapot! super cool. How'd you comes across CAT?

If you're curious to delve deeper, I'd suggest checking out:

CAT Video Tutorial series:

http://area.autodesk.com/learning/series/3ds-max-using-cat 

Cheers,

Melissa