Max for Maya 1.1.4 for Maya

• sophie white said about 15 years ago:

  Hello, My question is to do with the ik/fk blending. I'm currently attempting a push animation and need the arms to be ik controls so I can plant the hand on the box that he is pushing. I've tried selecting the shoulder control - animate- ik/fk keys - set ik/fk key but I keep getting the error : a joint or handle must be selected. please help, I know its prob something simple, I'm usually a max user but I thought I would give maya a try :)
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• lowlight said over 15 years ago:
  @ chickensandbeandip Concerning your question about blending of IK/FK controls, the answer I can give from my own anecdotal experience with this rig is that you have to set keys on the IK/FK switch for the controls that you'll be blending. Additionally, try to keep the number of frames that span a switch as low as possible to avoid wierd mesh distortions, especially if the movement is a broad one between the switch (ie: slamming a hand on a table from a fully raised position). If done carefully, the switch is pretty much transparent, and can even accentuate a bit of interesting squash-&-stretch depedning on the circumstance. If there's a better way to pull this off gracefully, I'm not aware of it... --------------------------------------------------- @ jaisen The reason you wouldn't see the dummy mesh that I know of is because Max' dummy mesh visibility layer is off by default in the Layers menu; you'd need to toggle this on and the smooth version (called "SmoothMesh") to off. As for why you don't see the "smoothed" version of Max, you have to increase his smooth setting within the rig from the "root_CTL" controller; the default value is zero (0). The name of the setting is called "Smooth Levels" and it's all the way at the bottom of the list of controllers, so it's easy to miss if you don't scroll through the entire list. I usually use a value of one (1), but I believe it can go up to a setting of three (3). --------------------------------------------------- @ milowerx Actually, you can texture this rig quite easily, if you go about it the right way. What worked for me was to go into the outliner after I settled on a smoothing value for Max, open Max' mesh subfolder (geo_GRP), select each "*_Geo" object in turn (eg: "bodySkin_Geo") and then export each mesh to Headus UV Layout to unwrap each one in turn. Once each one was unwrapped to my liking, I would import the UVs for each mesh back into Maya, take a UVSnapshot of each Geo item, and go from there with Corel Painter. Granted, if what you meant was "the rig's mesh should've come unwrapped", I would agree. One word of warning though, once you've unwrapped your UV's at a specific "Smooth Level" setting, you cannot decrease or increase the level of smoothness without adversely affecting the UV map. This is probably obvious, but something worth noting if you know ahead of time you'll be rendering Max with a high smoothness value. Oh, one more thing concerning the "moving the entire rig" comment. What usually works for me with this rig is to simply set all IK limb controllers called "Parent" from the default value of "world" to "Hip" or "Torso". Once these are set, translating the "root_Ctrl" controller will move the entire rig.
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• chickensandbeandip said over 15 years ago:
  How do you blend the IK to FK properly? The rig isn't the most conventional one. Or do I literally just have to guess the proper positions? Or use Locators everytime?
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• Mike Milo said over 15 years ago:
  I love this rig, so lightweight and simple to use. One thing that I can not figure out though is how to move the entire rig. There's no Root control on him that I can see. Most rigs have one but this one doesn't I realize I can just grab the root in the outliner but it would be nice to have a controller on the rig. I also think that you should allow for it to be textured. I get the same error as the other fella that posted earlier.
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• jaisen said over 15 years ago:
  The best rig I've tried so far. Thanks a lot for the effort of making this. EDIT: When I render with Mental ray in maya2009 i cant see the smooth or the dummy mesh. Any idea what that might be?
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• jinu john said over 15 years ago:
  good one
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• CenturyEgg said over 15 years ago:
  This rig is great and I really like it. but I'm wondering if there is a way to snap the arm from FK to IK and vice versa. My animation require me to switch between FK and IK for the arms so it'll help me out a lot if there is a way to snap between the two.
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• casey33 said almost 16 years ago:

  i love this guy. thanks! i know this is made as an animation tool, but i was wondering why i am not able to assign a different shader to him? i was wanting to play around w/ the shader and create a custom texture. however, i get "error parsing arguments" when i try to apply a new shader. thanks for any help. casey
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• ErikSvensson said about 16 years ago:
  The FK spine? Im just curious what the purpose is to have the FK-spine in different rotation orders. The top-2 controllers has the Y as X and X as Y, but the hip has Y as Y and X as X, this will be a problem when you use local/gimbal mode to "pose" your spine because it will not bend correct, it will bend in two different directions (twist) which is annoying. Can this be fixed or is it as designed? Erik
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• Animatop said over 16 years ago:
  This has probably been asked a thousand times, but how do you turn on the IK controls on the arms? I can see the grayed out cubes on the hypergraph, but I still haven't found how to turn them on. Thanks, James, thanks for your reply. If there is any other n00b out there, it is under: Window > Outliner all_Grp | controls_Grp | root_Ctrl Thanks again
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