Limbs and biped

Creating a limb

To create a limb movement:

 

 

I have created a cylinder which I will add a limb movement to

 

Select systems, bones option,

 

IKHI solver gives you many joints, the IK limbs give 3 joints as in  arms, legs.

 

 

 

Draw and click the joints in place, this object will now be given 5 joints, move the limb inside the shape

 

Select the shape go to modifier list and select skin, on the bones menu click add, highlight all of the bones and select, now the segments of the limb can move and thus it will move the object surrounding it. (you will need to change the object view to wireframe so you can select the sections of the bones, thankyou Carl)

It is quite difficult to select the limb object within the shape, to make it easier a dummy can be attached to the limb but placed outside the object, therefore when moving the dummy it moves the part of the limb it is attached to.

 

A thought is that if an object has a limb would it follow an animation path in a better way?

 

Creating a biped - model with a skeleton

 

 

 

First creating a basic model in the shape of a humanoid, starting with a rectangle and extruding limbs only one side, having the limbs extruding away from the body in this star shape makes life a lot easier later when attaching the biped

locate create - systems menu there are some different options one is bonees but for this model I am using the biped tool, draw the skeleton to the size required to fit the model

Use symmetry to create the other side of the model, and its best to use the wire frame view

Move the biped into place making sure that the parts of the biped fit to the model, this is done by moving the small areas at the end of the biped (skeleton) limbs. 

 

Select model add physique in modifier list, use the attach to node option, increase view and click on the pelvic area of the biped, when the lines turn orange it is complete the model now has a biped.

This allows the skeleton to move the mesh, use the envelope option under physique to shape the the mesh to the skeleton, this can easily go wrong so patience is required.

This shows that the skeleton has not been enveloped properly therefore the mesh is dragging

The envelope radial scale can be increased to include the mesh surrounding it, you can see the mesh snap to the envelope as the radila scale is changed up.  Unfortunately if the envelope selects a different part of the body it drags the mesh.

Once the model has the biped enveloped properly there are tools to use to create a movement path which can be modified to walk or run, this is very useful.  This movement can also be adapted to move the biped up and down stairs.

I was able to create my man and get him to move but forgetting to save regularly meant that when it went wrong i was not able to go back to the working model.