CD Action 9 B/cdactioncoverdisc/max/cs_tech.txt

Text File | 1996-07-07 | 8KB | 192 lines

CHARACTER STUDIO - Concise Technical Overview

BIPED TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS


3D Character Construction

Skeletons - of any two-legged animal (such as humans, dinosaurs, monkeys,
or ducks) are quickly created through parametric methods and interactive
manipulation of the 3D character's body parts.

Biped Animations - can be combined with Physique to create 3D characters
with seamless skin, naturally flexing muscles, and sliding tendons.

Custom Objects - can be used for any or all Biped body parts to better
represent the character, or to animate jointed characters without using
Physique.


Footstep-Driven Keyframe Animation

Place Footprints - and interactively compose the timing and position of a
two-legged character to easily create walking, running, jumping, or any
motion pattern such as a dance.

Keyframes - are generated automatically from the footsteps to produce an
initial sketch of the character's motion. You can easily replace, delete,
and insert keys to produce a unique expressive motion without violating the
footstep constraints.

Keyframe Adaptation - ensures that any edits you make to a footstep pattern
preserve the nuances of your character's animation by adapting keyframes to
match changes in footstep timing or location.


Physically-Based Interpolation

Bipedal Mechanics - ensures your characters move, rotate, and dynamically
balance about their center-of-mass, walk with biomechanically correct
relationships between the ankle, leg, and pelvis, and (by default) bank
into turns as a function of speed and path curvature.

Gravitational Dynamics - interpolates vertical keyframes (up and down
movement) using Newtonian physics and adjustable gravity for artistic
control.

Suspended Dynamics Mode - allows you to turn Biped constraints off at
selected times to easily animate non-footstep movements, such as flying
and bicycling.


Advanced Inverse Kinematics (IK)

Natural IK for 3D Characters - allows you to animate limbs in a realistic,
precise, and easy-to-use manner rather than depending upon arbitrary
robotic-like linkages. You can quickly define IK paths for characters to
follow, relative to themselves or the space around them.

Animatable IK Attachments to 3D Studio MAX Objects - gives you the power
to dynamically attach and detach another object to a character's hands and
feet during an animation. Catching and throwing a basketball, rowing a
boat, and dancing with another character have never been easier.

Animated IK Blending - combines IK hand and foot-follow motions with the
natural swinging movements of conventional forward kinematic joint
rotations. Your character's feet gracefully swing as they move up the
stairs.


3D Character Motion Splicing

Biped Motion Copy/Paste/Insert - easily splices motions together by
copying and inserting sequences of footsteps and their associated upper
body movements.

User-Defined Motion Cycling - generates seamless motion cycles by copying
and then repeatedly "reinserting" selected sequences of character
animation.


3D Character Motion Mapping

Motion Mapping - you can apply the footsteps and animation of a Biped
character to any other Biped character: Biped adapts the animation to
account for differences in structure. Animation sequences can be copied
between characters regardless of height, proportion, or even physical
differences (changing from human legs with toes to dinosaur legs with
webbed feet, for example).

Dimensional Scaling - Biped accounts for differences in character size by
adapting the placement of footsteps in terms of overall leg and pelvis
dimensions. Gravity can also be adapted to the relative stance of the
Biped character. You can craft great motion sequences once and use them
with all your characters.


Motion Over Uneven Terrain

Footstep Composition and Adaptation - any motion can be either generated,
or adapted, to footsteps with varying heights and orientations, allowing
characters to walk up stairs, jump off a building, or run up a hill.

Accurate Foot/Ground Collision Response - a Biped character's specific
foot structure will accurately collide and roll over each footstep
location in a natural way, pivoting between the heel, sole, and potential
contact points of the toes (or claws).


PSYSIQUE TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION
Muscle Bulging

Use Articulated Structures - such as Biped characters or 3D Studio MAX
Bones - to create a skeleton that lies within an unjointed skin. Physique
connects to and moves the skin as you position the underlying Biped or
Bones skeleton.

Animated Muscle Bulging - can be based on the behavior of the skeleton's
joint angles and their relationship to one another. Bulging biceps are
easily created as the arm bends, for example.

Animate, Sculpt, and Bulge Any Surface - including polygon meshes, surface
patches, Boolean objects, and all procedural primitives.

Design by Cross Section - use Physique's Cross Section Editor to define a
muscle's profile at any given point. Add as many cross sections as needed
to give your model as much detail as you wish for any position.

Define Overall Muscle Movement - by establishing the relationship between
various muscle cross sections and the joint bend angle. Control the
influence, weight, and power of the animated bulge as joints bend.

Skin Behavior - can be controlled as the angles between limbs change.
Adjust the sharpness of the skin at bending joints with continuity;
control how skin twists around the joint as limbs move, and set the
amount of skin folding as the joint angle changes. All controls allow
for bias and tension adjustment, as well as deformation amplitude,
squash and stretch, and joint intersection blending.


Tendon Action

Tendon Control - selectively assigns portions of skin to move with
individual bones. Physique creates realistic tendon effects by linking
muscle movement to arbitrary bones, deforming the muscles across multiple
links.

Angular Pull - pulls skin based on the angular movement of limbs (for
example, the chest rising as the arms are lifted upward).

Angular Pinch - pinches skin together based on the relative angle of a
limb (for example, the pectoral muscles protrude forward as the shoulders
are shrugged).

Radial Stretch - protrudes skin outward as other limbs move (for example,
as when muscular arms' tendons appear when lifting weights) .


System Requirements for Character Studio
* 3D Studio MAX software
* Pentium(r) or Pentium Pro at 90 MHz minimum (full support of
  multiple processor systems)
* Microsoft(r) Windows NT Workstation 3.51
* 48MB RAM (amount depends on scene complexity)
* 100MB HD Swap Space (amount depends on scene complexity)
* Graphics card supporting 800x600x256 colors under Windows NT
 (1024x768x256 colors with PCI bus recommended. 1280x1024x24-bit
 double-buffered 3D accelerator ideal)
 Windows NT-compliant pointing device
* CD-ROM drive
* Optional: Sound card and speakers, software and cabling for
  TCP/IP-compliant network, 3D hardware graphics acceleration, video
  input and output devices.

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