Building the Arms

Creating and Editing Character Bones

Skinning

 

Autodesk 3ds Max Tutorials > Character Animation Tutorials > Character Animation without Biped > Creating and Editing Character Bones > 

Building the Neck, Head, and Hair Bones

In this lesson, you'll finish the bone structure by creating the neck, head, and hair bones.

Prepare the scene:

1. Open the scene you saved from the previous lesson, or open tut_char_bone_file04.max.
2. Select all the bones, helpers, and IK chains, and hide them.
3. If necessary, click Min/Max Toggle to display four viewports.

Create the final bones:

1. On the Create panel > Systems object type, click Bones to enter creation mode.
2. In the Bone Parameters rollout > Bone Object group, make sure the Width and Height values are set to 5.0.
3. Make sure that the Assign To Children check box is off.
4. In a side viewport, create two smaller neck bones, then one bone for the entire head, and then five more bones for the hair.
5. Right-click twice to end bone creation mode.
6. Use the Bone Tools dialog to create a color gradient for the bones and add fins as desired.
7. Rename the bones to the following:
   • BONE_Neck01
   • BONE_Neck02
   • BONE_head
   • BONE_Hair01
   • BONE_Hair02
   • BONE_Hair03
   • BONE_Hair04
   • BONE_Hair05

   

Look at the bone structure:

At this point, all of the basic bone structure for the rig is done. You can now unhide all objects to show all the bones you created.

1. Right-click any viewport to display the quad menu, and choose Unhide All.
2. Save your work as my_char_bone_complete.max.

   You can also open tut_char_bone_complete.max to examine the result of this lesson.