Building the Spine

Creating and Editing Character Bones

Building the Neck, Head, and Hair Bones

 

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

Building the Arms

In this lesson, you'll use the Bones system to create the character’s arm bones.

Prepare the scene:

1. Open the scene you saved from the previous lesson, or open tut_char_bone_file03.max.

   You should hide all the bones from previous lessons to prevent any newly created bones from automatically appending to the existing bones. To minimize clutter in the scene, it's also recommended that you hide the spine helper objects and spline IK goal as well.

2. Select the bones, the spline IK goal, and the helper objects. Right-click to display the quad menu, and choose Hide Selection.
3. If necessary, click Min/Max Toggle to display four viewports.

Create the left arm bones:

1. In the Create panel > Systems object type, click Bones to enter creation mode.
2. In the Bone Parameters rollout > Bone Object group, set Width and Height to 5.0.
3. Turn off Assign To Children.
   TipWith the arms, you will use the HI solver later on. When you plan to assign a HI solver to bones, you will usually create the bones without a solver first, then apply the solver after the bones have been created. This allows you to create a chain of several bones but apply the HI solver to only a few of the bones.
4. In the Top view, create three bones by clicking first at the center of the shoulder blades, second at the left shoulder, third at the left elbow, and fourth at the left wrist, right-clicking twice to cancel out of bone creation mode and create a bone tip.

   In the Perspective view, you can see that the arm bones were actually created at ground level due to the default placement on the construction plane. Next, you reposition the bones to fit into the mesh.

5. In the Front view, select the root bone and move it upward, placing it directly in between the character’s shoulder blades.
6. Moving down the hierarchy, move each bone to place it within the boundaries of the mesh’s left arm.

   

7. Starting at the root, rename each bone as follows:
   • BONE_L_Arm_Clavicle
   • BONE_L_Arm_Upper
   • BONE_L_Arm_Lower
   • BONE_L_Arm_Wrist
   NoteThe term clavicle is used to denote the shoulder bone. In human anatomy, the clavicle is the shoulder bone.

Create the wrist twist bones:

A lower arm bone can twist to rotate the wrist without rotating the elbow. Now you will create additional bones in the arm to simulate this type of movement.

1. In the Top view, create a single bone with a Width and Height of 5.0. Create it with the same general alignment as the BONE_L_Arm_Lower object. The bone should be one-quarter of the length of BONE_L_Arm_Lower.
2. Delete the new tip bone from the newly created twist bone; DO NOT delete the original wrist bone
3. From the Main toolbar, use the Align tool to align the Center X, Y, Z position and rotation of the new bone to the BONE_L_Arm_Lower object.
4. Click Select And Move, and change the Reference Coordinate System to Local.
5. Move the bone down one-quarter of the way, so it starts in the second quarter of the arm.
6. Hold down Shift and drag a copy to start at the end of the first bone.
7. Repeat to create a third copy that starts at the end of the second bone.
8. Link each newly created bone to the lower arm bone (BONE_L_Arm_Lower).
9. Rename the bones to BONE_L_Twist_Wrist01, BONE_L_Twist_Wrist02, and BONE_L_Twist_Wrist03.

   

Create the hand bones:

Here, you'll create the hand and finger joints. In order to make sure the bones line up with the wrist, you can click the lower arm bone. The cursor changes to a cross hair, indicating that the new bone will be parented to this bone, and will start at the end of it.

1. Create a one-bone chain and tip that goes from the wrist to the start of the middle finger.

   For this character rig, the hand bones will not be connected hierarchically to the arm bones.

2. Select the newly created hand bone, and click Unlink Selection on the Main toolbar.
3. Rename each bone to BONE_L_Hand and BONE_L_Hand_Tip.
4. Create bones for each of the fingers and thumbs by creating four separate chains, one for each new finger, and then link the start of each finger and thumb chain to the hand bone.
5. Move the finger and thumb bones up to the proper height.
6. Adjust the colors and fins on the hand and finger bones, as needed.
7. Rename each finger bone to BONE_L_Finger1_01, BONE_L_Finger1_02, and so on.
8. Rename the thumb bones to BONE_L_Thumb_01, and so on.

   

Mirror the left arm assembly:

Now that the left-hand arm assembly is completed, it's time to create the right-hand counterpart by using the Mirror tool again.

1. Select all bones in the arm, wrist, and hand of the left arm assembly.
2. On the Main toolbar, change the Reference Coordinate System to World.
3. On the Use Pivot Center flyout, choose Use Transform Coordinate Center.
4. On the Main toolbar, click Mirror Selected Object.
5. On the Mirror: World Coordinates dialog, set Clone Selection type to Copy, and click OK.

   Now you have a mirrored copy of the left arm assembly in its correct position.

6. Change the colors of the right arm bones to green to distinguish them from the left arm.

   

   If you like, you can unhide the other bones to see their relationship to the arms.

7. Save your work as my_char_bone_arms.max.

   You can also open tut_char_bone_file04.max to examine the result of this lesson.