Making the Biped Look at Objects

Interacting with Objects

Animating a Multi-legged Character

 

Autodesk 3ds Max Tutorials > Character Animation Tutorials > Biped Beyond the Basics > Interacting with Objects > 

Using In Place Mode

When you’re animating a character that's moving through space, it’s hard to evaluate the motion when the character moves out of your view. You can use In Place mode to keep the viewport centered on the moving character.

Use In Place mode:

1. Open Inplace_start.max.
2. Play the animation.

   This is an animation of a biped running. You can see the entire animation, but you’re too far away to really see what's going on.

   

3. At frame 0, select the entire biped with a selection rectangle.
4. Choose Zoom Extents Selected from the flyout.

   The viewport zooms to frame the biped, and you can see the pose clearly.

   

5. Open the Motion panel.
6. On the Biped rollout, click the plus to expand the expansion bar. In the Modes group, turn on In Place mode.
7. Play the animation in the Perspective viewport.
8. While the animation is playing, click Arc Rotate in the viewport navigation controls.

   Arc Rotate lets you rotate the viewport while the animation plays.

9. Rotate the viewport around while the biped is running, so you can see the animation from all sides.

   Since you are using In Place mode, the biped remains in view and never leaves the frame.

   TipIf you click In Place mode and the biped disappears, navigate the viewport to the center of the home grid. In Place mode plays the biped animation at this location.

   

   

   Summary

   You can use In Place mode when you need to view and adjust the animation of a biped that moves beyond the confines of the viewport.

   In Place mode is just a viewing mechanism; it doesn't actually create an in-place animation. To actually change the animation so the biped really stays in the same space, create a dummy object and link the COM to the dummy. Then keyframe the dummy so that the biped stays in the same place as the animation progresses.

   To see an example of this, open the file in_place_dummy_final.max.