Biped Rotational Limits

[Contrails]

I have a cow that I'd like to animate (in max) and have adjusted a biped to fit...

http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s9/jtin_photo/cowpose.jpg

but where the "arms" are (front legs) I can only bend the joint backwards, instead of forwards

http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s9/jtin_photo/cowbend.jpg

Is there a way to adjust this limit to allow me to bend it forwards? :)

[SidV]

I'm not a CS expert but just off the top, i would rotate the upper arm about 180degrees around the X_axis in figure mode.

But if you want it to move correctly, you may wanna rebuild your rig againm, as in placing the bones where they belong.

http://evasion.imag.fr/Membres/Franck.Hetroy/Projects/Skeleton/Images/cow.png

[Contrails]

OK I'll probably go about learning how to create my own rig now... got the physique, envelopes and other stuff down now :) Thanks for the diagram

Doesn't figure mode just adjust your reference pose? So if I rotated the leg, it'll leave me with a backwards leg in my reference pose...

[SidV]

Probably not a bad idea, doing your own rig. But check out Puppetshop (http://www.lumonix.net/), its fast, free and way much better then CS, specially when you rig quadrupeds. The big advantage is, you can use tangent curves when you animate instead of dealing with quaternion rotations like in CS.

[Contrails]

Yeah looked at puppetshop but decided not to use it for now to at least learn how to make my own rig from the ground up :)

So I think I've done the rig the right way, putting the bones all under one hierarchy - imports fine into UDK

http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s9/jtin_photo/referencepose.jpg

But when I import an animation that looks fine in max, the rear and all the bones under it get flipped

http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s9/jtin_photo/animation.jpg

Also took a look at some of the default skeletal meshes... it seems like the 3P ones don't have that purple line to the origin although the 1P meshes do? What does it signify?

[Bobreg]

hehe!! That looks bad... like some critter got in to 3D program and started having it's way with the meshes.