A Cartoon animated space ship
Tutorial Part
Since 3DS 4 and Bones Pro we can animate all object with bones. It's easy and make some very good cartoon effet. Look carefully how the extrem right legs kick the ground.
Of corse you can do the same thing with 3DS MAX, SI, ALIAS etc... About MAX you'll need Bones pro or Physic because the utility for create bones can't deform meshes, it's just some bones.

I've done this animation with just boxes linked together, I didn't use invert kinematix.
In this case it's more simple and easy to just use parent child boxes.


Create the bones directly on the object

Shape and bones

This object is very easy to make, it's just a curve extruded with rotation. So just add it three legs and some roundy feets. You can start to add the bones. Make some boxes and place them on the object.

Top view of shape and bones

Use all the tools (Copy, rotate...). It's not important if the bones cross the shape. This exemple is based on 3DS 4 and bones pro wich sound to be the more difficult to do. 3DS4 is a old program now, but some IPAS are cool and you still have fun with them.

All bones

Here is a rendered picture of the bones. In Keyframer Link these bones between them from childs to parents. The parent of all bones is the "pelvis" (the bottom of the 4 body bones). Place all pivots between two bones.

Key

Just rotate some bones at differents frames. Try to find some good movements. It's not very difficult, the link between bones will help you.
Bones animation There is a special way to name object of the scene for Bones Pro. If you don't consider this it won't work. A lot of people are dispointed by this but in fact it's simple.
Part of the animation The name of the shape shouldn't have more than three letters. ex: Obj So each bones should be named Obj_bone01, Obj_bone02, ... Assign bone_axp to the Obj, and in keyframer call bone.kxp. The interface is intuitive and you can see the result in "real time".

Textures to The Max
Renaud DELCUZE ©Alliance Production 1999       Rhino/Max 3D House