Previewing Biped Motion

There are two types of animation playback available within character studio: the 3ds Max Play Animation button and the Biped Playback button.

• You can use (Play Animation) in the viewport playback controls to play biped animation, the same as you can any other 3ds Max animation.
• Use (Biped Playback) on the Biped rollout to play back the animation with the biped displayed as a stick figure, while hiding everything else in the scene.

Note: It is possible to turn on both buttons at once. This is not recommended. Depending on your system configuration, turning on Play Animation and Biped Playback at the same time can considerably slow down performance.

Biped Playback

Biped playback previews the motion of all existing, visible bipeds. If you hide a part or all of biped, the hidden biped or biped part does not appear in the Biped playback. Objects in the animation that are not bipeds do not appear in Biped playback. If the 3ds Max home grid is visible, a grid appears at Z=0 in the Biped playback viewport.

While Biped controls are visible in the Motion panel, you can also press V to start or stop Biped Playback. For this keyboard shortcut to work, the Keyboard Shortcut Override Toggle must be turned on.

Biped always previews the existing animation range. Biped Playback responds to the parameters in the 3ds Max Time Configuration dialog. If Real Time playback is chosen in this dialog, Biped plays back at the current frame rate, sometimes skipping frames if necessary. If Real Time is turned off, Biped plays back as fast as it can, depending on the capacity of the graphics card installed on your system.

Note: Hardware acceleration has no effect on Biped playback. If you are using a hardware-accelerated display card, you might find 3ds Max playback to be faster under certain circumstances.

Procedures

To preview biped motion using the Biped playback stick figure:

1. Activate the viewport with the view you want to see.
2. Hide or show the bipeds you want to appear in the playback.

3. Select one of the visible bipeds, and go to the Motion panel.
4. On the Biped rollout, click (Biped Playback).

   Stick-figure biped animation plays back in the active viewport. Animation plays back for all visible bipeds.

To preview biped motion using the full biped model, do one of the following:

• Drag the time slider.
• Click (Play Animation).

Biped animation plays back in the active viewport.

Depending on your system, biped animation might not play back in real time using 3ds Max viewport playback.

Warning: You might miss critical frames of your animation if Real Time is selected in the Time Configuration dialog.