While character studio was initially designed as an specialized program for animating two-legged, or bipedal characters, it works quite well for creatures that walk on four or more legs.
Here are some general rules to follow when animating characters that don't walk upright on two legs:
- Use Freeform animation, not Footstep animation, if your character walks on four legs all the time.
- Pose the biped to match the mesh in Figure mode, scaling and rotating body parts so the spine is horizontal, and the arms stretch to reach the ground.
- If appropriate for your mesh, set Leg Links to 4 and rotate the legs so the knees point backwards. You can set this value at creation time in the Create Biped rollout on the Create panel, or later using the Structure rollout on the Motion panel.
- Animate pivot points with planted keys to mimic the rolling of the feet from heel to toe. Treat the hands the same as the feet. Set planted keys on the hands and feet, then move the center of mass object to bend the knees and elbows. See Key Info Rollout for more information on the three set key buttons.
The ForeFeet option lets you set planted keys for fingers in the same way you do for toes. This option is located on the Structure rollout.
- You can save 3ds Max objects as part of the BIP file. If you need additional legs (for a centipede) or extra arms or wings you can use standard bone objects with IK chains, and save all of it with the BIP file.
- The Balance Factor in the Key Info rollout Body group, is designed to synchronize upper body and lower body movement. Set Balance Factor to 0 if you find the movement of spine links is affecting the biped's hip movements in an undesirable way.