While we are here we might as well set up the materials properly in order to export properly. This is IMPORTANT! If you do not set up the material properly you will not be able to apply the materials properly in Unreal Editor.

Press M to pull up the material editor, you may have already set this up already but I'll go over it again nevertheless. If you attached your three objects and kept the materials as is, your material shouldd already be applied to have 3 materials as sub-objects. This is what you need.

If you do not, make a new texture and set the Material type to Multi/Sub-Object. Set the max number of materials to the total materials you have and apply it to your character. I generally name the sub objects SKIN00, SKIN01 and SKIN02...although I don't know how important this is. You can reapply textures in the editor if they do not sort out exactly. The main thing to note is that you have a material applied to your one object with the same amount of materials needed applied to it.

OK, so we have the model standing in the middle of MAX space, with the texture applied to it. We now have to create a rig and align it to our body. I will also be adding bones in order to add emitters, as well as extra animation.

3DStudio MAX generally comes with Character Studio (which will be integral to MAX 7 once out), which comes with an amazingly useful tool called Biped. Biped is a rig that basically uses the exact same naming xconventions as UT2004 does...apart from the Gun bone. For the purposes of this exercise I am using this, but I hope to draw up the rig and it's naming conventions for those wanting to do their own at a later point hopefully.

At worst you can load up Unreal Editor...and look into the bone names there.

For Biped however, click on the Systems button ( ) in the MAX Create tab and then the Biped button in the panel. Click / drag up from the root XYZ point in space until the pelvic region is roughly where it should be. We can tweak later of course, but the better you line it up now the better.

Next we need to tweak the character to suit the pose we have designated in our model.

Firstly we need to use the Figure mode button ( ) in the Motion Tab ( ) of 3D Studio in order to do so. Figure mode is the equivalent of a base pose that you can always return to if tweaking is needed. Even after you have started animating.

To select this, the biped must be selected. Once done you can use the rotate, scale and move tools in order to move your bones around as needed.

You can also tweak the rig to have more bone elements. eg. toe joints, finger joints, spine segments etc...although I recommend you get this as close to correct as you can from the onset. These can be changed in the Structure Rollout at the base of the Biped Panel.

You don't necessarily need to make a human character, character studio is more restricted to Bipedal characters...however if you are making your own custom rig from scratch you can basically do whatever you like. However there may be issues in regards to conforming to the standard UT2004 regulation code in some instances...so you are on your own outside of what I place in these tutorials.

Either way, firstly I'm going to focus on the legs. You can use the Symmetrical button ( ) in the Track Selection panel in the biped section in order to duplicate your actions from one side to the other of your biped. Handy for things like arms and legs.

By rotating them to follow the lines along the XY axis, and scale them to compensate in both length and depth. Then changing views in order to make it thicker along the Z axis I get the following results. The closer you get the bone mass to equal the model mass the better, as there will be less playing around later on when you get to vertex assignment, at least if you use the envelope method. I tend to assign them all individually).

Take note of where the joints rotate such as the knee, ankle and toe sections. Each creation is different depending on how you have laid out your polys etc. So think about how your model is to function and deform when animating. Planning ahead will asave you a lot of time in the end...and over time, the amount you have to plan ahgead is reduced simply due to experience.

Next is the torso and arms. My experience so far has led to good results, but not great. But I'll see if I can get it right this time :)

So far I have used a spine count of 3. I will do so again.

The best way fror me to show you what to do is to show you what to do...so look at the image and look into the joints and where I have scaled/rotated my biped to suit the model. Take note of the shoulder joints going past the torso (I ALWAYS made that mistake previously) and how they are actually at the very top of the arm rather than in the base of the joint itself.

I have also made the lowest part of the spine really small, I have found that depending on your Unreal Editor setup...there is one bone, generally THE ROOT BONE MUST NOT MOVE OR ROTATE IN ORDER FOR BLENDING ANIMATIONS TO WORK PROPERLY. I have made it so it was the pelvic bone, which is what you want, but my last attempt didn't work as I thought it might...so either UT2004 changed the setup...or I just screwed up :) Happens to the best of us :) But we'll see how we go, and I'll come back to this and amend if need be...fingers crossed ;)

A little work around I worked out for this 'non-moving' bone is to apply the vertices of the base (pelvic region) to the lowest spine bone rather than the root bone...although you can only get small movement (without doing very odd distortion in some cases) it DOES allow you that little bit more freedom to move your character. I will be attempting to get this working as I did the first time. As that little amount of movement is worth the trouble that may arise.

When it comes down to it each joint is a duplication of what is happening in your own body...although substantially simplified of course. Cross that with a small amount of hinge/joint and physics and you'll get a good idea as to what is expected to create a good rig. As I go along with the vertex assignment, I still play with the rig in order to make sure I have the optimal setup for all situations. In particular, flexing of joints to the extremities of movement.

Next is the custom bones. There is two ways to do this. Either by using MAX generic bones...or another method which is good for spawn points (emitters etc.) I will be using both for this exercise as I have need of both.

Firstly I will make the two emitters for the smoke/steam at the top of the exhaust pipes. Basically this is making two dummy objects (found in the Helpers setion of the Create Tab) at the designated spots and linking them to the main skeleton using the Select and Link button ( ) found at the top right of the MAX window by pressing the button, and click/dragging from the dummy to the top spine bone. This makes the dummy object a child of the spine. So wherever you move the spine, the dummy will follow.

I will name the two new Dummy objects Smokerite and Smokeleft.

Next I am going to make a small joint to make the shoulder pad available to be rotated if need be.

Back in the Systems section of the Create Tab choose Bones. I then click once at the hinge joint and move to create a new bone out towards the shoulder on one viewport so that the bone tapers towards the second point you make. Once again, these bones use a child/parent hierarchy, so direction is important.

As I made actual pivot point representations on my shoulder area, I used the centre of them as a basis to create the starting point.

Once done, use the Select and Link tool to link the root bone (not the end one) to the top spine link.

Next we will make the trench coat base. This will consist of a number of linked hierarchies that go down the cloak that we can move as we see fit later on...deforming the cloak as it goes along.

As the mesh only deforms along the mesh lines, we will only make sure to rig along those lines. But to make it reasonable to use (and not hellish) I'm going to make 6 total hiearchies...3 for each side of the cloak. Overkill you may say, but hell. If I'm going to spend THIS long on it, I might as well go all the way!

Once I make one set I can then shift clone it and then link each of the chains to the lowest spine link. You may want to link it to the pelvis bone, but I'm going for that animatable waist thing remember.

Living on the edge man!!!

I could cover some stuff about IK solvers and all crazy fandangle animation tricks...but I haven't really gone that deep into animation nor do you really need it for the base animations. If you want to learn them, the help file in MAX covers them pretty well, just look under IK Solvers and Bones...and you can probably piece it together easy enough. Basically it allows you to do some pretty nifty things with bones :)

Last but not least is the facial bones in order to animate some expression. I haven't done the most complex face model, so we can only get away with simple expression...but we can do a lot with that however, so we shall get the basic elements we need in there for what we need.

For the purposes of creating the bones I hid most of my mesh to leave just the head. I then went to the side view to create something like the following rig. I doubled up a couple of the bones in the mouth so I can simple select them and rotate...rather than coming back to the side view and adding more. So far, I have only used the side view, next up I move to the front.

I also added some for eyelids, noting that a good rotation point is as I have made it, otherwise they won't close well at all.

Sometimes I used the side view to select the bone I want and then move to the front to rotate it. I also added a few bones to add some brow expression. One for each eyebrow, and one for the top of the nose.

I then linked each bone to the head bone, not the neck bone. As that would be a little awkward when you think about it :) It may seem obvious, but I forgot therefore so can you. If anything, just to make me not feel so foolish :)

Look over your rig and mesh...this is the final step before you start applying the information together to make an animatable UT2004 character. So if possible make sure it's all up to speed. It starts getting more and more difficult to make basic amendments to your model from here on in, so make sure it's as tight as possible before you continue on.

That done we are ready to roll and get into the creation of a living, breathing ME!! Well, a walking, running, badly lip-synching one anyway :)