Layers, Layers everywhere.. >:(

Well I now have found three types of animation layers, but as far as I can tell, none of them let me add a hand-holding animation on top of a biped footstep animation.

There is a general animation layer under the main menu->animation menu, that 3ds max describes as being better than the biped layer system, but as far as I can tell it doesnt work with bipeds. It works with a box nicely..

There is the Motion Mixer layers. I havent discovered any way to edit the animation of layers inside Motion Mixer. You seem to just be adding and blending them.

Finally there is the Biped layers. This is very nice for adding a bit of animation on top of a biped animation, but as far as I can tell it does not let you IK constraints as you can in the base layer.

Biped Footsteps

Spent ages trying to get one simple thing to work: inserting a footstep between two other ones!

Problem was this: take a normal biped walk and delete one footstep. Deactivate and reactivate the footsteps and you get a nice hop happening.. but what if you want to put the footstep back?

I couldnt get the "Changing footsteps using IK Keys" tut to work. Also splicing just did weirdness. Trying to use "Create footstep (at current frame)" option kept complaining about temporal overlap.

Finally figured out that this temporal overlap can be solved by making more room for the foostep in the dope sheet view. For some reason it insists on adding the wrong foot first so I had to create two and then delete the unwanted one.

Not pretty, but atleast if our character is walking to the gallows the decision to add a happy hop is a reversable one.

Helm model for jousting game

Pete's first post

Hullo! Just posting as a test really. Hopefully I'll have something more interesting to submit in a bit