The 3dsmax Cat rig and What type of #rig is best suited for Animations. Rigging an essential part of animations.

Hello HypefroActive fans and welcome to another edition of Hyperactive anime blogging. In this post i'll be talking about rigging. So what is Rigging? Rigging in Animation is the systematic setup or creation of objects that could come in the form of helpers, bones, shapes or almost about anything that would help drive or aid the movement of a geometrical mesh built , modelled or sculpted to perform certain functions. The model is that which we build such as your dog, a human, a car or trees etc. The rig is what alot of people in animation refer to as bones. At least that's what it's called in 3dsmax. In my earlier times, i once learnt how to use the #biped. Which i found to be amusing at the time because of  its many layers and functions. You could swap between poses and load poses however you want, whenever you want. But the biped has something i hate alot, which is it's own studio. If you are using the biped, you have to stay in the character studio and that means you key everything inside the character studio. I particularly hate keying the foot separately with a special kind of key designed for the foot, and if you dont understand this then you'll have the legs sinking into the ground almost all the time especially when you want them planted on the ground.

I delved into custom bones next and as a matter of fact the difference was clear at first use. The custom bones gave my ever relenting spirits the hope that i needed. The assurance that i could actually pull this off. Though my animations at the time where still very much rigid, but compared to the biped, the biped was like looking at me sternly and i could feel it was trying to say something like "what? you want a piece of me?". Creepy right? Yeah it was that bad, i almost gave up hope learning animations with the biped.

About a year later after i've learnt a bit about rigging with custom bones and have been animating petty stuffs, i began exploring CAT rig and its character studio. The CAT is just what i needed to assure myself that i could animate. It was just in between the custom bones and the biped and yielded results fast. I didn't have to worry about any planting of any foot and could change from inverse kinematics to forward kinamatics in no time or any time i deemed feat. Though it didn't come that fast learning it but if i had given the same time i gave to the biped to the CAT, i'ld probably have gone far with CAT. Everything about the CAT is customizable and like the biped or custom bones, you could load animations from mocap into it but i really have not tried anything mocap before. And i don't advice people using mocap when they are still young learning animations because it would make you lazy. You become a better animator figuring out how things work, what works and what doesn't and how to go about it all.

The CAT can easily be set setup and skinned to drive a mesh. There are also a lot of character motion presets that are available to you and can do a lot more than you think it ordinarily can. It's usage to me is almost limitless and will depend on how much you are good with it. So, if You want to begin chacter animation and are handicapped as in setting up a reel, you could go ahead with the CAT. The real power after it's set up again like the biped's character studio is its own studio where you have the layers and other stuffs. Understand the layer panel and you'll be able to use the CAT rig and make it work for you.

In conclusion, I've heard people beg some other people for rigs and all with the believe that this rig is special and no other rig can achieve what this rig can. This assumption is wrong and derailing. A basic rig can come close to achieving what a special rig can. The difference in most cases is the animator and maybe time and scope of the project. In the current Animation i'm doing, The CAT plays a prominent role in that it's my rig of choice for this anime and it's what is driving this Character mesh as seen in the pictures above. Simple rig with a little over simple animation and that's the world cup anime for you. So if you are yet to explore the 3dsmax CAT, now is the time. Especially for those of us with large scenes where you have to deal with crowd plus there there are alot of very helpful online tutotials and videos on it. Very very accurate ones too.