2009

microstructure of bipedal motion. Therefore, several features in Crowd are
focused on the special needs of bipeds.
In order to generate the required level of nuance, animated motion clips form
the basis for the repertoire of biped movements. In other words, during a
Biped/Crowd simulation, the delegates have no effect over the motion of the
Biped, they only set goals to be achieved using clips available in the Motion
Flow graph. With this approach, known as motion synthesis, the animator can
precisely control details in the motion either by using hand animation or
employing motion capture to produce a set of clips that describe how a member
in the crowd behaves.
For example, if you wanted to animate a crowd of marathon runners making
their way through the streets of a city, you would need motion clips for various
kinds of walking, running, jogging, resting, drinking water, cheering, etc. In
effect, each of the motions you might expect to see in a marathon race could
be represented as a clip. But motion must be more than a fragmented collection
of clips. You must also consider how motions might be sequenced. Which
motion transitions are possible from a given motion clip?
To best understand this process, study this topic and follow the procedure
Using bipeds in a crowd simulation on page 4799.
Motion Flow Network and Possible Scripts
Biped's
Motion Flow on page 4545 functionality provides the mechanism for
defining how separate motions fit together into a fluid animation. In effect,
the motion flow network describes which motions can follow from other
motions. Once the motion flow network is defined, a broad set of animated
actions is possible by following different paths through the network. In Biped,
a path through the network is called a motion flow script.
For example, shown below is a motion flow network used in the sample file
walkers.max. You can find this file in the cstudio\tutorials\biped_crowds folder
in your 3ds Max path. This folder also contains the BIP files used in the motion
flow network. You can access these files only if you have installed tutorials
on your hard disk. For information on installing tutorials, see the Installation
Guide.
4794 | Chapter 17 character studio