In this tutorial we will learn how to take a character mesh from rigging to animation using the Character Animation Toolkit (CAT) in 3ds Max. We are going to take a character mesh all the way through animation in 3ds Max. Throughout the tutorial, we will discuss workflow for an animation pipeline. We will start with rigging with 3ds Max's CAT system and learn some tips and tricks for skinning along the way. We will then talk about planning a shot and setting up a basic cameras. Finally, we take all of our assets and create a two shot animation utilizing the rig we created.

Presented by Chris Harvey, of Frantic Films, this session focuses on creating a rig for a vehicle, illustrating the flexibility of 3ds max for all types of rigging. Vehicle specific topics such as suspension, automatic wheel rotation, steering, automatic interaction of mechanical parts, automatic/hand-adjustable secondary motion, are covered, to name a few. The vehicle rigs include uses of scripted controllers, expressions, custom attributes, scripted plug-ins, modeling for rigging, the use of intelligent control objects, and wiring. To cap it off, the session would not be complete without demonstrating the ease and speed with which the vehicles can be animated.

RiggingPRO is the most advanced rigging training for 3DS MAX available anywhere. This training DVD covers FK IK blending, arm leg and spine stretching, automatic limb twisting, advanced foot roll, banking and much more.

RiggingPRO will start off from scratch with a humanoid model (supplied with the DVD) and ends up with a film-production-level rig ready to animate. All the steps are included. Source files included. No scripts or plugins required.

During these videos we take a look at modeling and rigging of a cartoon shark with principles that can be applied to other marine creatures. This training series looks at the modeling and rigging considerations of a cartoon shark in 3ds Max. We look at creating a basic FK skeleton for our shark model and the skinning consideration we need to think about to create some great deformations. We then expand upon our basic FK rig by using Max's built-in modifiers to create an automated swim cycle, finally finishing the course with a quick look at a controller system and corrective shapes.