Endless problems with Bones, working with

Okay.

-Can bones be at any angle and orientation your model?

-I created two sets of chain bones. Because I can't 'tag' to one end of a bone when making new ones, they are seperate (Upper body bones vs Lower body bones). How can I assoviate the two major bones together?

-How come when I align a PIVOT point of a bone to world coord, it moves the bone too?

-My bones for the arms are STRAIGHT across in the model. I added a TCB rotation key. But when I enter a value for 1 in the correct axis orientation, it rotates on a COMPOUND angle. I had to tweak an X and Y value to get it to rotate ALMOST straight. I looked at the pivot point orientations and my vector angle is correct. Can someone explain why I have to use two angles to get it goin straight?

-When I grab and move any of the arm bones, it rotates and stays connected perfectly. Very good. But when I do a TCB position modification, the bone DETACHES and moves by itself! Why doesn't the other bones move with it, like when I move it by hand?

-Is there a shortcut for coding a WALK animation? All these bones...angles...movements... oh man

( I know I have a lot of questions, but I'm new and in time they will wane, right? :))

1- yes they can but i don't remenber how to align then.
2-using the link button at top of max (it is a button with 2 boxes linked by the chain)
try adding a central bone between those 2 mayor bones and link this last 2 to the center 1.
3-you need to be sure that in hiriarchy you setted "Affect Pivot Only"
4- this is more complicated if you use bones, try linking each bone to a helper and the helpers together; this should help you make the animation easier.
5-hmm never thought tcb made that, anyway as i said before use helpers, they should fix that problem.
6-hmm there is not a shortcut all what i can tell you is that looping anims like walk should start and finish the same way.

I cannot really understand your problem really, as I havent encountered that yet with normal box bones. You will stumble on those if you use IK chain etc (like the bones are linked together without the link button as bliky said it)

about your last question, its possible (it isnt that hard man just rotate the legs step by step with rotator gizmo with set keys) with the easy way, but requires mostly Ik chain crap (I recall, correct me if Im wrong, which is most likely in this mater). Character studio has presetted walk anims which you can adjust etc. IMO you should just stick to the easy way with rotating the bones with the gizmo in persepctive mode

Okay new big problem.

I made the Stand - 1 animation. From 0 to 6000.

Then for the BONES THAT MOVE I set keys at 0, and keys at 6000. Both keys are with the bones at HOME position.

Then I tweaked them around in the middle areas, the way i want him to move.

GREAT! Thanks for telling me I can just rotate them with the cursor. Man, so much easier.

Now, I add a new key 7000-10000.

No matter what I do, moving the bones during 7000-10000 slightly shifts them all in the FIRST animation. Like points on a spline effect its curvature, this effects the stroke of my previous anim.

So I tried creating keys for them all again at 7000, in HOME position.

Didn't help. Still subtle shifts all OVER the place.

SUMARY: Why is my second animations even effecting the first? Especially since in between animations, the bones have keys at home position?

(Snifff... walk little dude....walk!)

PETTY Q'S
-How long are typical walk, attack, spell & death animations? (frames or seconds)
-Some animations loop, some don't. Can I control that?
-Can I add non standard animations, like 'Off' and 'Fly'? Can you play them with triggers or will WC3 ignore them?
-Should 'Walk' animation start mid stroke, and end mid stroke? or start at home position? How many steps should a 'Walk' animation take? One full step cycle? or two?

hmm remenber that your anim needs to start with 1 key and finish with another, else it willbe modified by other 1s. thats all what i can say now, but well i'm tired and i need to sleep.

as far as i know theres 960 frames per second in wc3......so set your time configuration to that for best results. heres one of my models with some animations and how you can add in nonlooping factors. just do them by hand after youve exported your mdl file. oh yah and stand animations and so forth are as long as you want them to be theres not typical time amount....if you want the walk to last one second make your start time 0 and end time 960 and adjust accordingly for what all you want to go on in the animation.

that pic is screwed up when you view it online just save it and view it in your paint or photo editing program

hmm ya, but is better that you use 30 frames per second in gmax/max, after all they are recalculated later.

hmmm....didnt know that blink....anyway could you plz help me out with my attachment point question?? i didnt meen to get you into trouble with republicola by reviving your thread. My attachment points always come out so bugged and either one works and the others dont. I put up a new post in modelling section on it.