3ds Max Rigging & Animation Tutorials
3ds Max Rigging and Animation Tutorials
This page is exclusively intended for 3ds Max rigging and animation tutorials. For other free and professional tutorials, please check the menu at left.
Bones / Spider Walk Video Tutorial
This video tutorial demonstrates the basics of how to create bones, inverse kinematic links, and how to animate those links - also goes over how to create a basic organic model, and how to "Skin" the model so that mesh vertices can recognize bones. Click here to see the HTML tutorial. Scroll down further to see tutorials for a spider rig with more legs.
Car Animation Video and HTML Tutorial
Video and HTML tutorial. Demonstrates how to build the hierarchy for a car using wheels, a chassis, a body, how to get the wheels to turn with an equation, how to make the car follow a spline path, and how to make the car exhibit body lean while cornering.Click here for the HTML tutorial.
Book CD Excerpts Part 1
Though this video is really more about the Torque game engine, and consists of a series of CD excerpts from the Creating Game Art for 3D Engines book CD, we include it here because it has some animation information that may be useful to you.
Book CD Excerpts Part 2
Though this video is really more about the Torque game engine, and consists of a series of CD excerpts from the Creating Game Art for 3D Engines book CD, we include it here because it has some rigging and animation information that may be useful to you.
Bones Book Video Tutorial
This video tutorial covers how to create bones and skin them to a book model so that you can animate a book opening or pages turning.
Chaos Truck Animation Video Tutorial
This video tutorial takes you through the process of keyframing a vehicle as it bumps into an object, and adjusting those keyframes for a realistic impact on the object and the vehicle.
Bones + Skin Serenity Lander Video Tutorial
This video tutorial walks you though setting up meshes and bones linkages to get the same effect as seen when the Serenity lander lands and the biomechanical legs flex to absorb the shock. Includes skin modifer discussion as keyframing.
Serenity Struts Video Tutorial # 2
This is the second video that pretty much takes off where the first video ended. In this one we demonstrate a bit of how to keep bones from twisting when you don't want them to, and how to set up controllers.
Chaos Truck Animation Video Tutorial # 2
Demonstrates creating a Link Constraint to a box so it is linked to the truck body, and then to the ground, so it follows the truck until if falls off and bounces on the ground, and how to make a camera follow a moving vehicle by copying and modifying a path.
Chaos Truck Animation Video Tutorial # 3
This segment of Chaos Truck describes how to build the truck tailgate, link it to the truck so it moves with the truck, and how to adjust the pivot of the tailgate so it rotates properly when you keyframe it flying open later in the animation.
Fix the Rig Video Tutorial # 1
Demonstrates how to directly assign vertices to bones, bypassing the envelop settings. Sometimes envelopes are too unwieldy and the direct approach, setting weights for each set of selected verts, works better. This tutorial is continued in Fix the Rig #2.
Fix the Rig Video Tutorial # 2
This video tutorial goes a little further, working with the rig in it's animated state to reassign weights to key sets of vertices. This is a continuation of Fix the Rig #1.
Spider Rigging Bonus Tut Excerpt #1
This tutorial goes into the process of rigging a Spider using 3ds Max. This is excerpt #1 of a longer bonus tutorial.Click here to read about the bonus tutorial.
Spider Rigging Bonus Tut Excerpt #2
This tutorial picks up where excerpt #1 left off. Both of these excerpts are taken from a 90-minute hi-res bonus tutorial. Click here to read about the bonus tutorial.