The bonebender pluggin is available from AFX (www.afx.com) and consists of the links and behaviors for placing a skeleton in a mesh object. It is important to note, you MUST convert all objects to Meshes before you begin. BoneBender, like all other skeletal animation systems, requires you to work from polygons.

So, without further interuption, here goes:
 

Step 1:

Drop a free form onto the main view and name it Legs & Hips.

Switch to the drawing plane, turn off previews, and draw a 4îx4î circle in the center (Use the Center option under Sections if need be)

Swtich to the top view and set the extrusion method to pipeline

Add some points to shape it so that it has legs and hips.

Set the envelope type to Symetrical

Adjust the extrusion so that it resembles something like imge 6

Change the surface fidelity all the way up (400%)

Click on done and then center the freeform in the main view, even the hotpoint.

Now, you will need to jump into the Mesh Modeller and begin manipulating the model as a set of polygons.

While the entire object is still highlighted, weld the parts together.

Subdivide the triangles twice and you should end up with some 3776 polygons.

Rotate the mesh so that the legs are pointing up into the air.

Switch to the bottom view and select the very center vertex.

It might be easier to set up the grid in the mesh modeller. I usually set the snaps on at .25î with a line drawn every 4 points, and 80 total squares.

Using the magnetism tool set for bumpy and a radius of 3, move that center point up .5î.

Center the mesh again. It will come in handy later on if you set the size to even values. Just a suggestion.

STEP 3:
Now you will want to center it, scale it 200% and mirror it so that the legs are facing down once again. This gives us our Z axis flipped.

STEP 4:
Now comes the fun part. We need to add bones to our mesh. The way will approach this is the same as how all bipeds are built. 5 Bones will be used, one for the hips, one for each femour, and one for each ankle.

As an additional visual aid, color your bones differently according to where they are or what they will do.

STEP 5:
Now we start by adding a bone for the waist and work our way down, each time mirroring the bone so that the Z axis is facing down.

Make sure to have your bones overlap. If there is not skin to overlap your bones, walking would cause your insides to leak out. No a pleasant thing to watch.

STEP 6:
Now would be a really good time to save your project.

All of the bones are applied and links assigned at time=0sec. This is your setup state. You don't have to start your animation here, just that this is where everything must be put into place.

STEP 7:
Now, as far as getting our lower body to start walking, we need to set some limits rotation in our links. Here is a table to use as a template for setting rotation schedules.
 
 

[The reason to rotate the waist is so that we get the effect of a persons hips shifting]

STEP 8:
Now, you will also need to move your "Lower Body" section from left to right. To do this, you will need to key the specific frames that have to do with "foot" placement.

To help out with this, place a "maker" of some type that will easily identify where the feet are supposed to be placed. Use your imagination. A walk will have short distances between foot steps. Running will need longer paces. If you do a quick preview, you should not see the infamous "skating feet" syndrome. At current time, BoneBender and Raydream Studio do not have any method of "locking" feet in place.

By adjusting the table up above, you should be able to set what when something will happen. With little modification, climbing up stairs, skipping, skiing, bicycling,...etc is easily produced.

STEP 9:
So, now that we have our first bonebender model setup, lets render it and see what it looks like. Without too much trouble, you should have something that lookes like this.

Go ahead and experiment. Don't feel that what I have shown you is the only way to do it or the best you can expect. Remmember, it took MANY animators, programmers, and technical directors and several years to make "Toy Story", so try and have fun. As an additional resource, here is my original file with all the links and bones already setup for you to play with. (NOTE: You MUST have the AFX BoneBender pluggin for this to load)

POLYGON COUNT
I think I should probably say a few words about polygon/tirangle count. As of version 5, Raydream Studio handles things more like polygons than splines. Obviously, since wireframe previews show not the crossections, but the polygon representations of them.

When dealing with polygon based objects, it is important to remember, keep the number of triangles as low as possible. Some basic guidlines would be...
 

• Use no more than 512 triangles for Spheres or cylinders, UNLESS they will be taking up 60% of the image at resolutions greater than 640x480. Cubes and rectilinear objects should be kept under 256 verticies as well. Think frugal.
• Unless you are doing a closeup of the hands or feet, keep the polygon count on those types of items low (less than 2048).
• Most of the models imported from Poser2 will have a very sophisicated polygon mesh that is excellent for renderings, but hard to work with for preview. The Nude Detailed Female is over 16,000 triangles.( This model alone would cost several hundred dollars from Viewpoint Datalabs )
• Areas where there is bending should have as much as 2 or three times the "normal" polygon count as before.
• To help rendering times, plan out your scene so that if you do have to have objects with rather high polygon counts, Only the areas of interest need be rendered. A good example is output from LPARSER.

Through testing, I have found that a single 1024 triangle based object with just default mapping and lighting requires almost 1 MB of memmory to handle. With over 20,000 triangles in some of the models from data sets, it is no wonder that you are better off just duplicating something, instead of trying to bring in many copies of it.

-Dwight Evers
dmevers@bitstream.net