Basically Bones     by Chris Tyler     of "Grab my Graphics"  

Starfish1
Begin with a model. If the model has limbs like this starfish, they need to be attached. The model you want to bone needs to be one complete mesh. (you can have glued parts) This will take a little getting used to for those of us who have jointed everything, but the results of bones and skinning is what we were waiting for. You will be able to easily apply the techniques from this lowly starfish of only ten bones and five joints to the more complicated but rewarding dino or human of 41 bones or more!
You can begin one of two ways; with the "Add New Bone" tool;  which just gives you one single bone, by itself, which you must add joints to using the "Add Custom Joints" tool OR the way I will use here, which is to select the "Build Skeleton" tool. .When you do that, right click on the tool as well to bring up these two boxes:  

    


First of all you want to select the type of joint you want to use for each of your bones and limbs. In the properties box (above) select your choice in the "link with" button. The joints work like IK in the earlier versions of TrueSpace so if you are unsure of this, check the manuals. Here, I want the little dude to be very flexable, so he gets the multi-rotational 2D spherical joint. Also in the properties panel, select which view you want the bones to appear as, vertical or leave it unchecked for horizontal. then just click on the screen to get a bone and joint set.
Note: when I was trying to figure this all out, this part almost drove me crazy, being new to these concepts myself, so here's a few little brain savers that I hope also will be time savers for you (wish I had known them ;) In the "Build Skeleton" Box (above) there are three buttons on the left, (from top to bottom) the "Move Joint", "Add Joint" and "Delete Joint". Watch these little guys. The "add joint" button loves to come on when you don't want it to. Here's what I do. I add my first bone section. then I make sure I turn off the "Add Joint" button. Now only "Move Joint" is on, and I can manipulate my section where I want it, resize it,whatever. ( You may need to double click on the "Move Joint" button to reactivate it.)

© Copyright 1998, Chris Tyler

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