Make Biped or Biped Dog Leg (Rig)

Creates a rig based on the selected biped or biped dog leg guide.

To display: Select a biped guide and choose either Create Character Rig from Biped Guide or Create Character Rig from Biped Dog Leg Guide from the Animate toolbar.

For more information on using the biped rig, see Creating Biped Rigs [Character Animation].

NoteMany of the rig controls use scripted operators to control their movement. As a result, you should not use the Remove Animation

from All Parameters, Any Animation Type or any of the Remove Animation

from Transforms commands from the Animation panel when deleting animation from the controls because these commands also remove the scripted operators on the controls' parameters.

A	Head (null): controls rotation and translation of head. See Head for more information.
B	Ears: curves are chains driven by springs. Cubes control ears' rotation. See Spring Operator Property Editor for more information.
C	Chest: controls rotation and translation of spine.
D	Upper body (outer square): controls rotation and translation of upper body.
E	Foot (outer cube): controls rotation and translation of foot.
F	Foot roll (inner cube): controls rotation angle for step and heel roll. See Biped Controls for more information.
G	Toe (cube at tip): controls offset from the foot in rotation.
H	Hips (inner square): controls rotation and translation of hips.
I	Leg up-vectors (pyramids): control resolution plane of legs for IK.
J	Hand Grab (small cube): controls rotation of fingers and thumb for making fists and claws. See Animating the Fingers and Hands [Character Animation] for more information.
K	Hand (cube): controls rotation and translation of hand.
L	Arm up-vectors (pyramids): control resolution plane of arms for IK.

Chest

These options let you select the way you want the torso, spine, and control icons to be set up.

Torso

All spine types are compatible in all combinations of rigs and with the shadow rigs.

Quaternion spine	Creates a spine that bi-directionally distributes the roll from the chest down and the hip up. This is the same spine that is created when you choose CreateSkeletonSpine.
Skeleton spine	Creates a spine that is a simple chain that doesn't allow for independent hip movement as does the quaternion spine.
World Aligned Quaternion Spine	Creates a quaternion spine that is aligned as closely as possible to the global up-axis, which is Y.
Near-Axis Aligned Quaternion Spine	Creates a quaternion spine that is aligned as closely as possible to the biped guide's up-axis, which can be Y or Z. This lets you create characters that are hunched over or are more animal-like in posture.

Spine

If you select any of the Quaternion spine options, you can set the type of spine.

Fixed length	Creates a quaternion spine that you can extend only using the Scale slider in the Biped Controls.
Stretches to meet chest icon	Makes the quaternion spine extend to reach the chest icon.
Divisions	Number of vertebrae that make up the spine. More vertebrae means more flexibility in the spine.

Control Icons

Type	Select to make Square control icons for the Chest or Cube control icons for the Upper Body.

Belly

These options let you create a belly area control to animate a large tummy or paunch. You can then control how the weight of the belly is distributed around the body.

Create Belly Setup

No belly

No belly control is created.

Make belly

Creates a box belly control that extends in front of the hips. The curves that connect the box to the hips are chains driven by springs. They have a layer of secondary animation that dynamically reacts to the movement of the rig. You can also key the rotation of the box to directly animate the belly.

To open a control slider set for modifying the belly's spring, see Spring Operators for Tail, Ear, and Belly Rig Controls [ Character Animation ].

Belly Slide

No belly sliding	No belly sliding will occur.
Sides of belly slide to even bounce falloff	Creates a null on either side of the hips to help distribute the weight of the belly (envelope) around the body so that it's not just like a big lump in front of the body. These nulls help even out the belly bounce's falloff.
Perc	If you select Sides of belly slide to create the nulls, you can set the percentage of weight that is distributed to the nulls on either side of the hips (the slide falloff). The higher the percentage, the more weight is spread to these nulls.

Head

These options let you set up the head, neck, and ears.

Head

Skeleton head	Creates a simple chain for the head that doesn't allow for independent neck movement as does the quaternion spine. The chain divisions in the neck are determined by the placement and duplication of the guide's control cubes.
Quaternion spine head	Creates a smaller version of the quaternion spine that bi-directionally distributes the roll from the head down and the shoulders up. This is the same spine that is created when you choose CreateSkeletonSpine, just on a smaller scale.

Head Spine (neck)

If you select Quaternion spine head, you can set the type of neck: either fixed length or stretchy.

Fixed length	Creates a quaternion neck that you can extend only using the Scale slider in the Biped Controls.
Head spine stretches	Makes the quaternion neck reach up to the head control icon.
Divisions	Number of vertebrae in the neck. More vertebrae means more flexibility.

Ears

Active

Creates ear controls, which are useful for making humanoid creatures. The curves of the ear controls are chains driven by springs. This gives you a layer of secondary animation that dynamically reacts to the movement of the rig. You can also key the rotation of the cubes on the curves to directly animate the ears.

To open a control slider set for modifying the ears' springs, see Spring Operators for Tail, Ear, and Belly Rig Controls [ Character Animation ].

Limbs

These options let you select the way you want to create the arms and fingers to reflect the way you want to animate them.

Arm Rotation - Order

The Arm Rotation options let you choose between two different rotation orders.

YZX

Creates the arms with the rotation order of YZX, which often helps reduce the occurrence of gimbal lock. This means that the Y rotation becomes the primary up-and-down motion of the arm and is evaluated first, then Z, then X (roll).

See Changing the Bones' Order of Rotation [ Character Animation ] for more information.

XYZ

Creates arms with the rotation order of XYZ, which is the default order in Softimage.

Symmetrical Manipulation of Arms

The Symmetrical Manipulation of Arms options determine if the arm rotation values will mirror exactly:

Symmetrical	The arms are manipulated symmetrically. For example, if you select both forearms and rotate them 30 degrees forward, both arms will rotate down. This also makes it easier to copy animation from the right arm to the left and have it mirror properly. The right arm is scaled to a value of -1.
Non symmetrical	Both arms have positive scaling, but if you rotate them, the motion is not symmetrical. For example, if you select both forearms and rotate them 30 degrees forward, the left arm will rotate down but the right arm will rotate up. This option is useful when you need to transfer the animation data to a platform that doesn't support negatively-scaled bones.

Arm Attachment

Arms are Children of Shoulders	Makes arms the children of the shoulders, allowing you to animate in an FK style by rotating the arm bones.
Arms are Children of Hips	Makes the arms the children of the hips, useful for when you want to have shoulder movements that are more independent of the hands and arms. For example, this style is useful for characters who do a lot of up-and-down shrugging movements with their shoulders.

Fingers

The Finger options let you choose between making fingers with 2D chains or 3D chains.

TipTo manipulate the fingers, see Animating the Fingers and Hands [ Character Animation ].

Fingers are 2D Chains	Creates fingers using 2D chains. These chains are constrained to a single plane and work more predictably in IK for typical character fingers.
Fingers are 3D Chains	Creates fingers using 3D chains. These chains allow for a full range of movement on all axes (not restricted to a plane) and can make good abstract tree branches, or monster or robotic tentacle fingers.

Toes

Three-bone toes	As advertised, creates toes using three bones.
Two-bone toes	Creates bones using only two toes.

Roll Division

These options allow you to choose how you want the skeleton's envelope to be weighted at a more refined level when the bone is rotated (rolled). These quaternion-based options create a set of nulls, based on the number of subdivisions that you specify, to distribute the weighting along the bone.

Forearm Roll Subdivision

Divides the rotation so that there is more rotation allowed at the wrist instead of the elbow. The rotation starts at the end of the forearm bone where it joins the wrist.

In this case, the rotation starts at the end of the forearm bone where it joins the wrist. This setup is compatible with animation on the last bone of the arm, hand effector, hand root, or hand bone. It also works with IK and FK, and IK/FK blending.

Active	Toggles the activeness of this type of roll division.
Number	Number of nulls created along the forearm bone.

Tip

Although it's unlikely that you will rotate hands beyond the -180 to 180 degree range that the roll provides, you can extend this range. For example, certain setups may require that you adjust exactly where the center of the seam line is. To do so:

Select a hand bone (LHand or Rhand) and open it in the explorer.
Double-click the Roll_Compensation parameter and tweak the roll_offset slider to get the range you need.

Bicep Roll Subdivision

Divides the rotation along the length of the upper-arm bone (where the bicep is) so that the nulls allow more rotation at the top of the bone than at the end.

For example, the start of the bicep is at the shoulder (and armpit), which requires more rotation than the elbow. This allows for more refined envelope weighting for this difficult area.

Active	Toggles the activeness of this type of roll division.
Number	Number of nulls created along the upper-arm bone.

Thigh Roll Subdivision

Divides the rotation along the length of the thigh bone so that the nulls allow more rotation at the top of the bone (where the hip joins) than at the end. This allows for more refined envelope weighting for these difficult areas.

Active	Toggles the activeness of this type of roll division.
Number	Number of nulls created along the thigh bone.

Skin

These options create a series of volume controls and nulls that approximate the way that the body envelope slides and compresses over the skeleton. These controls are created according to the way you set up the Volume Controls (yellow splines) when you created the biped guide.

For more information, see Selecting Volume Controls for the Skin (Envelope) [ Character Animation ].

Simple Sliding

Armpits/Hips

Uses nulls and 2-point constraints to approximate the sliding.

Sliding and Volume Preservation

Thighs

Use nulls and 2-point constraints to approximate the sliding, but does it outside a bounding volume that is created, forcing the body to keep its shape.

Joint Compression

Elbows/Knees

Create bounding volumes to the elbow pushing the mass of a biceps muscle or the knee pushing the thigh muscle.

The volume is placed as an approximation from the biped guide's yellow spline volume controls (see Setting Up the Biped Guides [Character Animation]) and needs to be fine-tuned in the pose of the compressed joint.

The Biped Dog Leg rig does not have the Knee option because of the way its legs are structured.

Shadow Rigs

These options create a shadow rig constrained to the regular rig. Shadow rigs are simpler rigs that are constrained to the main rig that is more complicated and used for animating.

For more information, see Creating Shadow Rigs [ Character Animation ].

Constrain Shadow Character

None	No shadow rig is created.
SI\|3D Skeleton	SOFTIMAGE\|3D-style skeleton hierarchy with the effectors as children of the last bone.
XSI Skeleton	XSI-style skeleton hierarchy with the effectors as children of the chain's root.
Null Hierarchy	Hierarchy of nulls with a null at the root of each chain.
Box Hierarchy	Hierarchy made of boxes.
Box with IK Arms and/or Legs	Hierarchy made of boxes but with arms and/or legs that are IK chains. This is often useful for creating animation that is exported to games engines. If you set roll divisions on the arms and/or legs in the rig (see Roll Division), they are also created on the arms and legs in the shadow rig.

Options

Hands	Generate Hands and Fingers does just that in the shadow rig. No Shadow Fingers creates mitten-like hands with no fingers or thumbs in the shadow rig.
Create Unified Skeleton and Rig Model	Creates the shadow rig under the biped rig's model. If you don't select this option, the shadow rig is in its own model.
Create Independent Lower Hierarchy	Creates a hip plate (a hip bone-shaped control icon) on the shadow rig.