3ds Max provides a number of utilities, available from the Utilities panel, to assist in animating scenes.
The Follow/Bank utility applies rotation keys to an object that already has a motion trajectory. The settings are similar to those found in the Path constraint. Use this when you have an object for which you've already assigned motion and want it to follow or bank along its trajectory, but don’t want to use a Path constraint.
The Motion Capture utility drives your animation using peripheral devices, such as MIDI keyboards, joysticks, and the mouse. While driving the animation, you can record it in real time.
You can use the Motion Analysis Corporation utility to convert motion data originally recorded in TRC format into character studio marker (CSM) format. This allows you to easily map the motion onto a biped.
The Camera Tracker utility synchronizes a background by animating the movement of a camera inside 3ds Max to match the movement of a real camera that was used to shoot a movie.
Skin Utilities provide a method for copying skin data (envelopes and vertex weights) from one model to another. Skin Utilities work by embedding the skin data in a copy of the source mesh, then using the object copy to map the data onto the target mesh.
