character studio is a set of components that provides a full set of tools for animating characters.
character studio lets you create skeletal hierarchies for two-legged characters (called bipeds) that can be animated quickly using a wide variety of methods. If your character walks on two legs, character studio provides unique footstep animation that automatically creates locomotion based on gravity, balance, and other factors.
To animate character motion manually, use freeform animation. This type of animation is also suitable for characters with more than two legs, or characters that fly or swim. With freeform animation, you can animate the skeleton with traditional inverse-kinematics techniques.
You can also animate a biped skeleton with motion-capture files. You can convert back and forth between these methods to take advantage of their several benefits.
character studio also provides tools for skinning a character using the biped skeleton or any other type of linked hierarchy.
character studio provides the ability to separate the motion of the animation from the structure of the character. Thus, for example, you can animate a giant walking and apply that motion to a tiny elf. Or you could animate a fat character and retarget the same motion to thin one. Using a library of motions, you can animate a character doing hundreds of different actions as easily as loading a file.
character studio provides a range of tools for motion editing. You use motion scripting to sequence animations with transitions. You can overlay different animations with layers, or blend them with the nonlinear Motion Mixer.
Function curve editing, available on the track bar and in Track View, as well as in the Animation Workbench, lets you alter animations. The workbench also provides specialized tools for analyzing and correcting motion errors. Last, character studio provides options for creating crowds of bipeds or other objects with a procedural-animation system that uses forces and behaviors to drive character motion.
character studio consists of three basic components:
