Lesson 1: Create and set up a muscle object

The quadruped rig is currently lacking a muscle structure. You will use the Muscle Creator to add some of these missing muscles. The Muscle Creator lets you not only create and mirror muscles, but also provide controls to sculpt and shape them so they move in a realistic fashion. The following steps take you through a workflow example of setting an initial muscle using the Muscle Creator.

Open the scene for the example

Load the Sabertooth_Create_Muscle_Start.mb.

This scene contains a quadruped rig with capsulated joints. You can use the DisplayLayer Editor to show and hide the skin of the model. Scrub the timeline to view the existing walk cycle animation.

Create muscles

From the main menu, select Muscle > Muscles/Bones > Muscle Creator.
The Muscle Creator appears. The top half of the Create tab contains controls that let you set the name of your muscle structure, the number of controls/cross sections, the number of segments around your muscle, and the joints to which the muscle is attached.
In the Muscle Creator window, do the following:
- Name the muscle: Mus_L_FrontLeg.
  
  NoteNaming your muscles properly helps you better identify them within the hierarchy, such as isolating the left-sided muscles from the right-sided muscles.
- Set the Num. Controls / Cross Sections to 4.
- Set the Num. Segments Around to 8.
Keeping the Muscle Creator window open, open the Outliner (Window > Outliner) to select the following muscle Attach Objects:
- In the Attribute Editor select the bn_L_F_Humerus01 capsule and click the Attach Start button.
- In the Attribute Editor, select the bn_L_F_TiborRaiiMinor01 capsule and click the Attach End button.
  The buttons load the selected objects into the Attach Start and Attach End fields for you.
In the Muscle Creator window, click Create Muscle.

The new muscle is now attached to the joints you specified in Attach Start and Attach End fields. To see the muscle clearly, you may want to change your scene view to wireframe. The muscle is primarily comprised of a NURBS surface, two attach points of each end of the muscle, and a series of cross section controls.

Beyond the lesson

In this lesson you learned how to create a muscle attached to capsulated joints. A completed file for this lesson, Sabertooth_Create_Muscle_End.mb. Now you are ready to refine and edit the muscles of the sabertooth tiger by setting the pose states and adjusting the locators at each end of the muscle.