Absolute character tools 1.5: muscles for 3ds max from cgCharacter. (Modeling).(from cgCharacter)

As any animator can tell you, one of the biggest challenges in creating realistic character animation with only skin and bones is that the skin does not deform properly. When Jurassic Park premiered, a highlight of the movie was the incredible skin deformation of the dinosaurs.

In fact, it is the vast network of muscles attached to the skeleton that deforms the skin. With that in mind, cgCharacter developed a program called Absolute Character Tools (ACT), now in Version 1.5, that serves as a musculature system for Discreet's 3ds max 4 and later versions. A Maya port is also being developed. What ACT does, basically, is put meat on your model's bones. The plug-in is used atop 3ds max's Skin, character Studio's Physique, and the 3ds max ping-in Bones Pro.

However, don't expect ACT to simplify the process of building a complete muscle system for your character. While you don't necessarily have to build every muscle group in the human body, and you don't have to be a biology major, the programmers of ACT expect that you have a strong background in character animation.

ACT comes with two new classes of 3D objects for 3ds max: cgMuscles and cgTubes. The cgMuscles are parametric 3D objects. As you link them to objects, they will automatically deform as the "parent" objects move. Here lies the true benefit of the program--the automatic deformation of a muscle immediately after it is created. The cgMuscle is designed to deform to keep the ends in the same positions relative to their attachment object's coordinate space.

What this means is that after modeling your character, adding a Bone skeleton and setting up the rigging, you can then add a layer of muscle using ACT, and you should have a completely deformable, animatable character: Some tweaking of the muscle's parameters will be required, and all of these are animatable as well.

You begin the process of creating a muscle in ACT by choosing the cgMuscle object from a drop-down panel, then defining the proximal (start) and distal (end) connections for the muscle. In fact, creating muscles in ACT is entirely too simple--it's just like drawing a line. It is after drawing the muscles around your character that both the work, and the power, of ACT really begin.

Within the program's Modifier panel you will find a number of options, including Muscle Structure, ...