Rigging the character

So after I finished building the model of my character, I needed to create the rig for the character, this allows the character to have a skeleton and therefore be moved and manipulated like a normal human being.

To start the rigging of the character I decided to create the skeleton using the CAT object rigging system, this is done by selecting the "helpers" section of the "create" tab and selecting the CAT Objects on the drop down box, once this has been done you will see the same as the picture below.

 

Once this had been done I selected the CATParent tool and dragged it into the scene, this will create what is shown in the picture below.

 

 

After this has been created the next thing I did was to click the parent object and then go to the "Create Pelvis" tool shown in the picture below:

 

This tool creates the beginning of the skeleton that I have choosen to make, after creating the pelvis and moving it into my desired position, see the picture below:

 

I then created by creating a single leg by using the "Create Leg" tool shown in the picture below:

 After creating the leg and position it how I wanted it was simply a matter of copying the bone settings with the tools provided in 3DS max and then using the paste/mirror bone settings to create a mirrored version of the leg.

  

 After I was happy with the legs I created the spine by using the "Add Spine" tool, which places a basic layout of the spine, after shaping the spine how I needed I ended up with the picture below:

  

After the spine i started on the arms using the same technique as the legs except by clicking the "Add Arm" tool, once i was happy with the arm i again used the copy bone settings and paste/mirror tools to create a duplicate, see image below:

  

The last thing that was needed for the rig to be completed was to create a head, this done by simply using the "Add Bone" tool which added an extra bone to the top of the spine from which I then scaled into shape, see image below for the full rig:

 

After the rig was completed I had to connect the skin of the model i had built to the rig,  this was done using the skin modifier see image below:

After adding all of the bones to the required section in the skin modifer panel, I could instantly start moving the character around like a normal human.

 

The picture below is of the character fully rigged and skinnedand moved into a waving position