Modeling and ‘posing’ 3D chains may seem like a tedious job, but actually can be done rather easily by using the Array Tool and treating the links in the chain as bones. In this tutorial, I will show you how you can model a chain, rig it in a couple of simple steps. This allows you to pose and animate the chain in an efficient manner. This tutorial is aimed at the beginner and every step is outlined and displayed in detail, but does assume some basic knowledge of 3D Studio Max.
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We are going to start with modeling a single link from the chain. Click the Shapes button on the Command Panel, click the Rectangle button, and then draw a rectangle as shown in the picture below. Don’t worry about the exact size yet.
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Click on the Modify tab of the Command Panel, and change the Length and Width values below the Parameters section to 1 cm and 3 cm respectively:
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Press the Zoom Extents Select button at the right bottom of your screen:
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Set the Corner Radius setting to 0.35cm
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Click on the Rendering section to open it, enable the Enable In Renderer option and the Enable In Viewport option. Set the Thickness value to: 0.4cm.
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Click the Hierarchy tab of the Command Panel, and click the Affect Pivot Only button. Move the Pivot to the right to the location shown in the picture below:
Click the Affect Pivot Only button again to disable it. |
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Unless you are using a huge screen, zoom out a bit you so can what you are doing during the next step. Select Array… from the Tools menu:
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Change the Incremental Move X value to -2.54cm and the Incremental Rotate X value to 90. Set the Count value for 1D to 10 and click on the Preview button. If the results look like below, press the OK button.
If you are going to use textures for the links, you should create at least 3 to 5 different versions depending on the length of the chain, and rotate and mirror the individual links to avoid repetition in the textures.
Now we have a straight chain with only 10 links. While we could have picked a higher number for the Count value in the Array tool, using less will actually save us some work during the next step, and allows you to add some extra variation by rotating the links. The next step is ‘linking the links’.
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Click the Select and Link button on the main toolbar:
Select the last chain link, on the left of the chain, and drag the mouse pointer to the next chain link. If you do it correctly, the chain link to which you link the other chain link will flash white for a split second.
(or watch this short .WMV or .MOV video showing the ‘select and link’ process.)
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Select all the chain links, hold down the Shift key and drag the links to the left as shown in the following picture. When the Clone Options dialog box appears, choose the option Reference.
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Click the Select and Link button again and link the center two chain links (from left to right as we did earlier. In other words, link the chain link left from the center of the chain, to the chain link right from the center of the chain. Make sure you deselect the 20 chain links you just cloned.) To create a longer chain, you can simply repeat this process, e.g. select all 20 chain links, clone them, and then link the center chain links again. You can make the chain as long as you want, as long as the chain links are linked in one direction. I repeated these steps again, ending up with chain of 40 links.
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Select the first chain link on the left of the chain. Choose SplineIK Solver from the IK Solver submenu from the Animation menu.
The mouse cursor will change to a + sign, showing a trail back to the chain link you selected. Now click on the chain link at the other end of the chain. Two blue lines are added of which one goes all the way through the model, as shown in the following picture. This is called an IK Chain.
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Click the Shapes button on the Create tab of the Command Panel. Click the Line button and draw a straight line directly above the chain, of approximately the same size as the chain. Make sure you draw it from right to left, and click 5 times along the way to add some vertexes to the line. Disable the Enable In Renderer option and the Enable In Viewport option.
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Click on the Motion tab of the Command Panel. Click the button labeled None below Pick Shape: in the SplineIK Solver section and select the Line you created in the previous step. The button of the label with change into Line01.
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Select the Line and switch to Vertex sub-object level. Select one of the vertexes of the line and move it around. If you followed all steps correctly, the chain should now take the shape of the Line.
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To allow the chain to take a more realistic shape, we need to change the vertexes from ‘corner’ to ‘smooth’. While you still have that vertex selected from the previous step, press CTRL-A on your keyboard to select all the vertexes in the Line. Right-click in the viewport and select smooth as shown in the following picture:
The Line as well as the chain will now take a more curved shape. Move around some of the other vertexes and see what the results are. If the links do line up on certain corners, you can change the corresponding vertex to Bezier, which gives you some extra control. Instead of using an SplineIK Solver, you can also use a more simple HI Solver for example (in step 12), but by using the additional Line shape to control the IK Chain ‘and’ the chain object you can easily pose the chain as needed. For example, place a necklace around a model’s neck, or slightly hanging between two poles. The more links you add, and the more vertexes you add to the control spline, the more granular your control over the chain will become.
Assign a metal or paint material to it and you got yourself a lifelike chain. Instead of creating a chain link based on a Rectangle shape, try one of the other shapes (e.g. Circle, Donut, Ellipse, Helix, Star) or create your own original chain link by drawing a complex Line shape.
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and that it contributed something to your 3D Studio Max modeling skills.
This tutorial is created originally for 3Dvalley.com. You are not allowed to redistribute this tutorial in any form.
January 28th, 2009 on 3:18 pm
I have a problem with step twelve the moment I put a SplineIK Solver the program shuts off. I have no idea why? Any guess to what might have happen?
January 29th, 2009 on 9:24 am
Hi,
If 3DSM crashes it’s usually a matter of not having sufficient memory/ram in your computer (or because it’s not a proper legal version) but adding an IK chain doesn’t require that much memory so it’s odd it crashes at that point. You may want to try posting your problem at Autodesk.com, perhaps it’s a known bug.
March 24th, 2009 on 12:08 pm
Worked perfet thanks alot mate!!
March 27th, 2009 on 6:18 am
Great tutorial, helped a lot! Thanks man!
April 27th, 2009 on 6:54 am
nice tutorial….thankz
July 26th, 2009 on 3:58 pm
ty, good tutorial
August 12th, 2009 on 3:45 am
I’m trying to model something using these chains, but the chain is not composed of just these chains… whenever I try to pick the Line object, my model distorts into this weird deformed thing…
Does anyone have any idea how to fix this? Thanks.
September 21st, 2009 on 9:34 pm
Thanks man…good work….
September 23rd, 2009 on 2:31 am
Worked like a charm! Thanks!
You might want to explain in the text that the linking step has to be done for every link in the chain. The text doesn’t make that clear, but the video you’ve provided does. So if people try to follow the text without watching the video, they might be confused.
Great tutorial, appreciate it!
September 23rd, 2009 on 11:42 am
I use this tutorial and it works, however I’m creating a necklace with a custom chain links and the chain links are coming apart as the chain is being animated. Is there a way to limit the movement based on the shape of the chain? or is there another appraoch to animating jewelery?
October 3rd, 2009 on 6:47 am
Hi, Thanks for the tutorial!
I am having a little difficulty though at Step 12.
Quote “Now click on the chain link at the other end of the chain. Two blue lines are added of which one goes all the way through the model”
When I choose the SplineIK Solver and click the first link I get what you said with the dotted line but when I then click on the last link I get still have a dotted white line leading back and I dont get the 2 blue lines you are mentioning.
Am I missing something?
Thanks, Brian
October 3rd, 2009 on 12:21 pm
Hi, Sorry you can cancel the last question from me, I hadn’t done what davem had pointed out… “You might want to explain in the text that the linking step has to be done for every link in the chain.”
Thanks for that davem
Thanks for the cool tutorial! a huge time saver
October 25th, 2009 on 2:46 pm
Thanks so much for this tutorial. It really helped me a lot.
November 6th, 2009 on 4:19 pm
Great tutorial works nicely. Thanks for sharing.
November 30th, 2009 on 2:51 pm
I’m trying to animate a mechanical chain using the splineIK, however my chain doesn’t not follow the spline path exactly. Any suggestions why this might be happening?