Once you have your final model you will need to attach all your objects back into the one (if you had broken it up for baking or any other reason) and get rid of all elements that will not be imported (such as reference planes etc)

While we are here we might as well set up the materials properly in order to export properly. This is IMPORTANT! If you do not set up the material properly you will not be able to apply the materials properly in Unreal Editor.

Press M to pull up the material editor, you may have already set this up already but I'll go over it again nevertheless. If you attached your three objects and kept the materials as is, your material shouldd already be applied to have 3 materials as sub-objects. This is what you need.

If you do not, make a new texture and set the Material type to Multi/Sub-Object. Set the max number of materials to the total materials you have and apply it to your character. I generally name the sub objects SKIN00, SKIN01 and SKIN02...although I don't know how important this is. You can reapply textures in the editor if they do not sort out exactly. The main thing to note is that you have a material applied to your one object with the same amount of materials needed applied to it.

OK, so we have the model standing in the middle of MAX space, with the texture applied to it. We now have to create a rig and align it to our body. I will also be adding bones in order to add emitters, as well as extra animation.

3DStudio MAX generally comes with Character Studio (which will be integral to MAX 7 once out), which comes with an amazingly useful tool called Biped. Biped is a rig that basically uses the exact same naming xconventions as UT2004 does...apart from the Gun bone. For the purposes of this exercise I am using this, but I hope to draw up the rig and it's naming conventions for those wanting to do their own at a later point hopefully.

At worst you can load up Unreal Editor...and look into the bone names there.

For Biped however, click on the Systems button ( ) in the MAX Create tab and then the Biped button in the panel. Click / drag up from the root XYZ point in space until the pelvic region is roughly where it should be. We can tweak later of course, but the better you line it up now the better.

Next we need to tweak the character to suit the pose we have designated in our model.

Firstly we need to use the Figure mode button ( ) in the Motion Tab ( ) of 3D Studio in order to do so. Figure mode is the equivalent of a base pose that you can always return to if tweaking is needed. Even after you have started animating.

To select this, the biped must be selected. Once done you can use the rotate, scale and move tools in order to move your bones around as needed.

You can also tweak the rig to have more bone elements. eg. toe joints, finger joints, spine segments etc...although I recommend you get this as close to correct as you can from the onset. These can be changed in the Structure Rollout at the base of the Biped Panel.

You don't necessarily need to make a human character, character studio is more restricted to Bipedal characters...however if you are making your own custom rig from scratch you can basically do whatever you like. However there may be issues in regards to conforming to the standard UT2004 regulation code in some instances...so you are on your own outside of what I place in these tutorials.

Either way, firstly I'm going to focus on the legs. You can use the Symmetrical button ( ) in the Track Selection panel in the biped section in order to duplicate your actions from one side to the other of your biped. Handy for things like arms and legs.

By rotating them to follow the lines along the XY axis, and scale them to compensate in both length and depth. Then changing views in order to make it thicker along the Z axis I get the following results. The closer you get the bone mass to equal the model mass the better, as there will be less playing around later on when you get to vertex assignment, at least if you use the envelope method. I tend to assign them all individually).

Take note of where the joints rotate such as the knee, ankle and toe sections. Each creation is different depending on how you have laid out your polys etc. So think about how your model is to function and deform when animating. Planning ahead will asave you a lot of time in the end...and over time, the amount you have to plan ahgead is reduced simply due to experience

Next is the torso and arms. My experience so far has led to good results, but not great. But I'll see if I can get it right this time :)

So far I have used a spine count of 3. I will do so again.

The best way fror me to show you what to do is to show you what to do...so look at the image and look into the joints and where I have scaled/rotated my biped to suit the model. Take note of the shoulder joints going past the torso (I ALWAYS made that mistake previously) and how they are actually at the very top of the arm rather than in the base of the joint itself.

I have also made the lowest part of the spine really small, I have found that depending on your Unreal Editor setup...there is one bone, generally THE ROOT BONE MUST NOT MOVE OR ROTATE IN ORDER FOR BLENDING ANIMATIONS TO WORK PROPERLY. I have made it so it was the pelvic bone, which is what you want, but my last attempt didn't work as I thought it might...so either UT2004 changed the setup...or I just screwed up :) Happens to the best of us :) But we'll see how we go, and I'll come back to this and amend if need be...fingers crossed ;)

A little work around I worked out for this 'non-moving' bone is to apply the vertices of the base (pelvic region) to the lowest spine bone rather than the root bone...although you can only get small movement (without doing very odd distortion in some cases) it DOES allow you that little bit more freedom to move your character. I will be attempting to get this working as I did the first time. As that little amount of movement is worth the trouble that may arise.

When it comes down to it each joint is a duplication of what is happening in your own body...although substantially simplified of course. Cross that with a small amount of hinge/joint and physics and you'll get a good idea as to what is expected to create a good rig. As I go along with the vertex assignment, I still play with the rig in order to make sure I have the optimal setup for all situations. In particular, flexing of joints to the extremities of movement.