Is it possible to use a bone rig (not a biped) in a crowd simulation?  If so, how?

I have tried using a rig with a point cache modifier but get a “selected object has no usable controllers” message.

Any help would be appreciated.

Tim

anyone… even if to say… it’s not possible.

Tim

if you got a correct rig (= you can link the animated rig to a null-object and animate the null without any strange bone offsets or rotations and the rig animation stays intact ) then there will be no problem at all
you simply link the rig to the animated delegates then. Of course you do not have the option to use Biped files to choose between predefined anims, but a clever setup with some scripting might do the same with standard rigs and crowd.....

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Yeah, I figured I could do that.... I have gone ahead and used biped for now. 

My biggest question was how to populate the animation of a single object across the entire crowd using a bone rig.  I have a bird animation with a home made rig and was hoping that I could propagate that animation across, but it looks like it’s not possible to bring into the max crowd system.  It isn’t acknowledged by the global motion controllers and there is no way I know of to make a rig use the motion flow process.  So I remade my bird rig in biped.  Looks odd, but for now works.

If anyone has any other feedback, I would be willing to hear it.

Tim

but that would be possible
you got the “ Edit Multible Delegates”, there are tools for Delegates to Objects animationcontrollers setup etc…
And there are tools for Motion Clips usage of delegates…
for a flock of birds i simply do not see why it should be easer with biped....

funny thing is the Object/Delegate Association button has actually a birdicon on it ;-)

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I guess that is what I need a little more detail on how to do.

I have done plenty of animated crowds with the base object being animated with Modifiers (bend, stretch, etc), and plenty with biped.  I’m just not sure how to do it with the bone system.  I thought I could cheat and use the point cache, but it didn’t work.

Tim