What you'll learn

In this series of lessons we're going to build a complete character in 3ds Max that you can use to rig and practice your animation. When rigging and animating in 3ds Max, it's always nice to have an appealing character to work with. If you don't have a lot of experience modeling, however, it can be difficult to create a character you'll be happy spending much time animating. There are free characters and rigs out there, but many have been used over and over, and it would be nice to be able to create something you can call your own. In these lessons we'll cover the building of a simple character, with emotive eyes and eyebrows, that you can then rig and animate. We'll look at methods for building the head, body, arms, and legs and connecting them all together. We'll talk about building the topology with an eye towards rigging and animation- building it to deform well. The goal at the end of these lessons is not to give you a new prebuilt model to use, but to teach you to use the techniques shown to create your own custom character, ready to rig and animate. Software required: 3ds Max 2010.