@ the lion - Your welcome. Every model will be a different challenge to complete.
For this on I would use just the bones not Biped. Build it the normal way in max Z up.
Think of it like an octopus. Build your bone to the mesh.
Make your first bone from 0,0,0 and go up to the pivot point of where the legs would be. Continue up what would be the hip, spine, neck, head if using.
Start each leg and arm and tail as its own seperate chain. I just label the first bone in the chain for reference. What you name these bone makes no difference as long as its easy for you to remember.
Add enough bones only to produce smooth bending. Once you have your seperate chains made, open the bone tool. (very useful) Pick the bone that would represent the hip for the leg joint. Press connect in the bone tools window. then click on the bone at the closest to the hip in each chain of the legs. You have to choose connect for each bone in the bone tools window.
Click on the last spine bone in the main chain for connection of the arms. Repeat the connect bones proceedure above.
This is the same for the hands, Build the fingers seperate chain and connect them to the fore arm bone.
You will want to practice this. Its not to hard just monotonous.
Once you get done connecting all the bones. Then you can just rotate the bones in spot for a sanity check that you in fact did connect each one. Save your work at intervals. If you start having problems. Stop, Save, Save as a new name, Continue to work in the new file. That way if you make a critical mistake you can go back to the last file and save as a new name again and try again.
Once satified that the bones are functioning.
The hard part begins. Select the mesh, Use the skin modifier. Add all the bone in the dialog. Save and save as a new file name with Skinned in it. Work in the new file.
Rotate the bones and see where you will need to adjust envelopes or vertice weights. Take you time here and be sure you got it all before you get to the actual animating stage.
Once you get this step done save and save as a new file and animate in that new file.
Hopefully you can get it on the first shot. Dont count on it. Everything will look fine in max and when you export it. there is were you will see anything that xfile format dont like.
Most of the characters I convert I get to do three or four times from scratch before they are complete. Some time they just work the first time. The important thing to remember is take your time at the rigging stage and think what is really going to happen with this model. It will make a difference in how you may need to rig it.
Take your time when weighting the verticies. Missed verticies or ones linked to the wrong bone can cause some nasty mesh stretching in the game engine. If you are going to use one of the skin boned shaders. Make sure you dont go over the shaders bone limit. 60 for the old ones. and I believe Bond1 made all his new ones at 100 or so.
You could try biped with the forefeet option used for the legs and ponytails for the arms and tail for the tail. Use physeque for that first. If that mesh wont conform. then try the skin modofier on it.
If you have a newer version of max you have the character-animation tool. It can do a bunch for you and the rigs are mostly made and interchagable, but its a learning curve. Its rigging the proper way.
Hope this helps out some. You should use the Max help file. It explains the use of the bone tools and some other useful things.
Use panda soft exporter for animated models and characters. Setting in one of the above posts.
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