The Character

I decided to use a female character model for my animation. The model itself was premade (as I am weaker at modelling organics) but I decided to rig and animate the model entirely through my own doing.

I began by loading the mesh into 3ds Max, and scaling it to the corresponding size in my already specified, metric unit setup. I then created a biped. After positioning and rotating the bones of the biped to fit the pose, this was the result:

At this stage, I was able to select the mesh and use the modifier "Skin" to enable me to attach vertices to the biped. As a result, when a bone is moved, the corresponding vertices will as well. The other option was to use "Physique", however I had not had much experience with this modifier.

 

Having skinned the female mesh, the model was ready to be animated according to my storyboard; of course, this would have to wait until the scene is ready and prepared.