Now you should be able to see the skeleton and we will be examining its joints or bones.

Figure 1.6 Selecting the Joint to examine

If you examine all the joints or bones, you should see that this skeleton does not contain the full skeleton of a character model. This should be obvious from that you see only one finger listed on the right hand, while the left hand is missing all together. Our bone for the knife is called "knife" and you should select it as shown in Figure 1.6. You should see the "joint" turn red when it is selected. Also, the rotational axis show up if you zoom in on it. If you were to switch to the "Model" rollout, and select the ""Rotate" tool, you would see the knife rotate and the axis reflect its "X," "Y," and "Z" directions.

One of the most important joint or bone, called "Bip01" is where all joints should connect to, and is the first one that should be created.   This is because this bone is where the center of gravity for the mass of the model is, sometimes called "COM" or "Center Of Mass" in modeling. In the 3D Studio Max world this is what this joint is referred to.

We will merge our "p_knife2.msd3" file with what we have already open. Doing this will enable us to get a relative height and position of the knife. This will save a lot of trial and error on our part. As time goes on you will have a library of your own to quickly access and not have to create new skeletons for each and every model. Merge the "p_knife2.msd3" file, by selecting "File->Merge..." from the menu selections, then choose the "p_knife2.msd3" file. If you were to open the copy of the "p_knife2.msd3," and then the op4 "p_knife.mdl" the op4's model skeleton would not show up. Milkshape keeps the old skeleton, assuming that you just want the models mesh and not the skeleton.

Switch to the "Model" rollout, and click on the "Select" in the "Tools" options. Also click on the "Face" in the "Select Options" as shown in Figure 1.7.

Figure 1.7 Selecting all the faces in the p_knife model

 

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