3ds Max Tutorial - What is cat? - Lynda

For those not familiar with the CAT system, C-A-T or CAT, stands for Character Animation Toolkit. The animation tools that CAT gives to us are both quick and easy to use, but at the same time they do offer a very high level of control over the rigging and animation process. CAT gives use the ability to create and animate with a wide variety of rig types. For example, we can create bipedal characters, which of course can be the staple of many rigging jobs. But CAT is by no means limited to just Bipeds. As we will see throughout this course, we can certainly create and animate rigs for our quadrupeds and multi- legged characters such as insects. We can even fashion rigs from scratch to work with our own character designs no matter how many limbs that they may have. All of CAT rigs, whether presets or custom built, make use of CAT's IK/FK systems, as well as having full access to CAT's procedural motion generator. CAT also has a lot of power and flexibility when it comes to handling animation through its animation layer system. These give us the ability to blend multiple animations together to produce a pleasing final result. Just like 3ds Max's older biped system, CAT can easily work with motion capture, should our current project require it. Some may view CAT as a rigging and animation toolkit for beginners. Although this can be a somewhat true statement given the easy to use nature of the tools in CAT, it has to be noted that it is also a very powerful set of tools from which any rigger or animator with experience can produce exceptional results. In our next video, we will familiarize ourselves with just where CAT tools can be found in the 3ds Max user interface.