The Tips in detail

 "Block animation, a little tutorial..."

Block animation refers to the method of which a section of an objects animation is kind of well, "packaged" and can be used over and over again in combination with other blocks. The great thing is that MAX has made it very smart. When you create the block, MAX assigns controllers that allow you to connect the blocks almost seamlessly one after another. OR, as you will see, lets you pause between them as well. If you have used Biped, this is kind of like the foot steps controller in track view. I will be going into this in my later tutorials but here is a fast preview.

1. Make a simple animation about 10 or 20 frames long. (i.e. one bounce of a ball.)
2. Open the track view and expand the Global Tracks section. Click on the Block controller and another child will appear, the "available" parameter. When this is selected (available) the assign controller thingy on the toolbar becomes active. The little green thing that looks like the "More" button for modifiers. Click that and select the only thing there, the block controller. Click OK.
3. Back in track view right click the master block controller and open the properties section. Here you will click "Add". A little window that looks like another track view will appear. Expand the list until you get to the objects position track. Select the track and click OK. (You can and should assign the block controller to all transformers but all we did was move the sphere, not rotate it. But, if you did, use the Ctrl key and select the rotate transform as well.)
4. After you click OK a little window will appear that asks how long the block should be and what its name should be. Type in the length of the animation and (i.e start 0 end 10) and name it, like "Right foot".
5. OK click out of that. Now... and this is the part that some people get stuck on... Right click in the track view window... not on the words... click in the place where the keys are. In other words, right click in the window next to the Master Block track. When you do that a little window will appear asking which block you want to add. We only made one here so click on it to add it. If you had made several blocks for that object they would be listed here and you could add any of those. For other objects inthe scene MAX will make a seperate Master Block.

Once a block is created MAX tucks that away and remebers it. You can go back and change the original animation and create another blcok from that. Go back and change the original bounce of the ball so that it now goes below the ground plane instead of above it. Make a block out of this and you now have the blcoks to make a sine wave animaiton.

Thats the bare basics of blocks. (Say that ten times fast!) You now have a block of animation to move around. So what you say? Well try this. Make a block as described above for each foot step of a character. And bam! Instant biped foot steps! Ok, maybe only in a straight line but hey it's still pretty cool!

from: Mike Reiser <Mikereiser@aol.com>