Animating in max

[CJI]

Ok, Here's the deal. I made the transition from maya to max a while ago now and have adjusted most of my workflow accordingly. Once over the intial shock of the change i am loving my time in max.

 

However i am now starting to delve deeper in to the animation workflow in 3ds now i have the time and i am finding the differences here to be a little jarring by comparison. I am comfortable with the basic workflow, and using the curve editor etc. What is throwing me is the way controllers and contraints seem to work in 3ds.

 

I intend to use this thread to ask various questions that i either can't figure out, or find answers for anywhere else. I appreciate any help you can offer.

[CJI]

First off its a fairly simple concept that is bugging me. I want to animate a set of vertices. Now i can do this by simply selecting what i want and animating away. But what if i want a simple external controller (say a dummy object) that i can pick and animate that will then animate the vertices.

 

I can do this by using the linked xform modifier, right. Yup that works, but waht if i have multiple sets of vertices on the same poly object that i want to animated independently of each other.

 

In maya there is the Cluster deformer which pretty much allows you to do that. You select the vertices, set a cluster deformer, then link that to the dummy controller. rinse and repeat. You cant seem to do this multiple times with multiple linked xforms as it automatically changes the association of the verteices to the new linked xform. Im sure this is simple but i just can't find a way to do it?