3ds max: modeling for animation

Guys, can I model an object and then later on animate it or is there a special case for modelling objects that are going to be animated?

U can animate anything..but would be a good idea to readup on joints and the various technics for the stuff u want to do.
Try segment a box alot..and add some bones to it...and check out what happens

I have no idea about what you just said. :p
I'll just read F1 and tuts. :p
I want to do this without asking for too mich help. :p

Yeah..
Also best..and much faster
To just poke around

The deal is that I don't know what bones and dummies and even *how* to animate things. That's why joins and bones are in the dark area.
But yeah. I will poke around.
First I need to find out what I want to animate.
I was thinking of doing a spider kind of thing.
Like model the spider first and then animate.

You can try go to MAXScript and open or run the Humanoid script
Will pop a box that make a box man automaticly

I'll look around.
First of all first I need to read a tut covering the basics of animation.
Does animation require a lot from a computer?
Like a simple animation. Making a thing walk or something.

Http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorial/Connecting-and-Animating-Bones/3782
Thats good enough for starters
There are 2 main ways to do joint stuff...using SKIN stuff..skinning a bone system with mesh OR using the objects as bones..last one is fine enough for mecanical non bending parts...afaik

Once again, did not make much sense to me but I greatly appreciate the explanation and directing me to a tutorial.

U'd need bones and skin for a spider..cus the legs have internal centerd joints.

Well I was going to make a mechanical spider thing.
Now when you say bones you mean something that is already in max or is it something I need to 'model'?

It's there
Create/systems
Bones
Make 2-3-4 bones and play with pulling it around..and see how u can contol a leg jump from the ground like no problem at all
Its not realy hard
The tricky part is when u attach a model to the bones
Then you need to play with falloff curves and weights or so..for not fking the mesh up when its turned or bend alot
So u must think of this when u model it :)
More polys around the benfy areas in general

How would you add more polys?
By cutting?

Press tesselate..or yeah...what ever
In the direction u need good strech

Tesselate is in mesh orpoly?

Check it out !
:)
Just want you to press buttons and so...before u know what they do

Wow, this tesselating could've saved me a lot of work before.
Set the tesselate to 0.0 and you can add more poly's (including edges and so forth) without ruining the shape.