Its been a very long time since I have tried to rig a model but I am trying to rig my Baby head model. All is going weel for most of the head but now I am tryin gto apply smartskin on the neck. Smartskin is working perfectly for each axis on whcih is is done but it will not blend so if I animate on X and Y neither smartskin really works at all.

So, what is the best way to 'smartskin' a neck with rolls of skin?

Weighting is the best way to rig the neck. Then if you need to, smartskin at the extreme positions. Always weight it first.

Hi Will,

I agree weighting is the answer - for a standard neck - but my baby neck is short and has a fat roll - 5 rows of splines in a very small vertical area.

I suppose if I were doing it from scratch again then I should have added one bone for each spline and constrained them to orient and roll like their parent, say 50% - then I could have set up the weighting for each bone...... (I haven't added neck rotate to my Smartskin yet - so I may have to start from scratch anyway! - all those CPs to re-adjust - ahhhhhhh)

Cheers

I think Will is right that weighting is the answer. If there are 5 rings...divide their weighting equally betwixt the spine 5(or your top spine bone), the neckbone, and the headbone...

EG: (bottom to top)

ring 1: spine5 80%, neck 20%
ring 2: spine5 50%,neck 50%
ring 3: spine5 15%. neck 70%, head 15%
ring 4: neck 50%, head 50%
ring 5: head 80%. neck 20%

This should bend and flex and still hold form. SmartSkinning is SO V9-ish...

The Point is that you only have to weight it to a point... then the smartskin will behave. The weighting helps so that the smartskin doesn't have to do all the work.

Its the same on shoulders, and hips. weight to something that works smoothly, then apply the effect of skin sliding over muscle with smartskin. You'll find that you only have to smartskin at the extremes this way, and you'll want to pick memorable numbers for your bone rotations.. like 90 or 50 (seems to come up allot for me) then you can go back and edit the skin for better performance.. Add to many intermittent keys in any smarstkin and the keys will pop like crazy.

Always smartskin as a last resort (except maybe on elbows and knees ;-)

You can see my smartskinning in the WIP page - it's worked OK so far but I've lost count of how many CP keys I have created.

OK so let me get this right. I now have 3 bones - Head, Spline 5 bone and neck bone?

Without the use of Anzovins weight mover, how do I allocate weights to a given spline ring? (Is there a Tute already?). Does weight mover still work in v14? (I have it but I have never used it) How is the spline 5 bone rigged/constrained?

Cheers

There's Tech Talk #2 CP Weights, which is a 72MB mov file.

I'll be interested in your findings - I hadn't realised smartskin is so v9 - although I guess this is probably a controversial subject.

Higgins,

Select the spline ring you want to weight by clicking on a point and hitting the "," key to select the ring. Now right mouse click on the selection and select editCPweights. Apply the weight you want for each bone by selecting the bones you want to weight the points to and giving them a percentage.

I usually start by just giving a ring a 50/50 transition between the neck bone and the Head bone.. then the ones beyond that a 25/75 or so to the same bones. That should at least get you an somewhat smooth twist. Then just smartskin the head bone at 90 degree rotations on the Z and some arbitrary rotations based on range of motion for the x and y.

I usually set my smartskin relationships to blend instead of add so that the overlapping bones don't send cps off into space ;-)

by weighting the points first you'll find that the smartskin is much more predictable across the range of motion, especially if that range remains below 90 degrees rotation in any direction, (which your neck should unless you are also spitting up pea soup and yelling in latin

hope that helps.

Caroiline... Smartskin isn't so V.9 as you put it.. its just that it always needed some help on bones that rotated in 3 directions and had wide range of motion. In the old days that was done with fan/intermediate bones (which I still use alot as well) but the addition of cpweights solved alot of issues for smartskinning complex joints.

My process usually goes something like this. I add fan bones to the elbows, shoulders, hips and knees (because these are the most complicated joints in terms of motion and flexed shape. I weight these joints and the torso, waist, wrists, neck and ankles, hands to if you want but I usually save them for last cause they are a pain. Once I get the weights set and looking good, I go back and smartskin the elbows, shoulders, neck, torso, knees, ankles, etc. For some reason I almost never need to smartskin the hips, something about them and using fan bones and weights makes them work better, That could also be true of shoulders, I probably just dont place the fan bones properly for them. Shoulders are hard to guess at as far as proper place for the bicep bones origin and fanbone angles and positions. I've done a few and I always seem to re-invent the wheel.

Oh.. I also use fan bones along the forarm for the twist of the hand. 3 usually that slowly taper off in effect from the wrist to the elbow. If you try to weight this.. you'll get an arm that acts more like a noodle than a joint. I was stupid enough to try it once.

Here's a link to an old post I made 2 years back that talks about this and has links to some examples.

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...mp;hl=smartskin

Damn - CP weights made all the difference. in 10 minutes on weights and adjustment I did more that I did with 3 hours of CP tweaking with Smartskin....... Should have asked earlier.

Cheers

lol.

Yeah I read back through my posts when I was figuring it out, and I'd made a similar comment. CP weights just make the whole process go much much faster.