Hi,

I was aware that Woot's arm lenght was too short for my taste...
I mean the relative proportion of his arm with his forearm.

Personnally I scale Woot's arm bones in my animation work
(doing so, it will need some CP muscle mode adjustment )

I have mentioned this issue some months ago...(time past so fast ! )
but since It hasen't been adressed , I've assumed that most of you find the character just fine ...

But I've noticed the same arm/forearm proportion issue in some other characters too
Mainly in klu-klip and loon...

So my questions are:

What do you think ?
Am I alone to experience and see this proportion issue ?
Is it a big problem for you ? or you find it just fine ?

Is it still time to fix this ? ( increasing arm lenght, keeping forearm same size )


hey thanks for your interest


Al

Yeah, I raised that same issue regardin Nimmie Amee's bicep and forearm proportions. I remember Martin wanting to stick with the original style and design, which is why we left them as they are now.

It's a done deal, as far as I'm concerned. It's Martin's baby and I got used to it

Whoa... Let's have none of that.

I'm afraid those arm bones have left the station.

I've been having the same issues with Woot and Nimmie arms. Unfortunately, I think it is already way too late to correct that. I had some issues with hands too, especially the thumbs, and some of them have been corrected. But that was a few months ago.

As more and more animations are being done with the characters, the probability that those may be corrected at the character level approaches zero. So you better correcting those locally in your asigned anmations. I was also thinking of correcting that in my own animations using bone scaling as you suggest but I never managed to do that. When a pose does not work because of that, I just try another pose or another angle until it looks acceptable.

In the end, I found that it is an interesting challenge and learning experience to figure a way to get a good performance even with those constraints. It sure forced me to think differently than my comfort zone sometimes and I ended up doing things I would have not done otherwise. That in itself is a wonderfull learning situation.

Well,

The elegant way should be to correct the situation at character level, even if some adjustment would be needed further on animation work.
This also would be a " fantastic challenge and a good learning way to revise our animation work" hehehe ! just kidding with you Yves !

No seriously, Personnaly I had to revise all my Tin woodman animation cause Tin's shoulder-control bones has changed at character level,
So I can figure out the problem... but doing so ,I took this time to handle some other issues on my work and the final result is better.
Who can say that his anim work is perfect and final ? so it's never to late.

Beyond that ,scaling arm/forearm proportion individually is a working solution but will need extra "muscle cp" tweaking work to fix bad joints behavior when the scaled bone are rotated... Can we say that this is a better "time saving" workaround ? ...I'm not sure !

From my point of view , this is a "minor" change at character level...but of course mean a revision of all actions done with the character...
...that's the facts but at the same time, the overall results would be a better animation experience and a better look of the character.

Those specific characters are great but they will always keep a "newbie" look cause of that deformation.
Remain me small people with dwarfism who sometime have this problem.

The character I would recall to revision is : Klu-Klip , Woot , Loons , Yves mention Nimmie ( maybe it's less evident since the character is taller ? )

So that's all I have to say about that
I'll wait for a decision on that issue and will comply to it

I wanted to mention it clearly one time , now it's done ...sorry if this hurt some feeling

Al

Maybe a "test revised character" should be done so we can test it with animation and see how it goes ?

Those who doesn't want or can't adjust their action should be able to stick with the original character.

Al

No multiple versions of characters.

Alain,

Consider the revision work you had to do the TinMan shoulders. I unerstand that was a nice challenge and learning experience but now consider the enormous number of action files and choreographies and poses that were already animated. If we change the characters at model level, this means that a lot of those actions and choreographies will certainly and instantly be broken. Who is going to go back and fix all those actions and choreographies? When will that happen? Would you volunteer to do all that?

And while we fix relative arm vs forearm lengths, why no go and fix hands too and colarbones, and mouth rigs, etc? And then go back in the already done animations and fix the results too? But why stop at the arms?

Really, I truely think it is too late for that sort of model changes. That should have been done at the begining of the project when those characters were being modeled and rigged. Personally, I can only blame myself for not doing that when it was the time to do it. I should have taken the time to download the models, examine them and do test animations and posturing with them to see if anything needed fixing and provide comments, feedbacks and advises at that time. Now, it is too late. I cannot go back. I decided to live with the consequences of my decisions at that time. But this is nevertheless a good lesson learned.

okdo

This could be adjusted through the individual bicep/forearm squetch controls (deforms slightly, but not too noticable). It could be done in the models user properties to give it a more permanent fix or per animation as needed. This shouldn't effect the animation too much, if you keep the arm length the same. For instance, setting the bicep to 35% and the forearm to -38% keeps Nimmies hand in the same position. This could be tested to see if it does change any of the animation work already done. Woot is a 25% bicep, -25% on the forearm. It deforms the sleeve slightly (more noticable than Nimmie) but that could be fixed with an on/off muscle pose.

Right arm are done.

That is an interesting solution Mark. An ON/OFF pose that would set the arm/forearm equal length and keep the total arm length as is. This way, any new animation where arm length is an issue could have the pose to ON and that would not affect any already done animation where that pose would be OFF by default.

Mark's solution should work, the only thing I would check is how much distortion there is at the elbows when bending. That can be fixed with a little CP Weighting or Smartskin if necessary...I'm not sure if it would be though, it would depend on the amount of change in size.

David, you would not be able to reweight or smartskin, that would effect the original state of the model.

You're right, Mark...it would have to be muscle movement in the squetch poses. I don't know if it would be necessary, it depends on how much distortion the resizing introduces in the elbows...it might not be enough to worry about with the percentages you mentioned.

This seem an elegant solution!
And I will certainly use it with Woot.

two thumbs up !


You rock !
)

Al

Yes. And it works too. I tried that on Woot for his "Run holding Packsack" action file. His arms were so disproportioned that he could not hold the straps of his pack sack. I found that scaling up the arm bone +25% and scaling down the forearm bone -25% made the two bones the same length while still keepint the total arm length the same. That is for Woot. Different propertions would be necessary for other characters. By "scaling" I mean usng the arm and forearm Squetch control poses.

Indeed brilliant idea.

I did find a problem with this technique, ik/fk switch breaks down, I'm looking into it. I have woot and nimmie setup with an on/off pose that scales the arm bones and adjusts the mesh to the new positions, but I haven't upload the changes to the svn, I was waiting for the go ahead and do it. Plus I wanted to find the cause of the problem.

The issue may be because the arm orient bones rotate more as the bicep is stretched...I had to do that to keep IK working when the arm was stretched to its' extreme. I'll take a look late tonight.

If I turn the supports limits on in the kinemetic constraint, the problem goes away, but I don't know if that's a problem for the rig if it's on.

I think that causes a problem in some situations...it's been a while, so I don't remember when. It's worth experimenting tonight to find out, I'll put that on my to-do list.

I'll upload the changes, default off in the arm control folder.

I'd say it's a go ahead and do it if it is set to OFF by default and if it does not introduces wickedness. So finding the cause of the FK-IK issue is a prerequisite. But I trust you will get it to work.

They've been updated.

After some messing with it tonight, I think that what I was trying to avoid by turning off the "supports limits" in the kinematic constraint was some increased popping of the elbow when in IK and moving the torso around...other than that, it seemed to work fine with it turned on.

The breakdown on the IK/FK switch when scaling I think is due to the extra rotation on the bicep targets when scaling...without the extra rotation, the IK targets would decrease their angle and make the IK not work at all. I'll do some experimenting tomorrow to see if I can get a better targeting setup so that the extra rotation isn't necessary.

Did you look at the updates I uploaded to svn, David?

I haven't yet, I'll do that tonight...I had to stop early last night, my sleep schedule has been all over the place lately.

The updates on Woot appear to do the job, Mark! The testing I did didn't turn up any problems.