Hi David,

Tonight I started the CP assignments… perhaps not the best timing because I’m exhausted and my mind has turned to clay at this point. Anyway, I usually start this process in the area of the hips. The first thing I ran into here was a geometry bone I have not seen in any other rigs; stomach_IO_geom. In looking at what CPs are assigned to it in the v13_Squetchy_Sam_06_15_2007 model, what I see is a lot of weighting between it and other bones. The problem here is initially I need to just assign some CPs to it and not knowing what it does this is hard to do. Then eventually I’ll need to put it in an action and play with probably the control bones (or ???) to see if it looks right and weight it until it does look right. The problem here is that I have no idea what stomach_IO_geom is there for, what it will eventually do or, what bones to manipulate in an action and, LOL, what to look for when I do!

Oh dear. Info on this particular bone will get me by this and that will do for a day or so however, I will run into more of this and I know it. Is there any more documentation on this phase anywhere? If not, perhaps we can baby me through this process and in doing so create an FAQ on this phase for others. What do you think?

Thanks,
Rusty

Edit: BTW on that "automated" reset compensates... my site is full or I would have uploaded it for you by now. However, I must go through and clean up things before I can do it and this is taking time. Sorry.

The "stomach_IO_geom" and "chest_IO_geom" are for chest and stomach expansion and contraction and are used in the "Animation_Controls/TORSO" Poses. You don't have to use them, you can use muscle movement for that if you like. If you do decide to use them, weight them last for the torso. First, do your weighting using the "stomach_geom", "mid_section_geom" and "chest_geom", get everything to bend the way you want, and then expand the stomach and chest using those torso poses to weight between those and the "IO" bones.

If you put together a FAQ, it would probably help a lot of people...you've been very thorough in everything else you've done, Rusty. Anyone that wants to make a tutorial, guide, chart, list or whatever is more than welcome as long as they make sure the information is accurate at the time it's made. I'm going to be doing some tutorials over the next couple of months as I put together a personal project, hopefully those will help people as well.

David,

I don't know why I didn't think about that. Breathing is important to me and my characters always breath in and out using the chest and the nostrils (don't think I saw a nostril flare in your face rig) -- its of course subtle but 3D characters must always move in some way. Did I see mechanisms for arm and leg muscles too? Also, even though I'm not using the face until later, the continuous motion in the throat/neck when a character speaks is also important to me; does your face rig have mechanisms for this? Or, while I'm asking, cheeks in/out, ears down/up, tongue in cheek, eye tick, swallow, sniff or face jiggle or anything else out of the ordinary (if that has a definition)?

Re an FAQ, I'll try. I have (I guess we all have) a lot of irons in the fire. Bit it should be easy really and I'll run it by you before its released (the wiki and pinned post I'd imagine).

Cheers,
Rusty

Edit: Re faq: as I ask questions and you answer its just a matter of copy/paste into a document. However, this will only catch questions from myself. A search of the forum would capture questions from others and your answers -- in the past. I will 'try' to find the time for this. However, this won't catch questions and answers coming from others in the future. You are really the right person to do this though; because you (and Mark) will get the questions in the future and its just a copy/paste and also because you are the answer part. I can't search the forums on a continual baseus. Perhaps, you could ask people to update the wiki faq with their q and a's? Or, if I start it, you take it over just copy/paste as questions come in to you. I know you do enough as it is so perhaps asking the people asking questions to do it is the way to go. After all, that's what a wiki is for, no?

Cheers,
Rusty

The nose flares automatically when the mouth widens, but there isn't a specific pose for just nostril flaring at the moment...it would be easy to add a muscle pose though.



There is an automatic bicep flex in there...there aren't any leg flexing things in at the moment, but they could be added in the same way I did the biceps.



There isn't any throat/neck movement in there at the moment.



The cheeks and ears have automatic movement...poses could be added for direct control. There isn't a "tongue in cheek" pose or swallow at the moment, but the next update (in the next couple of days) will have a lot of eye stuff that might have the ability to do a "tick" (depending on what type of "tick" you're talking about). "Sniff" could probably be gotten across using the "sneer" controls. Face jiggle could be put in pretty easily.



A Wiki would probably be the way to go. I'm going to try to make tutorials as I work on this project I'm on and see if I can knock a few things out at once.

There are still some places that the rig can be added to, you point out some that I'll be looking at as I go along, Rusty. I've got a pretty significant upgrade to the eyes/eyelids that I'll be getting out in the next couple of days...it's a start.