I need some smartskining on the ankle/knee/thigh/mid rift/stomach areas. Which bones can I put it on?

Still need smartskin with weighting and fan bones? I haven't smartskinned a model yet.

The geom bones, unhide them using the pose. You will not be able to directly smartskin the bone, you will have to animate the rig in an action, unhide the geom bones and right click the geom bone to add smartskin. I believe this is how you need to do it, David will be able to tell you for sure.

Hi,

On the SIG 2005 Training Video (worth the cost) William Sutton takes the Dex model from the Hash CD and weights the CPs and uses smart skin to make the model move realistically. It is very long and very good and facing this task again I've been watching it the last few days while on the tread mill.

I myself can not finish a model with just fan bones and weighted CPs. I always need a little smart skin to polish off the motion. Weighed CPs tend to shrink a joint for one thing.

But don't try to apply massive layers of Smart Skin (SS)! Its hard to get it right and there are many pit falls.

All that said, in my experience you can in most cases use control bones for SS just fine... and, you simply apply it to the bone whose motion causes the gunk you wish to fix.


Rusty

Yeah, weighting has that shrinking factor and I'm probably not weighting to the right bones, so smart skin is going to be faster. It's nearly there, but I want some definition in the bends.
The bones I've tried to smartskin (they don't move in the smartskin window) are un-hidden in the model, but they don't appear in an action.

If you read my post, I gave you the answer.

You have to use the rig to rotate the geometry bones, then unhide the geometry bones using the pose that David provided, then select the geometry bone that you want to smartskin by right clicking and choosing new smartskin. So use the control rig ,in an action, to put the geometry bone in position.

I couldn't smartskin them from an action because I didn't know about this. Cheers.

I haven't had to SmartSkin any of those areas with this rig...does the shrinking you're referring to show up in Squetchy Sam, Ken? I know the kind of shrinking you mean, but I'm pretty sure it can be cured with weighting (and I don't think Sam has the problem, if I'm remembering correctly). If we need more fan bones, they can be added pretty easily. You can paint yourself into a corner with SmartSkinning if you're not careful.

The legs could benefit from some muscle contraction like the biceps...that could help the knees if there is a shrinking problem. It's one of the things on my list when I get time. This week I've been trying to make the bones rig for the face easier to install...still a few more things to do on that.

If you do end up SmartSkinning, put the limb you're working on in FK and use the control rig to move it like Mark suggested (unhiding the "geom" bones using the Pose).

Hope that helps.

It's all done, thanks. I just used the FK calf controller bone on the knees for example. I haven't a clue about rigging the crotch area (there are three bone directions to worry about) but it's passable. I'm sure you'll find plenty of weighting errors when I throw this model out there.

Is this a TWO model?