I am having trouble figuring out how to weight CP's and/or add fan bones to make the spine curve and twist properly.
I want to sqaush teh stomach more than I stretch the back and not compress the breasts vertically.
I'm sure this is possible with the 2008 rig but I need some direction please.

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I think that the origin of the chest bone would be lower (to the bottom of the rib cage) and the origin of the hips should be higher (around the height of the navel). You can get reasonably good results by making sure the spine is toward the back of the torso and doing some CP Weighting. Depending on what you're after, there are some other options like Smartskin and building a gut rig, but this character doesn't appear to need more than the weighting.

Hope that helps, Tim.

Anatomically the ribcage is a pretty rigid thing. It expands to breath, but it doesn't really bend. So putting a bone joint in the middle of the ribcage wouldn't be useful.

The part of the back that really does the bending is the spine from the hips to the bottom of the rib cage (maybe half way up the back?) An anatomy book with a skeleton would be a good guide.

I'd move the pivot point of those bones to something more like this...

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I'm presuming the 2008 rig can be varied like that.

I'd also move the hip/leg joint to a more anatomically correct location where the black crosshair is.

I don't know much about the working of the 2008 rig. What is that null that i pointed the question mark to?

You are always helpful.
It sounds like you and Robert see some of the same problems.

thanks Robert.
Seems You and David have seen the same errors.
I'm not defending my bone positions but I would like to show how I placed them and get more of your feedback.
I used a set of skeleton rotoscopes that I distorted to roughly fit her proportions. as you can see from the pics.
Can you please help me understand where my thinking went off track?
This is how I thought I could get good bone placement but if this is not going to work I am ready to learn.

The "NULL" you asked about is the body null of the 2008 rig that parents everything but the "steady" and "balance" bones.

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I adjusted the back bone to what you and David suggested.
It definitely helped.
I added one fan bone to smooth and help put forwards a bit.

I still need to work on the bottom of the shirt.

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What do you think?

That's good thinking!

So your original bone placement may be appropriate after all.

One difference between the skeleton and your layout is that the pivot point for the ribcage is farther back in the skeleton. That may be significant.

Maybe more so is that you have CPs from the mesh that would be children of the ribcage bone assigned to the spine bone below it instead, so when she bends her back the ribcage is going to be squashed or stretched.

You may still have to cheat some of this placement and CP assignment. In real life what we see is skin sliding over bones rather than skin glued to bones. A:M doesn't slide skin over bones. You may have to place the bones slightly differently or weight the CPs a bit contrary to reality to get a realistic effect.


The result you have in your bottom two pics doesn't look bad. What part of that don't you like?

I have placed some dynamics on the lower pant legs, breast, and ear ring.
The bottom of the shirt needs to have some natural follow that is not built in yet.
The back of the shirt when bent is sticking out too far I think.
The body portion seems to be close.
Thanks for the explanations of why I need to change things..
They go much farther than just what to move to fix it.

The fan bone you put in does a very good job, Tim!

The bones and CP weights seem to be pretty good for the RIGHT side now.
I was continuing with the instructions for the 2008 rig to mirror bones and finish the install.
Now I am getting strange issue and I don't know what I am doing wrong.

The weighting for the CP's is not FULLY transferring to the Left side.
The bones are mirrored and the CP's are mirrored, and the bone names are Right_*** and Left_***.
Some CP's on the left are only taking part of the weight assignments.
I used the settings from the 2008rig installation instructions to mirrorbones.

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542:left_side.jpg]

Any idea why its not assigning to the weights for Right*** to Left***?

Take a screen grab of the setting in the mirrorbones plugin dialog.

A couple of things, where are these new fan parented? And what bone are you running the plugin from?

Also, were these fans added after you ran the mirrorbones plugin once, and then you ran the plugin again to mirror the new fans?

Thanks for looking at this Mark.
I have a couple pics below to help answer the questions.
The bones I added are all below the MirrorBones bone.
I ran the Mirrorbones plugin by selecting the MirrorBones bone, right click, and select the mirrorbones plugin.
The fans are added before I ran the plugin as you can see in one pic.
I actually have tried to complete all the weighting, smartskinning, fan bones, and relationships on new fan bones, all prior to the mirrorbones process.
I was careful not alter, move, add or subtract from any relationships in the 2008rig. All mine are in a separate folder as shown below.
I thought that way I would get everything on the left for free. (silly me)
I saved the model before mirroring (that's the pic below) so I could return to a fixed point if there was a problem.
I did not run the mirror a second time since the fans were all part of the RightHalf prior to mirroring.

EDIT: I am using v15i if that has an impact.

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The one thing I notice is that you do not have the "Search string casesensative" option checked. It may or may not make a difference, but it's worth trying. If this doesn't work, you can send me the model, and I'll take a look.

I don't understand but that seemed to make a big difference.
I didn't check it because I understood that would make it ignore the opposite case. i.e. "Right" is search string with case sensitive ON would not mirror "right".
I will give it a hard look and let you know if there are still any problems.

Thanks,

Yes, so it may mirror the bone (in some cases), but not the weighting. So depending on the rig being used, you should follow the naming convention of the rig, including case sensativity, which it appears that you have.

Well I think everything is working now and the weights are all right.
I have a small issue with the rotation of the fingers on the left hand not working.
Only the pinky works.
Not sure where this problem is coming from.
Anyone seen this problem?

The only other problem I see is in the "Relations".
They have an error loading the name strings for the relationship.
It does not seem to affect anything functioning.
I recall seeing this error with the TSM2 rig when I got it and used it in v14c.
Has anyone seen this in v15i with the 2008rig?
I can probably correct it in a text editor with a little effort.


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With TSM2 I found that if I saved right after running Rigger, then restarted A:M and reloaded the character most of the text strings would appear properly.

However they are just display names, and don't affect the working of the rig.

Usually it's the word "Relationship", but i forget what 4386 is.

I've never seen the error loading string in the 2008 rig before. Are those suppose to be orient like constraints? It appears to only be in your added fan bones, is that correct? How did you duplicate the constraints for the fans on the left side? If you used the "mirror constraints" plugin, you may have caused issues in the finger control setup. It will be hard to track down without seeing the model file.

OK, the mirror constraints plugin is causing the issue in my case. I've narrowed it down and can reproduce it. The question is, did you use the mirror constraints plugin?

Closing A:M and reopening clears up the issue.

Now, if you did use the plugin, it screwed up all the 2008 rig "Right" side poses by creating Left side constraints in them. This screws up the left side of the rig with double constraints in different relationships.

Yes I did use the "Mirror Constraints".
What is the proper way to mirror the constraints without "Mirror Constraints"?
What do you suggest for me to get my model working right?
Thanks Mark

I closed and restarted AM, then restarted teh model and it seems to have cleared up the most if not all the names.
Thanks Robert,

Well, the proper way would be to do it manually. But.....if you have a version before and after you mirrored the constraints, you can fix it pretty easy.

Open both models in a project, open the relationship folder of the MIRRORED constraints model. Navigate to the pose relationship of you fan constraints pose. Select the relationship1 of the pose and drag it to the name of the NON-MIRRORED model. This should update the relationship of the non-mirrored model with the left side constraints. Check to see if the left side constraints are in the non-mirrored model, if they are, save as a new model. Close A:M and reload, open the new model and check everything. You should be good to go.

Just a note, you have to edit the relationship of the pose or be in an action window for the "mirror constraints" plugin to work properly. If you are not, when you run the plugin, the enforcements and offsets will not be correct.

Thanks Mark, I'll try that tonight after work and see how it goes.

PERFECT!
I need to test some more but the left hand works now and I think I am back in business!

Thanks again Mark