Here's the raw model. He'll have a cape but I'm gonna rig him first and get all that working, then add the cape with a cloth material.

Biff and Skarab were best friends in college as well as rivals for Midge's affections. He's still bitter over losing her, but he has risen to be a captain of industry with his popular WeevilSnax ("The Snack With Perfect Crunch!").

However when the Bugbots started becoming infected with the deadly computer virus known as Beetlemania, Biff decided on his own to start confiscating all Bugbots for what he claimed were safety reasons. This left Skarab, who is the Chief Bugbot Inspector, without a working Bugbot to examine.

Looks good!

Complicated backstory on these guys!

very well modeled

The basic rigging is done but for some reason the TSM installer left out some finger bones so I may redo it, but everything else seems to be working okay and I got good smart skinning around the knees for the wrinkling.

Here's a walk cycle for Biff. I've got dynamic constraints on his antennae but it doesn't show so well in a single-pass render.

I guess I need to start thinking about his cape.

Here's a "quick" test for the cloth material of Biff's cape. "Quick" meaning, I spent two solid days last week (and half the day today) trying to get the cloth to behave and work with the walk cycle I did, but that proved to be too much for the cloth simulation to handle, mainly because the walk cycle began too abruptly and caused the cloth to go wonky almost from the first frame. It took me awhile to figure that out.

Another *very* important detail for cloth is to be absolutely sure the normals of the cloth deflector group are all pointing in the correct direction.

I finally decided to forget merging it with the walk cycle and just focus on getting the cloth to look right.

Looks a bit stiff, not fluid, foldy enough.

Not sure how many scenes are in your animation that require cape/cloth, but you sure you want to be battling with cloth?

Perhaps you might consider a hybrid approach with dynamic constraints and use cloth material only at the ends of cape? Or even just go totally with dynamic constraints.

Dynamic constraints are a little more controllable, predictable.

Maybe try rigging a test case for 1 vertical column of say 3 patches, and see what you think.

Control bone
+bone1
++bone2 (attached to bone1)
+++bone3 (attached to bone2)

Apply dynamic constraint to bone 3. Test with default settings, by moving control bone. Tweak to taste.

Then try making a more dense column of patches and make end patches a cloth material?

Hm, not a bad idea. I had been thinking of combining cloth and dynamic constraints but didn't want to go down that path just to get more frustrated, though I was thinking of dynamics just for the shoulder portion, then cloth down from there. But your solution may have more potential.

For now, I just need him standing inside the door when it opens, with the enslaver ants backing him up. Getting it working with his walk cycle was not necessary; I just had this idea of building on the walk cycle with a series of test animations: cape; then textures; then lighting, all using the same walk and camera, but that was *before* I spent two days just wrestling with the cloth. At that point it was just, get the cloth working right, everything else is secondary.

Hey Nancy, if I post the model do you want to play around with it?

I quickly threw together a pseudo cape with multiple columns.

Each column of patches has a control bone and 3 geometry bones. I did not futz with cp weighting, but instead used bone falloff. CP weighting would have been the better way to go and the cloth movement would appear smoother if I had. I probably didn't have to use so many patches.

I applied a dynamic constraint to the last in the string of bones for each column and changed the stiffness setting to 10%, and drag to 20%. If you shaped the cape, then you would also probably want to turn gravity off (in the dynamic constraint). I didn't test for any collisions.

For this test, and because I'm lazy, I moved only 1 control bone back & forth, but applied an "orient like" the "master" control bone to the other 3 column's control bones, and gave them lags of 1 or 2, just to get some variation. But you could instead animate each of the control bones however you'd like.

If you need your cape/cloth to drape more tightly over some shape then ...umm...good luc...er...it would require more hand animation, tweaking.

Gerry this is all quite impressive.
Outstanding.

Wait til you see him textured!

Hey Nancy, I looked at your example movie and I may go that route. I was getting way too ambitious with the cloth test I was trying, and in actuality, for the shot I need Biff for, the need for cape movement is minimal, just a hint of movement as the front doors open. Thanks for the test.

Actually not complicated at all! Former best friends, rivals for the girl's affection, now bitter enemies. What could be simpler?

I posted this one over on my brand spankin new "Nightcallers" facebook page but for those of you who don't "like" anything I'm putting it here too. Still doing some detail work on his staff/cane/magic wand/whatever-it-is (you would think I'd know more about stuff that I just make up) but Biff is the spiff, if you can dig the lingo, daddy-o.

He's pretty snazzy-looking!

he, is very sparkly, love the whole outfit and his bewildered expression

Here's a slightly more *glamorous* glamour shot, and looking a little less bewildered to boot.

Very cool, Gerry!