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Precise positioning of joints


nemyax

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Is there a way to snap bone joints to specific locations in bones mode? I mean, apart from the number boxes in the properties panel (which provide all the joys of character rigging in Microsoft Excel). I fully expected an option to snap joints to spline points—that way you could make a rubber band figure and snap-snap-snap together a skeleton in no time. But I can't find anything like that in the program or in the manual.

What tricks do you use for the purpose?

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Hi Nemyax,

 

I toiled over something similar to this for a while. My problem had to do with snapping cps to specific locations

within a pose.

 

You can snap a cp to a "Mold" by selecting a cp then (Right Click) and snap to nearest cp.

 

HOWEVER.....If I hear you right, you desire to extend a knee/ elbow joint and then have the cps match the move.

 

May need to give us a simple drawing/ sketch or sample....so we can see what you want done.

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A specific feature like this has probably not been made since the bones are typically inside the surface made by splines and not on the surface, originating at a CP.

 

If you are going to do the manual work of positioning a spline inside a character to show where bones should be... then why not just position the bones at the outset?

 

However if you really need this, I think a likely solution is a spreadsheet that will text-edit a model file to move the endpoints of bones to the location of certain CPs.

 

 

 

None-the-less, I can imagine an all-in-A:M workflow with out text editing using these known features

 

-It is possible to make a named group out of a single point

-The Group Constraint will move the origin of a bone to the center of a Group.

-The AimAt constraint can make a bone point to and reach to another bone

-While Constraints do not operate in the Model window, it is possible to export a model, with bones, from a chor after constraints have had their effect.

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If I hear you right, you desire to extend a knee/ elbow joint and then have the cps match the move.

No, I'd like bone heads/tails to support snapping to CPs (with the customary right-click, of course). In fact, if this were possible, your idea would also be easy to implement—in reverse. That is, put a new CP at the joint, select the new CP, select the CPs you want to move, make the move, and snap the joint to the new CP's updated position.

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Yes.... I asked for something similar to that as well. This would allow a bone to snap to a cps position. Then you could attach the cp to it and so forth...

At least that's what I wanted to do with it. Effectively you could place small bones on all the cps in my case. And turn those bones into a system that carried the cps individually.

 

I Know.....that's very crazy craziness. :)

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I Know.....that's very crazy craziness. :)

Actually, that might be a reasonable technique if you wanted to take advantage of constraints somehow.

 

If you are going to do the manual work of positioning a spline inside a character to show where bones should be... then why not just position the bones at the outset?

Now and again I find myself needing to position a joint smack in the middle of a loop or between specific vertices, etc.

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