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cage mesh driven rigging


ruscular

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I started using Lightwave3D and combine AM rigging ability with Lightwave3D. AM still has the best smart bone rigging system, However its weakness is driving a high patch count model with rigging. We have a weight transfer plug-in for AM model. That's almost like a cage driven system. I wonder if having a plugin that allows you to rig a lo rez model and animate it, then link that mesh to a hi rez model and animate it?

Basically what I am working on now is to rig a cage mesh in AM and then export the action file thru MDD, and then use the mdd file to drive the hi rez model in Lightwave3D by way of lo rez cage model.

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Hey ruscular,

 

I've made some efforts with something similar in the past but not with LW.

 

I'm guessing you want to utilize LW's render/ effects.

 

The process you describe would be very cool, but I don't think it would be easy.

If you succeed, it would be great to have the capability.

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We have a weight transfer plug-in for AM model. That's almost like a cage driven system. I wonder if having a plugin that allows you to rig a lo rez model and animate it, then link that mesh to a hi rez model and animate it?

 

 

 

 

How would that be different from weight transfer?

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We have a weight transfer plug-in for AM model. That's almost like a cage driven system. I wonder if having a plugin that allows you to rig a lo rez model and animate it, then link that mesh to a hi rez model and animate it?

 

 

 

 

How would that be different from weight transfer?

 

You would keep the cage mesh to manipulate the set of points during your animation process. The plus side of cage deformer is to be able to rig complex model without slowing down the animation process. I know some people that would use the same rig to run a lo rez version of the model and then do a switch for final animation. Which means you would have to setup twice two rigs character. http://graphics.pixar.com/library/HarmonicCoordinatesB/paper.pdf

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJGjKg_P6KM

 

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I still use AM for superb constraint system and smart skin. Still lacking in other render-er. I think if we had cage deformer in AM, then the unique patch system would stay intact by staying inside the program. But yeah Lightwave can do particle really well. and also bullet dynamics. Anyway, something I am working on to use AM to make a cage mesh to drive Lightwave character.

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and also bullet dynamics.

 

 

 

You didn't hear it from me but there may be Bullet dynamics in v19. Steffen is looking at it.

 

I still use AM for superb constraint system and smart skin. Still lacking in other render-er.

 

 

If you are still SmartSkin how will a cage deformer help you export to Lightwave since a cage deformer can't do what smartskin does?

 

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Speaking of future A:M versions, are there any real time lighting/ render solutions in the distance.

 

 

Short answer: GPU rendering tried twice now in A:M with poor results. Look for my answer to Tore's question about GPU rendering for what little more I can explain.

 

 

I'll note that real-time lighting level adjustment can be done in post with OpenEXR render lighting buffers. Render once/ adjust lights many times.

 

 

Or export

improvements for exterior engines??

 

If you can identify a file format, a publicly documented file format, that makes that practical, that might be a likely candidate.

 

If the format only serves to get to a very particular engine that is very expensive, that makes it an unlikely candidate.

 

Personally I think a simple pipeline to export to Blender/Cycles (free) would be a candidate.

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I did post there moments ago. And stressed that rather than the difficult real-time render engine....A:M should revisit and improve the current exporters. MDD for instance is very difficult to use.

 

Are there exporters currently? YES.

 

Am I very, very, very thankful for these exporters? ABSOLUTELY. Thank you.

 

DO they work as well as they could? I don't think so.

 

Cycles would be a good option for an exporter. Blender would not take the place of A:M. A:M has much better tools. However, cycles is a very good renderer. A slick, streamlined mesh export into blender would be very good.

 

ALSO.....didn't someone develop a personal export to work in octane? Seems like Xtaz spoke of this at some point.

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"If you are still SmartSkin how will a cage deformer help you export to Lightwave since a cage deformer can't do what smartskin does?"

 

 

Smartskin would be done in AM, I would just export the cage mesh to lightwave to drive the hi rez mesh afterward. What I am suggesting is that a plug in for a cage deformer for AM would be useful for driving a higher rez model than re rigging a hi rez model, after animating a proxy model. Seems like the weight transfer plugin is already half way there.

 

Great news about bullet effect. If its true!

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We have a weight transfer plug-in for AM model. That's almost like a cage driven system. I wonder if having a plugin that allows you to rig a lo rez model and animate it, then link that mesh to a hi rez model and animate it?

 

 

 

 

How would that be different from weight transfer?

 

With a cage deformer, if you have to change your control cage, you just change it and that's it. You don't touch the hi-rez version, and your changes are applied dynamically.

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I rather agree with nemyax on the difference between a cage deformer and weighting. A cage would move and anything lying within would move/bend with it- no matter the density. I had tried constraining A:M's powerful 'distortion mode' type distorters (in an action R-click New, Distorter.) to a bone, however the CP's of the distort are not constrainable... I forget why. Imagine a rig where you simply adjust the various cages to fit over your character and you get smooth bendy joints no matter how dense.

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With a cage deformer, if you have to change your control cage, you just change it and that's it. You don't touch the hi-rez version, and your changes are applied dynamically.

 

 

With weight transfer, if you have to change the lo-res, then rerun the weight transfer.

 

Yes it is one more step, but is it a fatal extra step? Why is that step one step too many?

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crazy idea...

 

instead of controlling the hi-res model with the lo-res model, what if you could somehow "bake" the hi-res shape back onto the lo-res shape as a displacement map? And then use the lo-res model which now looks like the hi-res model?

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Why is that step one step too many?

Because it's demonstrably avoidable.

 

 

But we don't have deformer cages to do it the other way. If we can't have them, why is the project not do-able with the extra step that A:M can do?

 

I had Maya. Almost everything in modeling in Maya is an extra step or more compared to doing it in A:M, and yet those people live with it and do their Maya projects.

 

But if there's an extra step for something in A:M, everything comes to a halt?

 

Why are people ready to bail on A:M for one extra step, to go to some other program that will make them do 50 extra steps somewhere else in the pipeline?

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But if there's an extra step for something in A:M, everything comes to a halt?

No one said anything about things coming to a halt. It's a shame there's more work than there could be, is all.

 

crazy idea...

 

instead of controlling the hi-res model with the lo-res model, what if you could somehow "bake" the hi-res shape back onto the lo-res shape as a displacement map? And then use the lo-res model which now looks like the hi-res model?

There's no way you could displace (1) to get (2), for example.

afee987ba88de91330cd70177c04c96b.png

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  • 2 weeks later...

I started using Lightwave3D and combine AM rigging ability with Lightwave3D. AM still has the best smart bone rigging system, However its weakness is driving a high patch count model with rigging. We have a weight transfer plug-in for AM model. That's almost like a cage driven system. I wonder if having a plugin that allows you to rig a lo rez model and animate it, then link that mesh to a hi rez model and animate it?

 

Basically what I am working on now is to rig a cage mesh in AM and then export the action file thru MDD, and then use the mdd file to drive the hi rez model in Lightwave3D by way of lo rez cage model.

a high patch count model in A:M is overkill every time. get the detail you need with texture and disp maps.

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