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Rig for Pre-skinned Mesh


detbear

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Hey everyone,

 

I have a rigging question.....for ideas. I have a few of my own concerning this, but

I wanted to get some feedback.

 

I have a mesh/ human character. There are currently no bones or rig.

However, All the joint motions are already on sliders.

For example, there is a slider that bends the legs. There's a slider that bends the bicep, etc.

 

In other words, the joint motions of the character are all on individual sliders. These move the mesh

as though bones were already present.

 

I want to place a rig on this character that utilizes these sliders. Obviously, the skinning,

weighting is in the slider motions already.

 

I thought of some kind of MultiD setup. One where a rig bone rotates and moves the appropriate

slider percentage, but I haven't experimented with it.

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David. Turns out that the different poses compete with each other.

For instance, if you rotate the thigh forward and then rotate the lower leg also,

the lower leg shrinks as it moves it's pose.

 

I suspect this has to do with the cps being involved in both poses. Not sure if that

can be fixed.

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David. Turns out that the different poses compete with each other.

For instance, if you rotate the thigh forward and then rotate the lower leg also,

the lower leg shrinks as it moves it's pose.

 

I suspect this has to do with the cps being involved in both poses. Not sure if that

can be fixed.

 

I haven't seen the Poses, but remember that you will have to move the CP's in an arc with in-between frames to maintain volume. Muscle movement will move things in a straight line otherwise (including when combining muscle Poses). One reason to use bones is that they naturally provide arcs when rotating.

 

Hope that helps.

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The trouble is, that there are keys on every cp on each key 1-100. So the inbetweens are already there.

 

But the upper leg pose moves everything from the thigh down to the foot.

 

the second pose moves the lower leg only. with keys on all cps..1-100.

 

When these poses are done together the lower leg shrinks when its pose is moved.

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In my limited knowledge of SmartSkin and what you are trying to do... sounds like you need to use lots of separate SS's... and for bones that roll in multiple axis, a SS for each axis. Do not try to 'double-up' smartskins- that's where they fail.

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No. The problem is that each of the poses has a key on every cp of the leg from the hip to toes.

 

So if you turn up the pose for the thigh to move forward, it is actually moving all cps in the entire leg.

 

HOWEVER.....the lower leg pose moves the same cps also.

 

So when these two poses are used together, the lower leg shrinks.

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a couple things.... while the model is shaped nicely, it pretty much is the opposite of what A:M is all about. there is zero reason to have so many control points in this model. You could achieve the same shape with proably 1/8 the number of control points.

 

Me, I would never take on animation in A:M with a model built in this fashion. its just too much unnecessary detail in the mesh.

 

the other thing... its been a while since I've used a:m on the reg... but the poses are additive. the values add up ontop of eachother, if I remember correctly. so you'll have to force feed zero into the control points that you don't want shrinking.

 

Not sure what else to add as Im clueless as to the results one would be looking for in this method.

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Here is an idea--though you have given up: Since you HAVE got the morph shapes to transfer into A:M as poses, use those CP positions as just data to copy from when doing smartskins on normal joints.

Make a skeleton as normal and attach the model to it. Then bend the leg in an action, make a new smartskin, and copy/paste the CP positions from the keyframes stored in your imported morphs. Do this in isolation for the different joint rotations.

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