A:M Rigging
Rigging & Relationships
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I have been modelling the B9 robot from Lost In Space over the past week or so. I was wondering if anyone would have any ideas on how to best rig his arms? If the arms were strictly mechanical in nature, than that wouldn't be too much of a problem. But since his arms were essentially flexible ducting with a human arm inside, it was very flexible in nature. It could be fully extended or retracted, and when extended could move around with total freedom. Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Below are some pictures of his arms in 'action'. Thanks... Al Extended Arms Retracted Arms Arms Extended Straight A…
Last reply by Tralfaz, -
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- 6 replies
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What's the best way to keyframe poses? [EDIT] This thread started out as BVH and TSM2, but has been edited for the subject you see now.
Last reply by itsjustme, -
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I'm using Steffen's MirrorBones plugin in conjunction with finishing up the LiteFace installation. I've got the "Write Logfile" box checked. midway through I get an error saying "False weighting detected. Look in mbw_conflicts.txt" but I did a search of my whole hard drive and I can't locate this text file. Anyone have any idea where it ends up?
Last reply by yoda64, -
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So, thanks to the help of those on the forum in reminding me of a couple of old tricks, I cooked up something for my return to animating. My problem is that I have two teams of 7 that I would like to place and move about on the inner surface of a cylinder. So, to make my life a little easier, I did the following: -Made 14 "pointer" bones for the cylinder. -Made a Constrain to Surface constraint with a separate pointer bone assigned to each player. Now, I wanted to deal with laying people out on a flat version of the cylinder's surface (just easier to think that way), and so I made up 14 nulls to place on a control grid. This control grid related the loc…
Last reply by robcat2075, -
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Hey all, So, I'm starting back up into AM and one of the first projects I'm tackling is trying to do some kind of a zero-g thing. I've got a number of characters (currently just stick figures while I experiment with motion) within a cylindrical can. I've used the "Constrain to Surface" type constraint to ensure that they are standing on the edges of the can. I plan to manipulate the level of enforcement in order to make them able to leave the surface of the can. Anyways, using all those pointer bones is a little bit cumbersome, so I thought of trying to use Nulls with "Aim At" constraints applied to the pointer bones to make things easier. Problem is that wh…
Last reply by OdinsEye2k, -
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I'm searching for a way to write an expression that will use the Rand() function to set a value once at the beginning of an animation but not keep setting the value on every frame. I can use If() to test if we are on the 0 frame and stick my Rand() thing in the "True" case section and If() will return that random value, but when we are not on frame 0 and If() tests to "false", it returns a 0 as a value rather than no value at all, which causes the random value set in the intial frame to be overwritten with 0. There doesn't seem to be a way to safely store the initial random value for later use. Is there?
Last reply by robcat2075, -
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I am creating a walk cycle for my robot and am having a problem using "Paste Mirrored". The walk cycle is 24 frames. I have created the first 12 (one stride) the way I think I want it so far. I have been careful not to place keys on channels if they are not needed. The problem is, when I select "copy keyframe" at frame 1 and then "paste mirrored" at frame 13, AM is keying every channel that is previously keyed anywhere in the cycle and not just those keyed at frame 1. I then have a lot of extra keys in the second half of the walk cycle which makes it difficult to tweak later on. Is there a way to have AM "past mirrored" only the keys I have created at…
Last reply by pixelplucker, -
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Can I do all my smartskinning in one window? Are there drawbacks or advantages to doing it that way?
Last reply by rusty, -
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I have a A:M model that came in a T pose. I made an On/Off pose to put the arms down into a more natural position to begin animating. The pose works in the relationship window. but in the chor the model is not responding. What do I do. Also, I would like to have the arms down pose to be the default position when I open up the model. I would like to know how to do each of these things separately. Thank You for your help.
Last reply by MJL, -
- 4 replies
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I'm making another attempt at understanding why and how we get things to do the things we get them to do. This attempt is similar to, but hopefully less complicated than, the tongue project that David tried to help me with a few weeks ago. (Thanks again, David, for trying to help) Hopefully, what I am after is a more stripped down, less complicated, basic chain. I'm after something with as few constraints and compensations as possible. Here is a blade of grass, it has 11 bones, starting with bone #1 at the bottom, and bone #11 at the top, with 1 null at the top. The null is a child of bone #11, which is a child of bone #10, etc. In the PWS, I hav…
Last reply by HomeSlice, -
- 3 replies
- 550 views
so i started rigging my model and accidentally zoomed way out and saw the bone sitting out there. i moved it around and then closer to my model and it became huge, apparently when i move it it changes its size. i cant scale manually. if i delete it my model completely gets removed from the project. when i hover the cursor over it it say (model name: rotation object) should i just ignore it?
Last reply by sir fen the usa, -
- 3 replies
- 676 views
So I have a forearm with a number of small bones children of the forearm proper, that control the loops of cps along the arm, these bones are constrained to the hand bone with a rotate like so the motion of the hand when turning drives the shape of the forearm - this works pretty well until a certain angle is reached at which point the bones "snap" and the forearm goes all pretzel shaped, I think it's the dreaded gimbal lock or something like that. Any suggestions? How do people normally rig forearm motion?
Last reply by robcat2075, -
- 4 replies
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Hi all, I am looking for a way to tie the and of a hierachical bonechain, that is dinamic constrained, at its endbone somehow to a certain cp (area, level) without totally stalling the dinamic of the whole chain. Any ideas anybody , how this can be done? An example would be a hanging rope attched at its two ends or a person leading its dog with a rope.
Last reply by jakerupert, -
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Hi Robcat because of my recent right click issue I lost your script for alternative Fingers in TSM2. Could you post the link for the location with the instructions please?
Last reply by jason1025, -
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Hello Everyone, I am looking for a copy of the 2001_Skeleton.mdl. I have had a break from animation and am getting back into it. But the 2001_Skeleton.mdl on the hash web site must have been saved in v15 and does not work in v14. Would someone mind uploading the 2001_Skeleton.mdl saved by v14 or before. Thanks in advance for your help. Andrew Simpson
Last reply by johnl3d, -
- 6 replies
- 806 views
Greetings All ok I was looking at the 'Lady Goodbody' in the lib. and noticed that some bones have falloff and some CP have rings around them which appears to be controlled by two bones as the attached image shows. If so then how do you do this? The seam in the center of her dress is my point of focus since my model has the same and I am not sure which bone to attach them to.
Last reply by Walter Baker, -
- 3 replies
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I just realized that there are options for bone weight "falloff" this shows "cubic", "linear" and the customizeable "channel" options fallofftest.mov potentially powerful, although hard to wrap my head around.
Last reply by nimblepix, -
- 12 replies
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Hi All Got several new problems. 1st I created an eye from 'itsjustme' tutorial *the eye has a contact outside it that will open sideways *created a combination pose that will open the contact and will dilate the eye at the same time *at completion it worked perfect I saved it as a right eye, and a left eye (2 separate models) both worked perfect Now I bring them into my model separately place them. Question 1: why do the eye parts appear in the groups as all separate parts not as a unit or model? (image 1) Question 2: why did only 1 set of pose sliders show up in the model? (images 2&3) which only work the right eye…
Last reply by Rodney, -
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It started with wanting to animate a fish licking his chops after consuming a tasty morsel. The fish model had no tongue. Seeing as how I've become friendlier with splines and CP's, I thought no problem. Wrong. I'm running into the same problem that I had with the pump hose that I did a couple of weeks ago. I obviously don't understand kinetic or inverse kinetic constraints. With this fish tongue there are a total of nine bones in line. I want to be able to grab the end of the bone at the tip and more or less drag it into position, with the bones acting like links in a chain. What would be the constraints and relationships from bone to bone that would help me to a…
Last reply by itsjustme, -
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Hello - It's been a while since I posted on this forum. I've been slowly trying to develop characters for a music video. The attached is a 'Conductor' character (un-decaled) that I'm pretty happy with spline-wise, but rigging is another issue. I've tried educating myself on the topic of rigging using various sources - "Art of A:M", a Fan Bone tut from a 2005 3D Mag issue, Matthew Krick's wonderful online tuts, various CD-ROMS purchased from the Hash site, including Raf Anzovin's, etc. - to various degrees of success. Though I feel my best efforts came using the Matthew Krick tuts, I'm still not satisfied. The attached model has a basic rig and some fan bones …
Last reply by cribbidaj, -
- 3 replies
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Hello - I am creating a character for a client, which I actually cannot show, so hopefully this makes sense to someone. I created him, added a rig, did the smartskinning and pulled the character into a choreograph. When I select the hip bone and move the character up and down (bending knees) it has an odd movement - the lower body seems to sit there, while the upper body moves down and goes into the mess of the lower body - kind of a delayed reaction (when I render it, it dows the same thing). When I select the hip bone and move it up and down in a chor or an action, the body almost acts like a soft rubber ball - stretching and squashing... this issue has never happene…
Last reply by flashawd, -
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I would like to constrain a wheels bone to rotate on the x-axis like the roll of the rollhandle of the bone of a steering wheel, but am lost on how to set this up. ( see attached picture ) Any hints anybody?
Last reply by jakerupert, -
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How do you create (3) pose sliders to control the RED, GREEN, and BLUE channels of a groups diffuse color? I thought it would be as easy as creating the slider and setting the red to zero at one extreme and 255 at the other extreme but this did not seem to work. Thanks,
Last reply by TNT, -
- 23 replies
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I'm animating a logo for a friend. The original logo consists of simple pen or brush strokes. The "arms" are the handle and spout and the "legs" are just two zig-zag strokes. This should be easy to rig and plenty of squash-and-stretch is spot on for this type of character. A picture of the logo is attached. I'd like to use the TSM2 rig, but the challenge here is that the "hips" and "shoulders" will be offset by 90 degrees (hips side to side like normal characters, but "arms" fore and aft like the coffee pot it is). Since the the various parts are abstract and not actually connected, I'm hoping I can set it up in a normal T pose, then rotate the arms and "body" of…
Last reply by robcat2075, -
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- 3 replies
- 668 views
I need some help figuring out how to do this correctly. I have a model of a robot that uses the 2008 Rig. The rig is installed according to the tutorial and everything is functioning correctly. I have begun the rigging of the face by rigging, constraining, and creating percentage sliders for the right eye. There are (18) bones in to pose the eyelids and brow shape. I have used the "mirror bone" plugin and now have all the bones in the left eye with the correct CP weighting. PROBLEMS: How do I get the constraints mirrored to these eye bones? I have tried to use "mirror constraints" but it want to mirror ALL the constraints inclu…
Last reply by TNT, -
- 3 replies
- 601 views
In rigging the face of my Skarab character I'm running into more self-imposed problems with rigging. I've downloaded and experimented with the Lite Face rig and Steve's Head Gizmo but I don't see a clear solution. Because Skarab's anatomy is so non-standard, I realize that I need to rig the eyes and eyebrows from scratch, which is no big thing. I'm *pretty* sure I can get them to do what I want (i.e., open and close eyelids, aim eyes, move eyebrows up and down). But I'm not seeing a way to use just parts of those rigs and ignore/delete others. I'd like to use the mouth/face parts of a rig so that I have access to good mouth, tongue and phoneme controls, but replace t…
Last reply by Gerry, -
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- 7 replies
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As I've been reading the posts in this section I keep running into the term "fan bones." I've searched the documentation included with A:M and the forum, but I haven't found a description of what it means. Can anyone enlighten me? Charles Bandla
Last reply by HomeSlice, -
- 4 replies
- 836 views
i ve always being considering this for a very long time, my could i create my own rig , like TSM and so on any replies.
Last reply by robcat2075, -
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- 574 views
Either in the model window or action window with muscle mode, when select a cp and try to change it's weight the value doesn't stay. As soon as I reselect that cp it defaults back to 100%. What am I doing wrong? Wish AM had some modifier keys for base values when assigning cp's to bones such as hold down alt + number 1-0 for 10% - 100%
Last reply by pixelplucker, -
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- 13 replies
- 1.1k views
I have something I would like to do in my rig for my goat. He has pompoms(longer hair) below his knees that comes down and covers the top of each of his hooves. It's made of surfaces, not a hair emitter. I would like to rig the pompom (blue in the attached model) so that it has some dynamic secondary motion. I've not tried this before. I presume it can be done with dynamic constraints, lag, or who knows how else. I would be great if it could use collision detection with the hoof so that is looks simi-realisticly like hair bouncing and swinging around as he walks and runs but does not intersect the hoof. I have included a project file with the leg bo…
Last reply by itsjustme, -
- 5 replies
- 680 views
Hey, you may have already seen me ask this in my WIP thread, but I thought I'd post it in this forum as well as it seemed more appropriate. I've just started rigging a tortoise character with the 2001 skeleton and all was going well until I opened him up in the choreography and suddenly his legs had become bowed. I'm quite tempted to install the squetch rig, but for now I really wanna get this problem sorted. Any help is, as always, much appreciated.
Last reply by robcat2075, -
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I have come to the conclusion that I stink at rigging. I get by with a lot of trial and error but it seems to take me for ever. I have the TSM2 rig which works well up to a point. It installs easy and controls the basic movements. All the stuff I need to add like fans, smartskin, and other constraints, the face rigging, etc. is where it all goes south for me. Are there any good reference books for rigging? Howto build the geometry bones, and the control bones. How to place and constrain bones to control a knee or a neck. Is it a layered approach. Pitfalls to avoid. I've seen some books on Amazon but they are always for one of the other ani…
Last reply by TNT, -
- 5 replies
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This is Gus Gizmo, known in his universe as a Gizmo Mk I series robot (and origin of my username). I originally built him around October 2000, after having AM about 2 months, and had no idea what I was doing when I built him. He's had a few minor upgrades to his mesh since then, but I was never satisfied with the original skeleton I built for him. It was just simple bones linked together and very difficult to control since the bones were just standard daisy chain format and had no interaction in terms of maintaining balance, etc. I'd like to set him up with one of the later rigs for ease of control. I made an attempt at fitting him with the TSM2 rig, but that…
Last reply by GizmoMkI, -
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A new user request. How to make a vine grow and wrap around something. -the vine ("plant") has regular spline rings along its length -every spline ring has its own bone -every bone is "path constrained" to the path that wraps around the column. -the "ease" percentage for each bone is keyframed to make the bones travel up the path in order. Look in the PWS timeline to see how they are staggered. - the leaves were made to sprout with a pose slider, but that part didn't turn out so well VinegrowingMP4.mov PRJ: GrowingVine06.zip
Last reply by nimblepix, -
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- 5 replies
- 694 views
Greetings all, I have been rigging my character with Barry Zundel's tutorials, I am using version 15e on a iMac. I opened the model with a text program, replaced all left with right; somewhere with combining the 2 models together the relationships (left) did not come in. So when I flipped my left side rig and created my right side the way he said all my relationships became all 'right' none of the left came into the new model. Now my question is there a way to bring in all my left side relationships from the old model into the new model relationships? Copy/paste.....Drag-n-drop... ??? Any suggestions would be great so I don't have to go through that process again.
Last reply by Walter Baker, -
- 19 replies
- 1.3k views
CP weights are a new feature to me. I have only just started playing with them and love what they can do for those troublesome areas around joints. The problem that I am having is with the scant documentation. I have the Techtalk movie but that always throws out a C library error and crashes on both my machines. I don't think it covers my question anyway. What I would like to know is if I adjust my CP weights in an action am I creating values which are specific to that action or am I adjusting the "base" values which I have set up in model mode. It appears that new values are created in an action. Is that correct? Thanks for any info on this.
Last reply by mtpeak2, -
- 1 reply
- 521 views
Hello- Does anyone know if Sprites can be effected by Forces? I haven't been able to get that to work... Question 2) Does anyone know if Sprites can be contained inside another shaped object once they are emitted? For example, once sprites are emitted, can they fill an invisible object so that as the sprties accumulate, a form takes shape? Here is a clip from the second Narnia movie that got me thinking about this effect. It appears there is a quick cut between the particles floating and the humanlike body that they become.. Thanks for any feedback.. Tom Particles.wmv
Last reply by yoda64, -
- 4 replies
- 570 views
Is there an easy explanation on how to rig (Shaggy in this case) the eyelid to follow the eye and blink at the right point all the time. Characters in SO do it right with the auto_eyelid_main_controls. I have tried a couple setups with no success. Michel
Last reply by Animus, -
- 3 replies
- 653 views
Desperately trying to rig a broom to the hands of the troll. I need the broom to drive the arms if possible so that it can stay "level" and the hands/arms move to follow. I just can't get my head around this one. Pointers to any other threads on this topic or perhaps the Troll has a different rig. I seem to recall that other rigs had the "hand" as the end of the chain. It was easy to constrain the hand to an object to control it. I suppose I would be willing to modify the rig in the troll to do this if I get some pointers. I've tried constraining the hand nulls to the broom but the nulls can extend beyond the hands so that doesn't work so well. I constrained the…
Last reply by heyvern, -
- 1 reply
- 502 views
For some reason the hand clench poses in the Troll model I have don't work (the Troll model used in the "infamous" newton demo). They won't go above 0. The really wierd thing is that even putting the mouse on them and dragging causes the cursor to "stick"... never encountered anything like that before in an application. I am using the Troll from the newton demo project. Maybe there is a new one or a different one available? If not I can just pose the hands... by hand. Actually ALL of the percent poses for the Troll don't work for me. They are all stuck at 0% and won't budge. -vern
Last reply by heyvern, -
- 25 replies
- 2.4k views
Here's the scoop. My plan to use expressions for this isn't working as planned. I am absolutely certain something can be done using simple constraints. Imagine a chain of bones, in any configuration needed to achieve the results. Don't box yourself in. For my example this would be bone spaced out evenly to control the opening and closing of a curtain. It would be easy enough to just use a translate to or orient like on each bone to have this chain "collapse" but I want it to work in a specific way. I want each bone to only move when the previous bone reaches a specific point. Say, half the distance to the next bone, then that bone moves in unison until it hits the ne…
Last reply by heyvern, -
- 1 reply
- 566 views
I am using a:m 15c with mac os 10.4.11 and while in an action window cannot find the icons to choose a single bone, bone heirarchy, or whole skeleton keyframing option. Where are these located?
Last reply by rusty, -
- 5 replies
- 910 views
I've had some luck rigging hair guides to bones with Expressions, but I've hit a snag. If anyone has ideas, please post them here. Here's how to get started: -In Modeling mode, create a new bone chain. Match the bones to the default positions of the guide hairs' control points. -In Skeletal mode in an Action, Pose or Choreography, jiggle the position of the bones to create Rotate channels for them. -In Grooming mode, jiggle the positions of the guide hair's control points to create rotate channels for them. -Select the first hair guide CP in the PWS, and bring up the properties window. -Leave the Rotate properties unexpanded, so that they're all on the…
Last reply by mtpeak2, -
- 2 replies
- 657 views
I have read and read and still do not know how to get my eyes to look at the null. can someone please please make a tut only for rigging eyes?
Last reply by TheSpleen, -
- 3 replies
- 712 views
What i am looking for is information. I am trying to find a way to rig a models head to some form of target. I need the head to stay focused on a point that I define. Yet the only thing I have found is rigging it to a null bone. But that only angles it like the null bone. I want it to be able to follow the target that I set. Any thoughts?
Last reply by noober, -
- 12 replies
- 1.2k views
I just love that DYNAMIC CONSTRAINT! I use it all the time, EVERYWHERE. Want to make your character look drunk for hoots? After animation is done... put a DC on it's head control-bone, switch it to 'Spring' -turn gravity OFF and set a angle limit (around 30 to 40 deg) hit PLAY and be ready to GIGGLE! My question is about the 'Collision Detection' feature on the dynamic constraint... what does it look for- geometry/mesh or other bones? Is anyone able to say 'Yeah- I use it all the time- it works great! Here's the trick!" Just wondering!
Last reply by Gerry, -
- 5 replies
- 964 views
I was wondering if the Mirror Constraint plugin works for anyone else. Every time I try it it crashes AM. I am starting it from the modeling window. I am using AM v.15d It will be not nice at all to have to constraint the left side (specially the left hand) of the model every time y modify it (I have a base model that I plan to recycle using it to create more models from it and this involves moving bones around a bit according to body constitution). Thanks
Last reply by jakerupert, -
- 1 follower
- 7 replies
- 768 views
I've noticed that the hand lock pose for the knight orients the hand bone like the steady arms bone and keeps the hands pointing in a specific direction while the rest of his model moves and bends around. I'd like to use this to help keep the knight's hands planted on the rungs of a ladder as he climbs it, but I can't seem to rotate the hands to any position other than straight out from the body (-X/+X) once the hand lock is turned on. Turning off the "Store Roll" option at least allows me to roll the wrists. I'm thinking there must be a way to get these useful poses to work like they should but my tinkering with the hand lock relationships so far hasn't been entirely fru…
Last reply by SplineSoup, -
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- 4 replies
- 582 views
Hey guys, I downloaded Yves' skylight rig in an attempt to glean how to create a "rig" setup for lights in a choreography that I can export and then copy exactly into others. After reading the info file and perusing the various components of the rig it seemed simple enough...which is probably why I couldn't reproduce the concept. Naturally, I think I missed something. =) I can save out the lights themselves. I can also save out their choreography actions, and import both into a new choregraphy, but when I get to the part of joining the lights back with their actions, they won't go. What critical step is missing here? Is there a way to take lighting arrangements I'v…
Last reply by SplineSoup, -
- 2 replies
- 688 views
I need a tut showing me how to rig the face and head. My model has eyes I want to be able to aim and the mouth and teeth. Neck I am not sure where to start and I dont see a face tut anywhere listed. Thanks!
Last reply by TheSpleen,
