itsjustme

Make sure that the "show manipulators" button is pressed, hit "S" for scale, type in the "X" value and then hold the "Ctrl" key when you hit enter (you can't enter the values while holding down the "Ctrl" key). Repeat this for the "Y" and "Z" values. Hope that helps, Jon.

Fantastic, David! Did you enter it in the competition or was this just practice?

Have you tried importing the objects that won't be directly animated as "action objects"?

The InstallRig plugin is located here. I'll start putting the link in the posts when the rig gets updated, I should have done that. Sorry for any inconvenience.

The JPEG wasn't included with the file when I got it that I can remember...it would be either a rotoscope or a decal that you had assigned. All you would have to do is point at the JPEG in question. What I did was rotate the character where it had its' feet pointing toward the ground, rotated the leg bones so that they all faced forward, moved and adjusted the thigh and bicep orient bones, deleted the "balance" and "steady" bones and poses, reset the compensate on the feet control bones, adjusted the positioning of the bicep, forearm, thigh and calf bones so that the joints met and adjusted the positioning of the IK foot control nulls. Hope that helps.

it says i cannot load a file with that extension so i zipp[attachmentid=18591]ed it. please tell me what you think the problem is. Hope this is helpful...it's what I had time to do.

It looks alright to me, Charles. Weight it when you get time and then post it or e-mail it to me.

First, nice model, Paul! The hair problem, I don't have a clue...that is strange. On the head....what rig are you using? I'm thinking that no matter what rig it is it'll probably take actually looking at it to figure out that problem. Wow, I was absolutely no help at all...not yet at least.

I'm guessing that the attachment didn't take?

You won't have to go through the installation process, just re-model the areas you want to modify and then assign the CP's. You can use the present Squetchy Thom as a guide for what bones to use in the weighting...it's pretty much just the two "thigh_geom" bones, the two "thigh_fan_geom" bones and the "stomach_geom" bone.

Thanks for taking a look at that, Mark! I just got the chance to look at it and it's already done, coolness. As for the modeling on Squetchy Thom, Charles. You're right about him needing a few changes. When I initially modified the original Thom, I was trying to change as little as possible. I had to add the hands so that there would be a working example of the rig, and I needed a model to work with when testing the it. The hat had to be added so that you could tell which way he's looking (it's a modified version of the cap on the CD) and I added a couple of spline rings to divide the torso a little better. I'll see about improving the lower torso on a future Squetch Rig release...if you want to modify the splines and re-weight it, I won't stop you (post it in this thread or e-mail it to me when you're done and I'll use that for the future releases of Squetchy Thom). You can save the Choreography Action out by itself by right mouse clicking on the Action and selecting "Export as Action". It looks like what confused you about manipulating the thigh fan bone was that you keyed all of the bones in the model, that would make some of the bones that shouldn't be manipulated show up in your Timeline.

If you could post the model, it would help people find your problems. Without it, they would just be shooting in the dark when making suggestions.

Hmmm, I'll double check the right hand. I haven't had any problems though...maybe there's something I missed. Is that the Squetchy Thom that comes with the installation versions, Charles? If so, I need to look at the butt...it definitely shouldn't do that. If you still have the Action, could you post it? As I'm typing this, I think I know what the problem is, but the Action would help confirm my suspicions. The hips geometry bones have been replaced with two thigh fan bones. To do the weighting on the butt, use a combination of the thigh fan, thigh and stomach geometry bones...you can actually get a better look than what you could with the hips geometry bones.

This was a problem that was caused by the baking of the constraints (it manifested itself in the Hand Gizmo controls mostly)...I thought it went completely away, but it looks like it's still sorta there. Once you save the model, I'm guessing AM corrects the error on the model. I know that when they were making muscle poses for TWO that there were other errors that got compensated for after saving. I haven't had this happen to me in quite a while...I'm not sure why it happened, Charles. I'm glad you got it sorted out though. If you run into any other problems, let me know.

Yessir, 'X' should have its' compensate set at "0" on the bicep. Sorry for any confusion on any of the other stuff...things have been changing pretty fast in the last couple of months, I'm just trying to keep up with them.

That's the idea, but, the MirrorWeights plugin will not mirror the CP Weighting correctly on complex rigs at the moment. The mirroring of bones and nulls works fine in v13 though. I don't know when Steffen will release a new version of the plugin. I'm just preparing for it in advance since it is partially useful during an installation even in its' present state. Since I don't know how long it will take for the next version of the MirrorWeights plugin, I wouldn't just do the CP Weighting on one side of a model unless you have several months that you don't mind letting it sit doing nothing. As for the bicep twisting, my bet is that it's one of the "aim roll at" constraints on one of the bicep bones. You may need to reset the compensate on them in FK...unless everything is perfect, the 'Z' probably won't be "0" though. That's not to say it couldn't be, but more likely it isn't. Hope that is helpful, Steve.

I don't know about how hard it would be to set the compensate to automatically adjust...I wouldn't automatically assume that it was a piece of cake though, Drvarceto. You could ask Noel...he made the InstallRig plugin, so he would know more about it than I would. I'm just happy I don't have to manually re-parent everything. The installation process is about to get sped up on another front though. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It never fails, I post something and then almost immediately find something that needs fixing. In the four finger installation rigs for 07_13_2006 that I posted yesterday, the right and left blink INSTALL bones weren't parented under the "blink_main_INSTALL" bone. It's a very minor thing, but it irritated me. So, I have corrected it in this version. I didn't repost the macro for jEdit because it was unchanged. Well, I'll use this as an opportunity to post the MirrorWeights version of the installation rigs. The plugin isn't finished yet, but at present you can safely mirror bones and nulls in the v13 release (any earlier SDK doesn't support the mirroring of nulls). You can get the plugin at Steffen's site. For best results, I have set it up to where you can mirror the following bones after setting up the right side (the shoulder and leg bones are the white main INSTALL bones): right_blink_INSTALL right_shoulder_INSTALL right_leg_INSTALL_body_SQUETCH_base/body_SQUETCH_pivot/body_SQUETCH_character/base_bone After mirroring those bones, the left leg, left arm and left blink should be in place (assuming you already positioned them). For safety, save your model out under another name, close AM, re-open AM, reload the model and then run the "InstallRig" plugin. I think that covers everything. If anyone finds a problem, let me know and I'll take care of it as quickly as I can. ------------------------------------ EDIT ------------------------------------ The InstallRig plugin is located here.

In the interest of partially clearing my plate, here's the latest version of the Squetch Rig. The changes/updates are: Renaming of all bones to be compatible with Steffen Gross' future "MirrorWeights" plugin (final plugin isn't released yet, it's going through a rewrite). This involved renaming the Hand Gizmo and the on-face controls of the FACE interface. An updated forearm setup, thanks to Mark Skodacek for that. The addition of leg fan bones and the deletion of the hips geometry bones. The hips geometry bones weren't needed and the leg fan bones fill the gap in the weighting that existed. Of course there are still the hip control bones, but the "hips_geom" and "hips_IO_geom" bones are gone. This came from the numerous installations that Mark Skodacek made for TWO and his observations, thanks to Mark again. A macro for jEdit to rename an older version of the rig to update it to the new naming convention...it will also rename the forearm bones, but, updating the forearms and legs will require more than the renaming. This macro can be used on Actions as well, so any older actions will only take a few seconds to update if necessary. I'm going to include in the next installment of the installation tutorial a section on how to upgrade a previous installation to the latest setup. As always, if anyone finds something wrong with the rig, let me know and I'll get it corrected as soon as possible.

The hands appear to work correctly, Steve...send me the Action that is giving you the problem. My guess is that it's the combination of moves on the fingers, but it might actually be a problem. The Action will help me determine it a lot easier.

Congrats, Steve! I learn by breaking things...a lot. So, you're not alone.

Hmmm, if all of the suggestions failed, I would have to take a look at it, Steve.

That's what it looks like to me as well. Unhide all of the bones in the rig by selecting the "base_bone", holding the shift key down and hitting the "J" key. Then, select each bone in the fingers and hit "J" on each one that has the roll handle pointed the right direction until you find one or ones that aren't and correct the rotation. Hope that helps.

If you try to curl the fingers using the non-Hand Gizmo controls, does that work? If it bends backward when trying to curl the fingers inward, I would check to make sure that the finger bones have their roll handles turned the right way. The roll handles should point up on the index, middle, ring and pinky fingers. If the non-Hand Gizmo controls don't work, they may need to be set up...I show some of it on Part 5 of the Installation Tutorial. Hope that was helpful.

The only controls capable of doing that in the Squetch Rig would be the Hand Gizmo...I would check the keyframes for those controls. Hope that helped.

I still use Smartskin extensively...just not very much for the model geometry. The Squetch Rig uses quite a bit of Smartskin, most of the FACE controls, the finger curling and the control for the full body squetch are made with it. It is a very powerful tool...so is CP Weighting.