itsjustme

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.

If I remember correctly, you had an issue previously caused by resetting the compensates incorrectly...I would double check what you have with what the installation rig has in the "Animation_Controls/Arm_Controls/right_arm_FK_IK" pose as far as percentages when the pose is on and off, you might have something flipped still. The ring around CP's happens when there is more than one bone assigned to that point. That is CP Weighting and how it works. I show quite a bit of CP Weighting in the A Face Rigging Method tutorial and a little in part 5 of the Squetch Rig Installation tutorial (I don't think that has been released yet). Hope that helps, Steve.

My guess is that you turned on the pose inside another pose somewhere...at least that makes sense. Hope that helps, Steve.

Set the "Animation_Controls/FACE Interface/FACE off/Joint Controls/Split Controls" slider to "0" in the Pose Sliders menu.

Not a problem, Steve. Mark Strohbehn's tutorials on setting up the FACE interface will help you with the eyelids, they are located here. Mark is setting up a face using muscle poses instead of bones, but the eye setup he uses is compatible. Hope that helps.

The lip geometry bones are located as children of the "lip_base_main"...under several bones located there, actually. The lip geometry bones are named like "lip_lower_left_1_geom", "lip_upper_left_1_geom", etc. There are also children of those geometry bones that are designed for curling the lips named things like "lip_lower_left_1_roll_geom", etc. The pose sliders for moving the lips are located at "Animation_Controls/Face_underlying_controls/lips". There are individual up/down poses in the "mouth_ud_individual", left/right in "mouth_lr_individual", the in/out poses have "IO" in their name and the curling poses have "curl" in their name. The methods used in the Squetch Rig are similar to the rig used in the A Face Rigging Method tutorial, but there are a few improvements/changes and it has been adapted to work with the FACE control system. An example of a head rigged using the older tutorial is located here. That will give you a rough idea, but not the whole picture. If you have access to SVN, the Tinman is completely rigged with the new setup...along with a couple of character specific modifications that wouldn't be on a normal installation. I'm trying to get back to finishing the Squetch Rig Installation tutorial, it will have more specific information on the updated face setup. I'm hoping to get more done on the tutorial in the next couple of weeks along with an update to the rig itself. I'm still pedaling, Steve.

Extremely nice work so far! The only critique I have is that the fingers on the hands may be too long...it's hard to tell, but the right hand fingers seem long on the front view. Other than that, fantastic.

I think the first character you rig will take you ten times longer than any other, Steve. It's just about familiarizing yourself with the system. Once you know how to do it all the way through, the fog will lift. Don't worry about breaking things (save a lot so that you don't lose anything), tear things apart, do things wrong...that's the best way to learn anything. You'll never make those mistakes again.

That's the idea with CP Weighting, Steve. You can assign as many bones to a point as you want...I'm not aware of a limit at least. The only thing to keep in mind is that the percentages have to add up to 100%. If you don't make them add up to 100, the software will do it for you and you might not get the results you were after. Hope that helps.

Yessir, we are on the same page. I've got four or five modifications/updates that will be in the next Squetch Rig release...I'm hoping to get it done in the next week or so.

The face poses are pretty empty until you tweak them for the character you're working on. I haven't gotten to that point in the installation tutorial yet (I hope to get there soon), but the "A Face Rigging Method" tutorial that I made will give you sort of an idea for some of it and Mark Strohbehn has made some FACE installation tutorials that help bridge the differences. I'm pedaling as fast as I can.

All good points, Mark. I took a look at some of the weighting on a couple of TWO characters and did some experimenting...I could convert the hips_geom to be more of a thigh fan bone. I'll look at the elbows, I'm thinking you're right there as well. Thanks again!

If you have v12 installed, you can just get the DLL files from there...that's what I generally do.

Nice catch on Steve's model, Mark! I'll take a look at this tonight...maybe I missed something. Thanks!

Hmmmm, you've got something really strange going on in there, Steve. Did everything up to this point appear to happen as it did in the tutorial? The bones look like they went to the right places...the legs look like they need to be straightened on their "Y" axis, that may be part of the problem in the legs. I'm getting all kinds of flipping on the rotation of the leg bones and some really strange behaviors, like the thigh and calf bones separating instead of remaining attached. It's probably staring right at me, but I'm not thinking too straight at the moment. I have to get to bed, but I'll pick it up again tonight.

I'm still not sure what you're seeing, Steve...what I saw was that the "Channel CP Settings" menu pop up after selecting it. I went through it frame by frame looking for anything that changed and at 21:08 that's all I saw change. I may have a mental block though, I've watched these so much that I sometimes don't see obvious things. What part of the screen?