itsjustme

Where in the tutorial, Steve? Maybe I assumed something that I shouldn't have.

Dude, you seriously kick ass....one of the scariest rigging monsters in the haunted house! The workshop couldn't be in better hands. If I can help in any way, let me know.

Mark, you are an extremely generous man!

For the missing stuff, my guess is that you don't have "Show advanced properties" checked...go to "Tools/Options" (hit "Ctrl+P"), select the "Global" tab, and check the "Show advanced properties" and "Show property triangle" boxes. As for the knee problem...first, unhide all of the bones by selecting the "base_bone" in bones mode, hold down the "Shift" key and hit the "J" key. After doing that, make sure that the leg bones are all in the same location, if they are, it's most likely a constraint problem. If the foot jumps away from the foot control null, adjust the euler limit on the calf like I show in the tutorial. If that isn't it, go back and reset all of the compenates on the legs...before doing that, make sure you turn off the leg poses in the "Animation_Controls" in the "User Properties" for the model first. If that doesn't cure the problem, I'll be happy to take a look at it for you, Steve. I don't know why one of the knees wouldn't work...if you don't find the problem, I'll be happy to take a look.

Don't beat yourself up, Steve. I wasn't trying to be an ass, maybe it came off that way...but I really wasn't trying to do that. I was just trying to help by pointing out how it could be done better. If I had more time last night, I would've fixed everything...I just didn't have time. Also, if I fixed everything you wouldn't know how to fix it yourself. I'm the last guy in the world who would tear into anyone with the intent to harm. Sorry if it seemed that way...maybe I should use more smileys. The chest in/out bone is for chest expansion and contraction...there's also one for the stomach and even one for the hips, that way you can taper the expansion all the way down the torso. The way I assign the CP's to these is to assign CP's to the actual chest, stomach and hip geometry bones initially and then, once that works, I go back and assign to the in/out bones based on the assignments that I have at that point. Anything that is assigned to the chest bone, for example, could be safely assigned to the chest in/out bone. I'd better work on my critique replys...once again, I'm very sorry if it felt like an attack, Steve. That wasn't my intention at all.

Very generous, Jeff! He looks fantastic.

I don't know how I missed your last post here, Rodney...that is a very cool model. It would be good for people to have a standard model to do their first Squetch Rig installation, we just have to get a consensus.

I just realized that I didn't answer one of the questions...the face rig isn't finished being tweaked at the end of this tutorial. I know that part 5 has more setting up of the face and that's not the complete end of it either. The face is the last thing to get weighted when I work on a character. I think that was all of the questions up to this point. Hope that helps.

Here's the assessment, Steve: The leg problem is that the euler limit on the calves needs to have a "-20" instead of a "0" on the negative side of the "X" axis. However, there are a few other things that are problems. First, if you unhide all of the bones in the character (hold down the shift key and hit "H" with the "base_bone" selected) you'll see that the control bones and geometry bones aren't in the same places. That would mean that the geometry bones were most likely moved after the installation process or that translate/scale/rotate modes weren't used. Second, the bones on the left and right sides don't match and the model wasn't made using copy/flip/attach so it will take setting up each side independently. Third, the Hand Gizmo bones aren't in the hand correctly...that may be part of what is causing your finger problem. The thumb problem is the roll handles need to be turned so that they are perpendicular to the angle of the bend. The left side bones appear to be put in better than the right side. To fix this installation, you would have to match the left and right sides by deleting the right side bones, mirroring the left side bones to the right, correcting the placement of the control bones to match the geometry bones, center the feet bones on each foot, set the negative side of the calf euler constraints to "-20", correct the placement of the Hand Gizmo bones, reset the compensate on the leg and arm poses, rotate the thumb bones and then re-weight the CP's. The other option, which might be easier, is to re-do the installation. I have a couple of shortcuts that I can do, but it would still take a few hours. ------------------------------- EDIT ------------------------------- Here is a partially corrected version...I deleted the right side bones, mirrored the left side to the right side, corrected the euler constraints on the legs and corrected the leg and feet bone placements. I didn't reset the compensate on the legs and arms or fix the Hand Gizmo bone placement or re-assign CP weights...but it's a start if you go that route.

I'll take a look at it sometime tonight.

It would be easier to troubleshoot if I could look at the model...as for the knees, somewhere in there I talk about resetting all of the compensates and the limits. One way to narrow down what is causing problems is to just go down the list of poses and turn them off until the problem goes away...the one that gets rid of the problem is where you should concentrate your efforts. Hope that helps, Steve.

They look good enough to me, Ethan. Nice stuff so far!

It looks better, there's still some strange things with the feet, but it's tough without the ability to raise the heel. Mark's setup might make it easier. Very cool so far, Ross!

Nice experiment, Ross! Did you roll your own rig? The character reminds me of something I saw that Jeff Lew made for his DVD tutorial.

You have very scary chops, Stian! It's going to be gorgeous.

Very generous, Steve! The fact that it has places where we could add jiggle with dynamic constraints makes it a very good choice...it never hurts to work in something else to show. When she's ready, let us know.

Newton Physics plugin information

It couldn't hurt to have a common model to compare notes on...it is a conundrum at the moment. The only model like that that I've thrown out there is the modification to Thom, Squetchy Thom. Since he doesn't have a face, that leaves out any of the face rigging. I have Trevor, but, I wasn't planning on releasing him to the community because I wanted to use him in an animation that I hope to get started on sometime toward the end of this year (I was trying to kill a couple of birds at once when making the tutorial). If we could come to an agreement on what model to make the community test installation model, I'm all for it. Whatever we decide on, let's make sure that we Copy/Flip/Attach as much of it as we can, ideally the whole model...it would help if we use the MirrorWeights plugin, which brings up another point. The next problem that I'm wrestling with as far as installation goes is that the MirrorWeights plugin that Steffen has 98% finished would cut the time in half. It only has one issue, the SDK needs to be updated to include the ability to mirror nulls. If that problem gets cleared up, you would only have to put in half of the bones, use the plugin to copy/mirror those to the other side of the character, weight one side and then use the plugin again to mirror those weights to the other side. There are a couple of places that I would still weight both sides, but the plugin will still save loads of time. Things develop so fast it's hard to keep up with the changes sometimes...I haven't even finished the tutorial and it needs to be updated.

If you make a custom phoneme, you have to make a pose for that phoneme or it will have nothing to use. Hope that helps, Vijay.

Sorry it took me so long to get back to this, Lazlo. I don't think you'll have any problems with that five pointer...I'm not 100%, but, high 90's. It looks like it will crease in the appropriate place.

If the eyes are children of the body bone and you squash and stretch the body bone, the eyes will also squash and stretch. If you use an Expression to counteract the squash and stretch it will only be effective as long as both bones remain at the same angle or scale exactly the same on all axes. So, to me, the best solution would be to put a null for each eye as a child of the body bone located at where the base of each eye should be then make the eye bones as non-children of the body and put "translate to" constraints on them to translate to the nulls. The Expression for maintaining volume while squashing and stretching is "1/Sqrt(..|Z)" where the bone that is squashing and stretching is set to scale only on the "Z" axis. An "aim at" constraint with "scale to reach" and "Z only" set would do that. Hope that helps.

No, you're absolutely correct, Rusty. I had a brain fart. I need to make a rule for myself to not post anything within a half hour of going to bed.

If that is the case, wouldn't a clean install also do the trick, Rusty? If someone isn't familiar with the registry, that might be the better choice if it works.

Nice to see you back, Lazlo! Good job so far, I don't see any problems with animating what I can see...could you give us a closeup of the possible problem area?

What tutes do you need, Lucas? There are a few here, here, here and here...of course there are more, but, I don't know specifically what you're after. Hope that helps.