itsjustme

If there's enough geometry and it's weighted well, you can get some decent results. I have an early Quicktime test posted for Bertram's hands here that isn't too bad on the finger squishing. I'm going to be doing quite a bit more with it, but that is a good start. There aren't any fan bones in those fingers, just a bone for each joint...there is plenty of overlapping in there.

This is the first time I've looked at the updated hand controls, so I'll mash my comments together a little. The updated finger controls are pretty cool. What I think would be a good addition are carpal bones, so that you could cup the hand. Just some bones with "aim at" and "scale to reach" on them would do the job, translating the finger controllers to move them. For the Gizmo, it appears to do the job. As with any new system, it took me a few minutes to get used to it, but I think it works great. Lots of great stuff, Mark!

There are a few places that need some work, but it's looking good so far, Caroline. Fun clip!

2GB of RAM should be more than enough, I don't think increasing the virtual memory will make a difference, but it can't hurt to try it. I don't run Vista, so I'm not sure how much RAM it ties up...have you tried turning off some of the services running in the background?

Wasn't it about disabling "Aero"...or whatever the fancy desktop crap is called in Vista? I remember that caused some problems.

Is it a realtime rendering problem, Kevin? If so, try using OpenGL instead of DirectX. Do you have hair turned on? Turning that off would speed things up. What model are you using? How many patches are in that model? How many objects are in the scene? How fast is your processor? How much RAM do you have?

For the face, I do it all by hand, Caroline. The upper teeth, upper gums and upper throat is going to be weighted to the head at 100%, the lower teeth and lower gums are going to be 100% weighted to the jaw and everything else I adjust as needed. I haven't used falloff for setting up a standard character.

Very nice, Eric!

Okay, first, if you twist anything like that, it will get thinner, gedo831. In that image, you are rotating the bone on its' 'Z' axis, so, that's what will happen. An arm or leg would rotate either on the 'X' or 'Y' axis depending on how you set it up, but the 'Z' axis will always cause a loss in volume when done the way you have your example...it wouldn't if the bone were turned sideways and positioned at the knee, but that's not what you have. Next, you've got a lot of Control Points for a knee or elbow there. For every joint, make sure you have three spline rings and at least one spline ring between each joint. This image of Squetchy Sam's arm should illustrate what I mean...you could put more if necessary, but that amount of spline rings can do the job. Sam can be downloaded using the link in my signature at the bottom of this post. Lastly, if you do run into problems with losing volume on a limb when bending, you can use different CP Weighting, fan bones, more splines or Smartskin to correct it. Hope that helps.

I posted a video tutorial showing how Bertram's eyes were modeled here. In order to keep the Tutorials thread for this project easy to navigate, I'm going to have the comments/critiques/corrections for each in a different location with links to the actual tutorials. The ZIP file includes a twelve minute and twenty-five second H264 encoded Quicktime video tutorial, an example eye model and the iris map for the example model. This is an updated version of a tutorial I did several years ago, so, it may look familiar to some people. I have changed the way I'm making eyes slightly and didn't have a full video tutorial with audio posted, so I decided to post this update. I'm also using this as a "dry run" for how I'll be putting together the updated Squetch Rig installation tutorial. If you have any comments, critiques, questions or corrections, please post them in this thread. Hopefully, the tutorial is helpful to someone.

Here is an eye modeling tutorial. In the ZIP file there is an H264 encoded Quicktime video tutorial, an example eye model and the iris map for the example model. In order to keep this thread "tutorials only", please post any comments, critiques, questions or corrections in the thread located here. Modeling_An_Eye_Tutorial.zip

D'oh! I should have looked at the model instead of just the video (I didn't see it)...Mark is probably right. Next time, I'll try to pay more attention.

What you have is fine, Caroline. If you wanted to turn it up a notch, you could put some bicep flex in there to pull the inside of the elbow toward the upper arm as it bends. Since it's Gala, I wouldn't use the bicep flex to necessarily "make a muscle", just to get the bend a little nicer...it's not necessary though. I've seen a lot of people use fan bones for fingers, so it's not unusual. I haven't had to use them there yet, but, if it helps, use them. If the model has a low spline count in the fingers, you might need to use Smartskin (or increase the splineage). Nice thread! I'm curious to see what your finished product will look like.

Nosir, the installation is nothing like the 2001 rig...if you do it that way, you'll only make problems for yourself. First, open the version of the rig you need (four finger, five finger), import the model you want to rig, open a new Action, look in the "Pose Sliders" menu for the installation Poses, use those Poses to position the rig, export the Action to a new model, then follow the instructions in the "Posable_installation_steps" text file that is included in the Zip with the rig. I'm updating the installation tutorials this week, so there should be some video tutorials soon. The most recent version is Mark Skodacek's "Rig Along With Me" threads which start here. Hope that helps, Andy.

By "resizing the main bone", do you mean during installation, Andy? If it's during installation, are you doing this in an Action using the installation Poses? If it's after installation, are you in "Bones" mode? If it's after installation and you are in an Action, what Pose are you using? What is the actual name of the bone you're trying to resize...and why...is it during animating or installation? A proxy version of a character is when you simplify your actual model in order to get realtime response when animating by reducing the spline count, turning off hair, deleting decals, etc.

The experiment I mentioned hasn't been completely successful yet, so I figure I should table that until I get further along. I'm going to do some more double-checking and then start rigging Bertram (and the updated Squetch Rig installation tutorial)...I've got a lot to do and I'm trying to not get bogged down, if possible. I figured I should post an update so that these threads don't appear abandoned.

I don't think so, Andy...I'm pretty sure a G5 is faster than my laptop (aren't they 64bit processors?). I'm using an AMD 2500 processor, which isn't a 64bit processor and is about three or four years old. What bones are you trying to move and resize? Does your character have a lot of patches? For realtime response, you might have to make a proxy version of your character that cuts down the patch count. Do you have hair turned off? Have you compared the handling of Squetchy Sam to the character you are having problems with? If you can give me a set-by-step of what you are using, we might be able to narrow down the problem.

Very cool so far, Holmes! Good luck with your deadline!

Nice! Looks great, Mark.

Okay, now I see what's going on...it's not broken, I was just thinking about it wrong. When the leg is put into FK, it turns it into a bent toe instead of a raised heel. When the IK foot control is put into the right position for that to happen, it repositions the other controls accordingly. Since that's the way it needs to behave in order for the FK/IK switching to work correctly, it's the way it should be, I'm thinking. Sorry about the false alarm, Mark....as far as I can tell, it's solid. Very nice work!

I'm probably not being very clear. Here's a quick video to illustrate. In the video, I put the right foot on its' toes using the "Right Heel Controller", set the "Right Knee Follow Ball Controller" Pose to 100%, rotated the foot like its' grinding something into the ground, turned off and on the "Right IK Leg" Pose and then selected the "Right Ball Controller" to show its' position. The "Right Ball Controller" will return to the correct position if the "Right Heel Controller" is put back to its' default and the "Right IK Leg" Pose is turned off and on. However, if you don't do that, you can't do the same movement of grinding the foot using that control...at least I wasn't able to do it. I checked the Squetch Rig and it has a similar problem...I never noticed it. I'll do some tinkering on that tonight and see if I can clear it up. foot_thing_07_17_2008.mov

I'd better restate that...it's not perpendicular to the floor, it's perpendicular to the bottom of the foot where the toes bend. If that makes sense.

One last thing, I think. When the "Right/Left Heel Controller" is rotated, then the leg is put into FK and then back into IK, the "Right/Left Ball Controller" is rotated and stays that way. I'm thinking it needs to stay perpendicular to the floor. Other than that, I haven't found any other problems...very nice work, Mark!

Here's where I'm at with the hands. In order for me to determine what I needed to change, I put in a simple set of bones so that I could see how things moved...it helped a lot. The biggest change is in the knuckle area. I rendered a Quicktime of the test I was running to check finger movement and included it in this post. There are some minor CP Weighting tweaks and a few other obsessive things I will go back in and do, but it will give you an idea of the progress. When I'm finished with the modeling, I'll strip out the test hand setup and save a version so that I can refer to it when I'm at the rigging/CP Weighting stage...it should speed things up a little. I've still got a test I want to run that will affect some things later in the process...I'll post the results when I get them. Thanks Mark! I think you pointed me in the right direction. Bertram_hand_test_07_17_2008_Sorenson3.mov

I found a couple of things with the FK/IK switch for the legs, Mark. When using the "Right/Left Foot Controller" and "Right/Left Foot_Geom", everything works fine when switching. When using the "Right/Left Heel Controller" or "Right/Left Ball Controller", the "Right/Left Foot Controller" doesn't jump to the right position when switching, so the controls get out of place (especially if you move the "Right/Left Foot_Geom" in FK). The solution would probably involve some compensates, but I know you're trying to keep those to a minimum. I'll do some more looking.