itsjustme

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.

Cool, I got the current version now. Thanks, Mark!

I may be wrong, but is that an older version that was uploaded last, Mark?

Cool, I'll do some double-checking on the latest update tonight, Mark.

Sounds good to me, Mark. I'll do some more looking tonight. Very nice work on this, as usual.

I found a couple of things, Mark. The first one is that when you rotate the foot using the "Right/Left Ball Controller", the knee didn't follow the rotation. I re-parented the "Right/Left Leg Hinge Roll Target" bones as children of the "Right/Left Ball Controller" bones to fix it. The second one I didn't come up with a solution yet. When you rotate the head on the 'Z' axis and turn off and on the "Head_Controller" Pose, the "Neck_geom" bone does some unwanted rotating on the 'Z' axis. Maybe some roll targets and a couple of extra bones would get it to bake things in place. I'll do some more looking and see if I can find anything else.

Sorry, that was tongue in cheek - even I installed it once a long time ago to try it out. I was trying to give an idea of the huge complexity of it. I should have put a in there...it's hard to read tone in a text message. Sorry if I came off wrong, it wasn't my intention, Caroline. The biggest job in installing the Squetch Rig is CP Weighting, the second biggest is resetting compensates (hopefully, that will eventually be automated).

Mark hasn't made an installer yet, Caroline...once he gets everything ironed out, that will follow. A character without any constraints at all could be animated. You wouldn't have IK, which would make some things more difficult, but it could be done. Using just euler constraints would give you problems when the limits are reached in a lot of instances. It can be done, but you might end up fighting the rig sometimes. The goal is to give the animator a system that doesn't work against them and is easy to use. Too much automation or too little can both cause extra work. Where there is something automated, there should be a way to turn it off if the animator would rather not use it. I've got plenty of damaged brain cells, believe me. Once I get the update for the installation tutorial done, I think it will be a lot clearer. I'm not far from starting to put that together, once Bertram's modeling is finished I'll be using him for the tutorial.

I'm probably not understanding what you're thinking, Robert. I do know that a "roll like" wouldn't need a compensate since its' position and present rotation doesn't matter.

Thanks, Mark! You were right about the fingers...hopefully, I'll have something to show on those in a day or two.

Looks good...perfect. Thanks for your help, Nancy!

When I first read your post Eric, I think I misunderstood. Now that I read it again, I think you mean that the updated face should be more like the version that is my present avatar? If that's the case, is it that the updated version looks less friendly? My present avatar image is from a frame that wasn't the default pose for the face...he's sort of smirking. Or is it something else?