Mechadelphia

Path constraints? That's interesting. That sounds like some out of the box thinking. 👍. The video reminded me a lot of cloth but with some really serious control setups. Since you made it that far, I think you'll figure out a solution that you're satisfied with soon enough. Good luck with it.

Very nice and smooth. How did you do that?

Happy Birthday Robert and thank you for all that you do here! 👍

You're very welcome! I'm glad that you have found it useful. Thanks for trying it out. 😄

Ok! It's back online now! As I stated earlier, there's nothing new there but everything is as it was before I took it offline. Thanks.

Just an FYI for those who may have been looking for this rig on my site... I took my web site offline maybe about a month or so ago to do some maintenance but I never brought it back online. My intent was to bring it back online after only a few hours but I became a bit side tracked and didn't get back to it . I'm going to bring back online in the next few days. There won't be anything new on it when I bring it back online, just the old stuff for now. Thanks. Take care.

I recall this discussion from years ago where Steffen made a few comments about the future of the Mac version: His remarks from that thread may be much closer to fruition today than they were when he originally made them. If nothing much has changed regarding the technical challenges that he faced back then, keeping the Mac version updated may prove to be too tough even if we were to come together to get him a new Mac. I suppose we should wait for Hash Inc.'s or Steffen's input before getting too serious about this.

I don't use the Mac version but I am certainly willing to help pitch in for a newer Mac for Steffen. Just tell us what you need.

Gosh Robert, that would be useful but you're asking a lot from me already. 
 I was trying to work with you here but I guess I'm not working fast enough for you. 
 Before I continue let me post this here from my website:
 
 "I will advise you of this before you proceed (and to paraphrase Steffen Gross):
 
 This rig was originally designed as a working relief for me and, therefore, raises no claim or guarantee that it will work well for you (or even work at all). I will not offer any support for this work beyond what I have already posted or may post in the future by my own volition. You should use this rig at your own risk. Make sure you always have backups of your important work."
 
 So I'm tapping out now with that in mind. I'm not going to help you out with this.
 
 One of the goals of the Saucy Rig was to make it easy for people to install and use.
 
 Right now you're in "You should build your own rig." territory because what you are talking about isn't easy for the average person to do, it's time consuming for me, and you don't seem to appreciate that fact.
 
 You are certainly welcome to modify the Saucy Rig to suit your needs. If you study the rig for yourself you'll be able to see that the hierarchies are modular so you can make sense of it if you are committed to learning how it was done.
 
 Or... you can build your own rig from scratch.
 
 So I'm done with trying to help out with your project. I have my own to work to get back to. Maybe others here will be willing to help you out with this. 
 I sincerely wish you the best of luck.


No problem. I have some time and I am working on it now. It won't be easy to add but it should not be terribly difficult either. This will have to be a new rig but I am shooting for the same kind of install automation that we are used to with with the current rig. I am thinking of putting together something for you to review with your Eggbot before I go too deep into this. That way, I'll know if I am on target with what you need (I think that I am but I just need to make sure). I don't have a timetable for when you could expect that yet. If that is alright with you then I will PM you the file once I rig it.

Thanks Matt for your comprehensive post! I tried to understand the hair system long ago but it just seemed so complicated to me that I gave up. For example, understanding what all of those settings that you mentioned actually do is daunting to me. Every time I see your results though I reconsider trying to learn about it again. I'll let you know what I learn for sure. It may not be much at first but I'll share what learn anyway.

I never said that the Saucy Rig has the leg scaling that you need right now I said that the Squetch Rig does. (by David Simmons... AKA "itsjustme") Go here: Squetch Rig download files. Download the file named "v13s_Squetchy_Sam_07_19_2017_with_sleeves_and_switches.zip " Use Squetchy Sam for your exercise. Problem solved.

Hi Matt. Are you disappointed with your hair results? It looks fine to me. Were the solutions that you came up to address your earlier problems practical ones or do they seem to be more trouble than they are worth? Thanks for the demonstration model. I am gong to have a look at it and try to learn more about A:M's hair system.

No. I made the Eggbot long ago and pulled it out because I knew it had the leg-scaling which is something I wanted to include in the exercise. Hmmm… So I am actually being asked to add a feature to my rig, that you guys have not even tried in this scenario, to address a problem that you are having in a completely different rig. I see. As I said before, the Squetch Rig has what you need right now for your situation (Leg Scaling and Soft IK). It’s a great rig so consider trying that out for now. You could even use the Squetchy Sam example character which is pre-rigged to complete your exercise. In the meantime, I will continue to work adding leg scaling to the Saucy Rig on my end. I’ll take more time to add or tweak a few other things that I’ve been thinking about while I’m at it. I’ll post here again when I have completed the update.

Ok. I thought about that more and I understand what you are saying about that not being a bug. I meant to ask this before but forgot to: Your video showed what happened with your model rigged with the TSM Rig. Did you guys try the Saucy Rig in the eggbot model at all? If so then what were the results with the walk cycle?

This end user found it wasn't easy. Scaling the leg and then reverse scaling the foot compensate is probably tricky to get so exact that the foot never changes. Oddly enough, I was actually able to figure out a way to counter scale the foot with a driver. The real problem though when scaling along a bone's Z axis is that its children get skewed and distorted when they are rotated. I mentioned that in post #91. I suppose that may be one of several reasons the TSM and Squetch rigs were designed the way that they were. I am guessing that the skewed bone phenomenon is a bug. Anyway, since I'm here I'd like all of your thoughts on the following: The TSM Rig's limb bones are subdivided into two bones each so a thigh and lower leg bone are comprised of a total of 4 bones. The Squetch Rig's are subdivied into 4 bones so a thigh and lower leg bone are comprised of a total of 8 bones. Each approach is fine but I find the Squtech Rig 4 bone sudivisions leaves the door open to more options for the limb if desired. I am leaning heavily towards doing a 3 bone subdivision. It is a compromise between the two aformentioned approaches to me. That may not really mean very much to you if you are not familiar with rigging but for those that are familiar with it, what are your thoughts about these 3 different approaches? Thanks.

Hi Robert. I have the file now. Thank you. With the Squetch Rig, I just meant that you would need to install that rig into your model to get the functionality that you are looking for. It is already capable of performing the functions that you needed to have available to you in your video. I will keep you posted...

Thank you for that detailed explanation Robert. Just so you know, I don't think that scaling solution is cheating at all. Now that I understand your dilemma a bit more I'll make some time to work on this today and this coming weekend(s). Is the model (or a proxy of it) from your video one that you can you can send to me for my testing? If so then you can post it here or e-mail it to me at mack@mechadelphia.com? (That's right, I'm not worried about spammers ) In the meantime: The Squetch Rig's functionality can address all of the issues that you covered in the video (with scaling and Soft IK). Thanks. I will update you when I make any notable progress.

Ok, so I took a look at this. I can do it but, because of the way A:M handles bone scaling, I would need to fundamentally change this rig by subdividing the limbs in the same way that David Simmon's Squetch Rig and Anzovin's The Setup Machine Rig does. I tried to do it with my current setup but there were some really bad distortion problems when rotating the limb. So... if I were to do this then this would be more of a Saucy Rig 2.0 and without any relatively simple rig upgrade path like there was from v1 to v1.5. I don't know what your production schedule is but this would take me some time to put together so you should not wait for me to put this together. I think that I will circle back and do this but I don't know when yet. What issue are you trying to address that a leg scaling would help with?

I'm definitely interested. How long do you anticipate the boot camp would last if you move forward with it?

Hi Robert and Steve, I apologize. I did not realize that there were new posts here. Just so that I am clear on this: You want to know if I can incorporate a leg scaling slider like the one in the video that does not affect the scale of the foot. The purpose of the functionality would be to tweak the knee location during walks. Is that correct? It is possible. Which rig is being used in the video? I'd like to see how it is being accomplished there since that may help. I have a question about the slider in the video though. I noticed that the slider has positive and negative values. It is clear to me what is happening in the positive range of the slider. What is happening in the negative range? Would -100% return the leg to its original length or is something else happening there? I will need to resubscribe to A:M before I can look at it though and I am not exactly sure when I will do that just yet (hopefully not very long from now). I think that I will just go with the never expiring version this time around. Anyway, I have to have a look to see what I will need to do. I will keep you posted...

It looks like I am the only Philadelphia area Animation Master user. Well, at least the only one that uses these A:M forums. I am not completely surprised but it certainly did not hurt to ask. Well, I'll dive back into my rigging dungeon for now . I'll to come up for air here more often though.

Thanks Robert. I will certainly do that in the meantime. I just need to catch up on that post to see what i will need to be able to participate. Still, it would be nice to meet other A:M users who may be in the area. Virtual meetings are truly a great thing to me but if the meeting participants are local then I would love to sit down with them in person.

I'm wondering... Is anyone here in the A:M forums also in the Philadelphia Pennsylvania area and may be interested in meeting up to discuss all things Animation Master? There used to be a group here years ago called the MAAM (Mid Atlantic Animation Master user group). We don't meet any more and it seems that all of the members of that group, except for me, no longer use A:M or have moved on to other things. I think that it would be nice to actually meet other A:M users face to face again. It was pretty cool back then and I think that it could be pretty cool now even though it would not be the same group of people as before. I could go over some rigging stuff and maybe some modeling stuff too but I'm also interested in meeting other A:M users out there and learning about what they are up to as well. If anyone here is in the Philadelphia area or close by and you may be interested in meeting up then let me know here and let's see what we can work out. Thanks. Edit (April 7th, 2018): It looks like I may be the only Philadelphia area Animation Master user.

Thank you! Rodney, have a look at robcat2075's post about poses (watch the video). He specifically covers something called "draggable poses" which may be a good way to go for that. You can use that approach to create a large variety of hand poses and it would be very quick and easy for you to set up and use. Thanks. In the earlier versions of the Saucy Rig, those credits and thank you notes were actually included in the rig file too except that they were buried deep in the relationship folders where maybe two or three people that I could think of would ever dig deep enough to see them. I can tell you that if they found those notes then they certainly were not expecting to find them . I wanted to put them front and center for this version so that is one of the reasons why I made the "Notes" folder.