robcat2075

another idea... the arm hinge seems to be on an unoffset aim at constraint from the shoulder to the wrist. What if the arm hinge and its child bones were created in the orientation of the upper arm, then you could easily use the orientation of "body" for that elbow controller. THEN after those have been created the scripting does the aimat constraint and pulls the arm hinge into position, I presume its child bones will follow with it. make sure any constraints that target these moved bones are scripted after the above. Alternative I'd consider... is there some other mechanism to control the IK arm besides this particular scheme? Something that would appear similar to the animator but do its job without this exact arrangement of bones? there have to be a dozen variations on IK arm out there.

Here's the last dirty trick I'd try after absolutely all else had failed... you could put the relevant scripting for that problem bone in a body part that isn't mirrored like "spine" or "neck". You'll have to explicitly script the left and right versions but that will solve the probelm of rotation being different on left and right sides. I'm not sure what order the scripts are executed, if "spine" is executed before "arm" and your bones will need some parents that "arm" was going to create, then you might create some temporary bones in the correct position that are then later duplicated by "arm" then discarded. If "Spine" references bones that "arm" hasn't created yet it will crash. and all the vice versas for the above.

since it doesn't matter that the upper and lower arm are of equal length and therefore it doesn't matter that the elbow controller is not pointing directly at the elbow, does the exact 90° angle matter? what does bicep orient influence? If I make it visible and drag it around nothing moves.

Thanks Robert, your help is much appreciated. That's a poser... If we knew the character would always be modeled with straight arms we could base the orientation of elbow controller on "body" and not need to use "rotation" which is doing some funny mirroring. If we knew the character would always be modeled with bent arms like the above we could start elbow controller from the middle of arm hinge and place the end point at the start of the lower arm, also eliminating having to use "rotation". If I were trying to debug the script you have I would find some way to not use duplicate of "arm hinge" because when arm hinge gets flipped by rigger it's XYZ view of the world is flipped also. Just a theory, I haven't tested that. And there really isnt' anything about elbow controller that is a "duplicate" of arm hinge after you're done with it. How important is the initial roll of arm hinge? is the roll handle pointing up, forward or back in the view you posted? It's possible if arm hinge were created with a different initial roll position, the apparent flipping of elbow controller wouldn't happen.

Okay thanks. Can't bend the fingers too with advanced or otherwise. Even the model from the .hxt can't bend the finger. When I bend it the whole finger bends straight. I have the same character, the fingers work. Are you sure you're turniing the blue ring? they dont' have anyone on staff now to update it and fix bugs.

If you rigged with regular fingers (not "advanced") the one bone controls all 3 joints evenly. advanced fingers have a bone for the first joint and a bone for 2nd/3rd.

"with rotation x,y,z" will point it anywhere you want do you mean when you are animating or that there will be characters you'd install squetch in where straight back is the wrong way? An answer is an answer. even if it's the only one, it's an answer. You only need one. OUtside of expressions and a some poses that have to have specific values at the 0%/OFF position I haven't seen anything in Squetch that couldn't be reproduced with TSM2 scripting.

The "constraints" folder seems to be the character specific things they added in addition to TSM2 bones. things like fanbones at a joint. These are things that are different for each character depending on its mesh so they are not part of the regular TSM build. It looks like they have gone all out and fan boned every single joint to show you examples of what one might do in each situation. youcan open up that "Constraints relationship" inthe PWS to see the list of bones it uses. Most of those could be done away with by CP weighting although sometimes fanboning is easier. Assuming nothing is otherwise wrong, the TSM fingers use one bone for the last two joints. rotate on the red ring for the first joint and the blue ring for the second joint. I'm not a fan of that so I've written a replacement script for TSM fingers that add fanbones at every joint and restores a conventional three control bone finger. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=273221 I'm thinking of making a tut to show how to use TSM2 rig. They used to sell a video on that but they aren't selling videos anymore.

Ok, I'm looking at Woot as a Squetch example.... the elbow controller seems to have an origin point of about 25% of the way from the elbow (a known point after placing your TSM2 Builder bones) and the wrist (also a known point). I could script a bone that starts there by starting it "between" the starting points of the two bones that make up the TSM forearm. the elbow controller points straight back. Normally I'd use an already existing bone as a model for a new bone's orientation, but there isn't one like that in the original TSM2 arm bones so I'd use "with rotation x, x, x" to explicitly point the bone back. The bicep orient bone is tougher as it hangs out in back there. I was about to chicken out and say "add it to the arm component" (a valid solution) but I see now it's about as far back from the shoulder as the forearm is long. I'd script a temporary bone as long as "with length of" the forearm and point it back from the shoulder like I did the above elbow controller. then I could use its endpoint as the starting point of my bicep orient bone and I then give that bicep orient bone the orientation of a forearm bone to make it correctly point outward. The temporary bone could be deleted or just hidden and left in. This is all do-able and I have done similar new bone creation in my own scripts.

What bone in Squetch is it that TSM can't create?

well, I know there is a plugin for squetch, I just know nothing of powers other than using it in the workflow you outlined. here would be the TSM for Squetch workflow equivalents 1) import the Squetch posable model into your model TSM builder creates right side geometry bones 2) create an action and do the Poses thing Fit TSM bones to Mesh. Run TSM Flipper 3) export posed model from the action (just sizes the bones to fit the model to be rigged) 4) delete installation poses 5) Import Final IMPORT Model into newly posed model - I believe this only has poses/relationships in it and does not influence the plugin? Not sure. doesn't matter. 6) Run Install rig plugin (SIRP) TSM Rigger creates additional rig bones and writes constraints and poses 6b) drag in poses containing expressions 6c) program to convert bones to NULLs 7) reset compensates 8) assign & weight CP's Actually I like to do this after TSM Flipper in step 2) but some fan bones may not exist until TSM Rigger is run in step 6)

I don't know all the elements you're using there, it sounds like it would work, but I still think it would be easier to just work with all bones, then have a program that will search thru the model file with a list of bone names and flip them to NULLs. I know that program doesn't exist yet but I suspect it wouldn't be more than a page of code to write. I just found out that Flash can write files known as "shared objects" to the user's hard drive (normally Flash doesn't allow itself to write ANYTHING to the user's computer) so that makes me more likely to write this thing. I've written apps in Flash before that parsed and altered large text files, but to save the result I was having to make it print the result to a window from which I would copy and paste into a text editor. It worked fine but saving directly would be nicer. No ETA on when I'll get around to this though. One caution on this... TSM Flipper will flip "right Bone" to "left Bone" but will also flip "Right Bone" to "left Bone" Normally this is not a problem, unless you have written a script that you sent looking for "Left Bone" when "left Bone" is what is really there. That will cause TSM Rigger to crash.

"replace" or "Add" may be the blend mode you need to set onthe new chor action.

Hey that was snappy! I think the legs have better clarity than the arms. I can pretty much tell what the legs are doing, but the poses/action in the arms are harder to discern. I know it's supposed to be frantic motion, but there's probably some solution to make the arms more effective. I don't know what it is tho...

Looks promising. Lorenzo Lamas might say there's too much space between her thighs.

The creases are probably spline continuity errors. Post a wireframe and someone will probably point them out for you.

I like that you limited the color palette. Nice Shot.

I know you'll enjoy that project. If you have questions, ask me.

Yup, it's a lot of work when you rig a character and then want to change the rig to something else. But it's not TSM2's fault that that is a lot of work. Yes, you could constrain an already rigged character to TSM2 control bones but what are the chances of someone getting that all right? Imagine if someone wanted to convert an already rigged AM2001 character to Squetch. What are the chances of getting that all right? And you know they'd blame Squetch! Who would ever be able to debug it for them? Better to start from scratch and do the rigging process correctly.

Thanks, I'll edit the link at the start of this thread.

Bone creation and bone constraining via scripting are future installments here. Adding your extra bones after TSM2 has done its thing is easier than adding TSM to an already rigged model. Imagine adding Squetch on top of AM2001. I suppose you could do it , but why? If one of your bones is name the same as a regular TSM2 bone then you'd have to consider renaming it. Basically you have a humanoid. It has elbows and wrists and knees and ankles and a neck... all that stuff that 99% of characters have. That's what vanilla TSM2 controls and moves. You put TSM2 bones in your character and attach all the relevant CPS to them and run TSM Rigger. Now, you have some other body parts that dont exactly correspond to 99% of characters' anatomies? Add some bones for them at the appropriate spots and constrain them. No scripting required. Scripting is for rig enhancements that you will want to apply to many characters without having to manually recreate them for each one. For example, I modified the "arm" script of TSM2 to add all the bones and constraints for limb bending on top of the regular TSM2. It's 100+ extra bones and twice as many constraints that I had to do manually for each character that are now made automatically. Took me long time to write and debug that script though. But your Terminator is a one-off character. You won't be needing to reproduce those extra joint and gizmo bones on other models. So writing a script for them woudl be unnecessary.

it shouldn't do that. Perhaps you have a non-standard mouse? Try the alternate method of pressing the ~ key while you hold down the left mouse button.

Nosir, it has to be a v12 model without any nulls in order to have the TSM rigger work. This is not correct. TSM rigger works on a model that has already been loaded. It doesn't matter what version the model came from. Have you noticed that it prompts you to save your work after TSM Builder and TSM Flipper? That would be pointless if you couldn't reload those files for use by TSM2. TSM2 Rigger can add bones to any existing model from any version tht your A:M can load. I've been doing it for 2 months now. But the real TSM workflow is not that you re-rig an existing rig. All the user has to do is put in the minimum Geometry bones and TSM2 rigs and constrains everything on top of that in one step. There is no need to compensate pre-existing constraints. TSM Builder requires it's "Components" have been made in V12 or earlier. But that's something the creator of the rig only needs to do once. He makes those available to the end user who never needs to modify them. But if you're using the possable Squetch file to put bones in a model, you wouldn't even need TSM Builder. Rigger does not need any V12 files at all. Where is that idea coming from? If Rigger needs V12 files how is it that i can save my work after TSM Flipper, quit A:M, restart it, reload my work (now a V13 file) and run Rigger on it? I really think you're introducing some unnecessary complications in this.

is the detour thru V12 so the Posable installation rig can be used? I still dont' understand the need for that detour, and it sounds like anyone who wants to install the Squetch rig is going to have to have V12? I've done a Squetch installation once and I dont' understand the advantage of the pose slider driven installation. It seems to me that using the sliders to rotate and scale the squetch rig into place is no fewer steps that using the regular rotate and scale manipulators in A:M to rotate and scale the TSM2 rig into place. What am i missing?

No. The easiest way is to animate the wheels to match the motion of the car. If you convert the "driver" for the bones for the wheels from "quaternion" to "Euler" they will be easier to keyframe for multiple revolutions. select the bone inthe chor window, Right click on "rotate" in the properties window for the bone. Maybe. You'd have to experiment a lot to get good results. Easier to aniamate the objects moving. you can put all the obects on the same path and use the "ease" settings to make them appear to follow each other. FO r what you are doing the versions are the same. you need to give each wheel a bone so it can turn. Hash.com has a button on the front page to buy V15