pixelmech Posted January 24, 2005 Posted January 24, 2005 Well, no thanks to the Rant's and Rave's forum I'm making some progress on my second model. I kind of scrapped that first one because he really wasn't constructed very well. Anyway, I'm somewhat happy with the way he is coming along but I have a few problems maybe you can all help me with. 1. I originally had a 'toon mouth but it didn't look right. I kind of want to put a straight line mouth where the light green line in the picture is indicated. I'm not sure how to break into the head and make this so that the mouth will actually work - do I need to remodel the whole head? (The eyes are not attached). 2. I actually have TSM2, but I'm working on rigging him myself. I really feel like I need to understand the process well even with TSM. So I am using David Rogers book and going through. I've only done the basic rig, no finger bones or fan bones, smartskin or anything yet. One issue I'm having is movement of the neck *severely* deforms the top of his body. In my next post I'll post a capture of the control points to the bones so you can see how I have them set. I'm kind of lost on how to set up the CPs so this won't happen. Maybe this is an issue for contraints? I get the same problem with the head movement too. The head pushes down the neck and I get bad looking stuff. He is indeed a robot, but I want him to be semi-organic moving. It's ultimately a character for children, not a serious robot. But certainly his metal body should twist up like it does. Appreciate any and all comments, good or bad. Thanks! EDIT: Forgot to say, if you notice my avatar, that is the drawing I started with. There's some detail and tweaking aside from the mouth that I have not gotten to yet. And the feet just might be tricky too... Quote
pixelmech Posted January 24, 2005 Author Posted January 24, 2005 Here's the CP assignments around the neck and a photo of the deformation. Also, is it common to have a spine bone not assigned to anything? I ended up with that, should I remove it? Quote
jesshmusic Posted January 24, 2005 Posted January 24, 2005 Cool model! The one thing I would recommend (and I hesitate to do it since you are so far along) would be to not have as many bendable parts. He is almost human. I would think the knees, elbows and necks would be jointed. I guess you wouldn't even have to connect the arms, forearms, etc. If this is the look you are going for, cool! If that is the case ignore everything I have typed except for the first two words!!! Quote
pixelmech Posted January 24, 2005 Author Posted January 24, 2005 Cool model! The one thing I would recommend (and I hesitate to do it since you are so far along) would be to not have as many bendable parts. He is almost human. I would think the knees, elbows and necks would be jointed. I guess you wouldn't even have to connect the arms, forearms, etc. If this is the look you are going for, cool! If that is the case ignore everything I have typed except for the first two words!!! Thanks Jess Well the thing is, I wasn't sure how to make him "less bendable"! LOL. I kind of would like to - especially around the neck/shoulders/torso. I'm just not sure how to do it. I did kind of what him to have some bendability. Think of some kind of synthetic skin over the machined parts that are quite flexible. Now, the arms are NOT connected to the model, nor are the orange rings. I'm wondering if I should break off the neck? Any suggestions I'll definitely consider. I'm not adverse to reworking parts of the model if necessary. I have to do something about the mouth anyway. Tom Quote
jesshmusic Posted January 24, 2005 Posted January 24, 2005 I don't know if this will help, but here is Glix, a robot from my current project. His neck is a seperate piece. His head is what rotates, however, the neck does not move. Keep in mind that his biceps and forearms only rotate on one axis due to their design. I don't know what that joint is called. Perhaps you can find a similar solution. Old-school Sci-Fi artists sometimes just put spheres at the joints. Quote
pixelmech Posted January 24, 2005 Author Posted January 24, 2005 Cool model! The one thing I would recommend (and I hesitate to do it since you are so far along) would be to not have as many bendable parts. He is almost human. I would think the knees, elbows and necks would be jointed. I guess you wouldn't even have to connect the arms, forearms, etc. If this is the look you are going for, cool! If that is the case ignore everything I have typed except for the first two words!!! Thanks Jess Well the thing is, I wasn't sure how to make him "less bendable"! LOL. I kind of would like to - especially around the neck/shoulders/torso. I'm just not sure how to do it. I did kind of what him to have some bendability. Think of some kind of synthetic skin over the machined parts that are quite flexible. Now, the arms are NOT connected to the model, nor are the orange rings. I'm wondering if I should break off the neck? Any suggestions I'll definitely consider. I'm not adverse to reworking parts of the model if necessary. I have to do something about the mouth anyway. Tom Quote
pixelmech Posted January 24, 2005 Author Posted January 24, 2005 I don't know if this will help, but here is Glix, a robot from my current project. His neck is a seperate piece. His head is what rotates, however, the neck does not move. Keep in mind that his biceps and forearms only rotate on one axis due to their design. I don't know what that joint is called. Perhaps you can find a similar solution. Old-school Sci-Fi artists sometimes just put spheres at the joints. Nice model! Yeah, I think I will do what you've done, disconnect the neck and let the head rotate, that is really what I want. I almost put the spheres in for the joints...I'll have to think about this some more Quote
jesshmusic Posted January 24, 2005 Posted January 24, 2005 Post up some updates when you do it! I hope my advice doesn't mess him up too bad! Quote
pixelmech Posted January 24, 2005 Author Posted January 24, 2005 Ok, here's an update. Detaching the neck definitely helps. The head can rotate freely along the X axis no problem. The problem comes in when the head tilts in the Y or Z axis though. Since my head is attached to a neck bone, which is attached to the spine - a tilt of the head ends up deforming the body via the neck/spine chain. Really all his body should do is rotate in the X axis or tilt forward back a bit. The pelvis seems to work that way mostly... Do I need to decouple the head bone out of the spine heirarchy? Look at the CPs in the red/maroon section - these seem to be particularly troublesome, yet I don't know what to do there. Setting them to the shoulders doesn't seem right... Quote
ZachBG Posted January 24, 2005 Posted January 24, 2005 Hey there-- If you don't want the head/neck bones to affect the spine, you have a couple choices: 1. Lock off the bones (click the lock button while the bone is selected) in each Action and Chor; or 2. Turn "Attached to parent" OFF in the bone's properties. Hope this helps. Quote
Tunames Posted January 24, 2005 Posted January 24, 2005 try using "lock IK" for the head bone then the neck won't move with the head but it will still retain the heiarchy...... oops Zach beat me Quote
pixelmech Posted January 24, 2005 Author Posted January 24, 2005 Hey there-- If you don't want the head/neck bones to affect the spine, you have a couple choices: 1. Lock off the bones (click the lock button while the bone is selected) in each Action and Chor; or 2. Turn "Attached to parent" OFF in the bone's properties. Hope this helps. Thanks both of you guys, I will try that - attached to parent sounds more like what I want. Attached a picture with the mouth added in. There is some slight creasing on it I may have to work on. Not boned yet. Thickened up arms too. Starting to think about redoing the hands, they are looking like they don't belong...darn. Quote
pixelmech Posted January 24, 2005 Author Posted January 24, 2005 I took the "ball" idea for the joints (which I had wanted to do anyway but wasn't sure how to) and added them. I like both the look of it and how it makes the joints look, here's a shot. Interesting how with even a basic rig that isn't complete you can get a somewhat decent pose ... Quote
jesshmusic Posted January 24, 2005 Posted January 24, 2005 Oh yeah! Fabulous! Let's see some animations now to see how it looks! No time to waste! (Must keep pixelmech away from Rants and Raves!!!!) Quote
pixelmech Posted January 24, 2005 Author Posted January 24, 2005 Oh yeah! Fabulous! Let's see some animations now to see how it looks! No time to waste! (Must keep pixelmech away from Rants and Raves!!!!) ROTFL :) Yeah, no kidding, keep me outta there! I have to decide what to do with the hands first. Then I have to finish the rig too, which means going through the contraints chapter in Davids book. So it might be awhile, but I will post any model updates here for a bit. Thanks everyone for the input. Tom Quote
pixelmech Posted January 25, 2005 Author Posted January 25, 2005 Added the balls to the finger joints and made the hands 20% smaller which I think helps. Quote
pixelmech Posted January 25, 2005 Author Posted January 25, 2005 Thanks Doug I'm going to work on it some more tonight. Quote
pixelmech Posted January 27, 2005 Author Posted January 27, 2005 Here's an update. I ended up putting balls at the thigh as well. Might at the shoulders. Problem is I'm having a hard time rigging "mechanically" without getting deformations. Doesn't help that I'm brand new at this. Anyway, hiding the joints is cheating I guess, but I follows the robot look (Kind of a Robbie the robot thing) and allows it to kind of look like robot joints (the ball stays still while the joing moves "in" it) and hides the deformation too. Added a ring around his helmet. Quote
pixelmech Posted January 27, 2005 Author Posted January 27, 2005 We wanna see animations!! arggh! The PRESSURE! LOL. I don't feel like I can animate him til I get the rig done right, you know? But I think I'm getting close....wait...I think I said that already... Ok Ok...soon...soon... Quote
pixelmech Posted January 28, 2005 Author Posted January 28, 2005 Ok, finally got a version rigged that seems to work good enough to play around with (phew). Part of the problem was the way I had the model built, so I made some adjustments that seemed to really help. Here's a quick goofy pose with the TSM rig working. I'm going to try my hand at a walk cycle tonight..maybe something else... Quote
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