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Questions about modifying the 2001 rig


adamP

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1.) The Ik arms and legs are already set up, but to have arms and legs that are not "attached to parent" while still having IK setups, do I need an extra set of arm and leg bones?

 

2.) How would I set up a heel bone so that I can rotate the heel up or down while the toes remain in place?

 

3.) Do I need all of the setup relationships (like basic setup, steady, balance, balance rigid, right hand lock, and left hand lock) that are already on the rig?

 

Thanks

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Hey OM, hmm, I'm not sure what you mean with all of the questions but I'll give it a go

1. I have no ans. as I'm not sure what the question is.

 

2. I think you would, not sure as I have not done this myself, add a null and call it Mr.FootTarget. Make sure the Mr.FootTarget is at the Ball of the Models foot behind the toes. Add a bone and make it's base at the Mr.FootTarget Null and pointing back past the heel(call it heel raiser, or HellRaiser:). Make the Foot Target null a child of the Mr.FootTarget

Then, Make the Foot Target translast with compensate to heel raiser. The Toe bone should also become a direct child of the Mr.Foot NUll.

Pretty sure that would work.

 

3. The only things you need from the 2001 rig, in my opinion, are

basic setup, right hand lock and left hand lock.

 

Mike Fitz

www.3dartz.com

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Thanks for the answers to #2 and 3. For #1, with the 2001 rig, when you turn off IK arms, the whole arm can be moved by just moving the forearm bone. I'd rather move each bone (bicep, forearm, and hand) individually. It does this for FK because the forearm bone has "attached to parent" turned ON. In order to do it the way I want, "attached to parent" needs to be OFF. but this would screw up the IK setup. So do I need 2 sets of bones? 1 with attached to parent ON for IK, and 1 with attached to parent OFF for FK? Hope that clears it up a bit. Or can attached to parent be modified in a relationship?

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OM, why don't you just take the IK out?

Then you just have the one bone chain for the arm. Select Lock IK in the properties window. It's not all that uncommon of a method and it's very simple and effective.

What you could do at that point is just put some rotational constraints in to help keep the range of motion honest.

 

I personally never enounter much that can't be done with the IK set up in the 2001 rig.

 

Mike Fitz

www.3dartz.com

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Okay, "attached to parent" and "lock IK" cannot be manipulated in a relationship. But I will probably be fine just having lock IK turned ON for the calves and forearms all the time. But there are 2 problems with this.

 

1.) If I move the forearm bone (with lock IK turned ON) in any way, it throws the IK arms setup out of whack.

 

2.) Lock IK turned ON works fine for the calves allowing me to rotate the bone independently however I like, but this isn't the case for the forearm. I think it has a limit placed on it, but I don't know how to remove it. I've looked through all of the relationships and can't find any limits or anything.

 

Here's the rig if anyone wants to try to figure it out. (no mesh, just skeleton)

2001_Skeleton2.mdl

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OM,

 

If I'm reading you right, a combo FK/IK rig like what I described in your other thread is what you're asking for.

 

I played with it the other night, but my rigging skills quite literally suck.

 

I'm pretty sure this is the tutorial of the guy from Cg-char that talked about this:

 

http://www.dirtyoldtoon.com/tutorials/IKFKTutorial_01.htm

 

The only problem is that you need to speak maya to understand it.

 

My experiment partly worked. I have two sets of two bones for each limb. The two bones with the geometry also have a null at the end with an IK constraint. Next you have two other bones in exactly the same location (hide the first two). These are the FK bones(lock IK on). Then you constrain the null to the tip of the FK bones. When you move the FK bones around, the null moves and the geometry moves (almost) like if you were strictly FK. That's the part I haven't worked out exactly yet. I think there's a few roll like or aim at constraints, and maybe a relationship that I haven't got my head wrapped around yet.

The whole idea is that you can do wonderful arcs and gestures with the FK parts and then when you actually need IK for grabbing something or for planting of the feet then you constrain the null to something besides the end of the FK bones....this becomes your IK/FK switch.

One of the "nice" things is that you simply move the FK bones back to where they'd "pick up" the null when you switch back to FK. 'Theoretically' removing any jumps or hiccups.

I don't know how much time I'll spend fiddling with this tonight, but the mathematical side of my brain intuitively tells me that there is enough information in the 2 FK bones to 'tell' the IK bones where to be simply through correct manipulation of the null and one other bone to bone constraint. I might not get it figured out until this weekend, though :(

 

eric

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2. I think you would, not sure as I have not done this myself, add a null and call it Mr.FootTarget.  Make sure the Mr.FootTarget is at the Ball of the Models foot behind the toes. Add a bone and make it's base at the Mr.FootTarget Null and pointing back  past the heel(call it heel raiser, or HellRaiser:). Make the Foot Target null a child of the Mr.FootTarget

Then, Make the Foot Target translast with compensate to  heel raiser.  The Toe bone should also become a direct child of the Mr.Foot NUll.

Pretty sure that would work.

Mike, how do you do it man? You said you haven't done it yourself, but that's the best heel setup I've ever tried! Just one comment though, you said to add a translate to constraint from the foot target to the heel raiser, but I also added an orient like constraint from the foot target to the heel raiser. With just the translate to constraint, the heel breaks.

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Hey OM thanks for trying the setup out.

I actually just quickly tried the set up out myself and think there are somethings that could be done to make it really rock, but I'd have to play with it a while.

But feel free to keep experimenting with it. That's how I learned!

Anyhows, in re reading my stuff, here's what I would change

1.Make MrFootTarge at ball of foot.

2.Make HellRaiser a child of MrFootTarget pointing back past ankle, straight with ground.

3.Make FootTarget a child of HellRaiser.

4.this is the part I would like to inspect further but give it a try - Make Knee rotator orient like HellRaiser. I had to put it at 50% to just mess around with it.

 

I'll contiue messing with it when I get the time, but get after it yourself, you might find the right setup if there are any problems with this one.

 

Mike Fitz

www.3dartz.com

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Had some time to fool with it...

1.)The new hierarchy you suggested does make it really rock :D

2.)The nice thing about it is that if you have IK legs turned on, you can choose to animate the legs with the FootTarget or the MrFootTarget without an extra relationship.

 

3.)I didn't notice a significant difference with having the knee rotator orient like the heelraiser.

4.)My ONLY problem with the setup is the toe bone. With this hierarchy, we don't need a Heel Setup relationship, but what I basically need is to make the MrFootTarget control the movement of the toes so all I have to animate is the MrFootTarget and the heelraiser. I guess the only way to do this is to have an orient like constraint from the toe bone to the MrFootTarget, unless there is a better way.

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Hey Mike - I love the "Hellraiser" - it works wonderfully - thanks for sharing this - should be part of the standard rig

Hi Nancy, thanks!

I don't feel the setup is complete as listed above. there's something bothering me with the rotation of the leg.

I think it has to do with the knee having independant rotation from th foot in the hash 2001 rig.

I am going to mess around with this when I get sometime either tomorrow or this weekend.

 

Thanks

Mike "HellRaiser" Fitz

www.3dartz.com

kidding about the hellraiser part....

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I'm not at MY computer right now, so I can't check it in A:M, but with the default 2001 Rig, doesn't the "knee rotator" have an orient-like constraint to the "Foot Target"? If so, why not just make the contraint's target "MrFootTarget" instead of the default "Foot Target"? That should give the leg the same rotation as the default rig. The other thing that bothers me is the toe bone, so I'm going to make a "Heel Setup" relationship where the toe bone is oriented like the MrFootTarget.

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Hey OM, the knee is independant. It only has euler constraints to make the rotation easier.

I know why you want to make the toes orient like the MrFootTarget, so that the toes automatically stay straint if the heel is raise. But that mean that the Mr.FootTarget is going to get rotational data if you want to raise and lower the toes.

I would leave it as is, maybe put an expression in the toe bone to the tune of

"If MrFootTarget Y is 0, than no "negative" rotation. Otherwise, freedom of rotation allowed." Yeah, this is not expression language, but the mechanics of how the expression would fire off is the same.

Basically, if the foot is on the ground, the toes can not rotate into the ground. But they can rotate upwards. If the foot is off the ground, the toes can now rotate negative and positive.

I'll see about writing it out so we can test it.

Mike Fitz

www.3dartz.com

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I know why you want to make the toes orient like the MrFootTarget, so that the toes automatically stay straint if the heel is raise. But that mean that the Mr.FootTarget is going to get rotational data if you want to raise and lower the toes.

I would leave it as is, maybe put an expression in the toe bone to the tune of

"If MrFootTarget Y is 0, than no "negative" rotation.  Otherwise, freedom of rotation allowed."  Yeah, this is not expression language, but the mechanics of how the expression would fire off is the same.

Basically, if the foot is on the ground, the toes can not rotate into the ground. But they can rotate upwards.  If the foot is off the ground, the toes can now rotate negative and positive.

What if I wanted to basically use the MrFootTarget as my toe bone to where I would never actually animate the toe bone, just the MrFootTarget?

 

If not, how do I add an expression to a bone, is there a tut or anything?

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I noticed no toe bone?

I tried it without putting an orient like constraint on the toe bone to the foot target, but when animating, you have to deal with 3 bones instead of only 2: translation of the foot target, and rotation of the heel and toe bones. Instead, now you just translate and rotate the foot target, and then rotate the heel as needed.

 

You might recognize the knee target and legroll target from Jeff Lew's rig. After buying the DVD over a year ago, that's the rig I've been using, but I also like certain things in the 2001 rig (like the hip null and inverted pelvis bone). So I sort of blended the two rigs together. And with the addition of this heel setup, it's turning into a very versatile, yet simple, rig. I'll post it when it's done, if anyone cares to try it out.

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