NickHutson Posted March 29, 2005 Share Posted March 29, 2005 Does anyone know a good tutorial ( I don't have the cash for tsm) for setting up a rig that goes from A to Z. I'm having alot of trouble with A:M's auto assign bones because it always grabes mesh in parts that I don't want it to. And my character has a vest, so this is making things really hard. Will this pan out with cp weights (which is also refusing to work)? Also I'm having trouble desiding how I'm going to manage the vest. Should I use constrainted bones or try my hand at fabric to get a more realistic look. Any suggestions? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admin Rodney Posted March 30, 2005 Admin Share Posted March 30, 2005 Philip, I've collected the following in the Useful Links area: Rigging ***Rigging with the 2001 Eggington rig (includes Rigging your own tutorial) Search for rigging tutorials on the A.R.M. More of Dem Bones by Raf Anzovin (Note: Link to the first tutorial: Dem Bones is broke on the A.R.M.) A:M Bones Notes by Joseph Firestine 3D Animation & Design Interesting discussion on Fan Bones etc. I'm sure there are probably other tutorials that should be linked as well. (maybe Colin's and Kricket's) *** This one is a good A to Z tutorial. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admin Rodney Posted March 30, 2005 Admin Share Posted March 30, 2005 Whoa... double post attack. Sorry. So I'll make good use of the space and post links to: Colin's: Colin's Tutorials Kricket's: Kricket's Anime Page Look for the rigging section. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NickHutson Posted March 30, 2005 Author Share Posted March 30, 2005 Thanks for all the links. Looks like there are no quick fixs. Darn, I hate doing this part! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admin Rodney Posted March 30, 2005 Admin Share Posted March 30, 2005 Philip, I take it adding the 2001 or another rig created by A:M users won't do the trick? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
modernhorse Posted March 30, 2005 Share Posted March 30, 2005 I'm with ya brother - no quick fixes. Don't forget to check out the Rigging and Relationship forum led by 3DARTZ. Good stuff there (it's under the Features part of this forum). Doug Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dre4mer Posted March 30, 2005 Share Posted March 30, 2005 Dude, I know it's rough, i've struggled with creating my own rig since getting AM about 2 years ago, without enough success to really consider creating an animation with a bi-pedal character. I had to stick with fish, and simple creatures. The steup Machine 2 and Weight mover combo are WAY worth the money just in the hours of time you save. I would say they are the only "quick" fix . I also found Colin's tutorials very helpful http://www.colins-loft.net/tutorials.html -Ethan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3DArtZ Posted March 30, 2005 Share Posted March 30, 2005 You'd be surprised how "quick" it is when you know how to put a rig in yourself. I don't know how much more I know than other people out there, but putting the basic IK stuff of the hash 2001 rig is a 5 minute operation...... I think the automated installers are definately worthwhile, but you can't beat knowing how to install this stuff yourself. Mike Fitz www.3dartz.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3DArtZ Posted March 30, 2005 Share Posted March 30, 2005 oh btw, you can read about installing a basic IK rig(a la 2001) on my site. I finally Ironed out some stuff with my web hosting company so, I've done a minor update to the site. But again, you can read about putting IK stuff into your model, if anyone's a little co-fused about it. Mike Fitz www.3dartz.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NickHutson Posted April 1, 2005 Author Share Posted April 1, 2005 Thank you all for the help you've lended. It's been really... Well..... helpful. I took a look at the Rigging forum and it was enlightenning. What I'm planning on doing is getting the bones set to the mesh using Jeff's greendude rig. Then applying smartskin to iron things out. The only problem is that my character is wearing a vest and a sheriff badge on top of that. So it would be impossible to get the vest far enough away from other mesh to make the start pose for cloth simulation. Is there another way to manage the vest without using cloth? P.S. I'm using version 11.1 of A:M Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heyvern Posted April 1, 2005 Share Posted April 1, 2005 Don't be afraid.... I spent ages terrified of rigging... then.. I just forced myself to do it and if worked out quite nicely and I learned a million things (while making as many mistakes). I just used the 2001 rig from the CD and applied it to my own model. The vest... Is the vest opened or closed? If it is closed you can just adjust the model so that the vest has some thickness and have it assigned to the same bones as the body. The thickness would prevent the vest from "vanishing" inside the body. If the splines of the vest don't align exactly with the body you may want to do some additional smart skin or cp wieghting to compensate. Or you could have a seperate set of bones for the vest that are constrained to the body bones with an offset. This would allow the vest mesh to shift and move seperately from the body for more realism. If you want the vest to be "open" and flap around like cloth. Find some spots that would actually "not move". Areas of the vest that would be "attached" to the body, like the neck back and shoulders. Then use dynamic constraints for the "floppy" parts. The badge would be assigned to the same bone for that part of the vest. Don't think of the badge as being a seperate object, treat is as part of the vest. In an extreme case you could assign one bone for the badge as a child of the vest bone in that spot. Then if the badge intersects occassionally into the vest, just rotate that badge bone to fix. For a vest like this... cloth... and this is just an opinion not a judgement on cloth per say... cloth would be overkill. Considering that for the simple amount of cloth like behaviour a few dynamic contstraints would do the trick nicely. Most people automatically think of using cloth when creating... clothes... in most cases, it isn't neccessary unless you have long flowing gowns or capes. Plus, a dynamic constraint is more... flexible (forgive the pun). You can change the attributes and not have to run a new simulation. It is more simple in its application. Good luck! Don't be afraid of rigging! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NickHutson Posted April 1, 2005 Author Share Posted April 1, 2005 Thank you for your reply Vernon. This has helped allot. I don't know why I didn't think of ridged dynamics for the vest, being that I will be using Dynamics very extensively thoughout my short. I'm using smartskin to iron out the mess of the joints instead of fan bones. Mostly cause they scare me to death. Will smartskin be worth using for this? Or should I start adding fans before I get too far ahead of myself? Along with the smartskin I've been having problems with getting A:M to mirror the smartskin. I've done this before on other projects, but for some reason it hasn't been working lately. Does anyone know of a fix? Thanks again for all your help! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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