Migrating from TSM1 to TSM2

[luckbat]

The good news: As a happy new TSM2-for-Mac user, I'm eager to get started with the new toys.

 

The bad news: After a year of using TSM1, my model meshes are majorly decked out: Fan bones, Smartskin, constraints, and CP weights like you wouldn't believe.

 

Now, no one's forcing me to overhaul my models, of course. But I didn't buy TSM2 just to keep using my original rigs. I've been looking forward to this for almost a year.

 

I know there's going to be a lot of re-assigning of CPs and re-creating of constraints. I can live with that. I'm just hoping to reduce the amount of lost work. Are there any clever ways I can integrate my existing (pre-rigged) TSM1 skeleton into my new TSM2 one? For example, I know that when you rename a bone, all the Smartskins and constraints will update to reflect the new name. So it seems like, by carefully re-naming existing bones and gingerly inserting the extra TSM2 bones into their proper place in the hierarchy, it might be possible to minimize the time I have to spend re-doing everything.

 

What do you think? Am I living in a dream world?

 

Oh--one other question. Jeff Lew's video claimed that a 3d model's spine needs to be straight, not curved like a human spine. Is that true, or does TSM2 not care?

[anzovin]

Morgan and Raf need to answer this, but I would not get my hopes up. Jeff Lew is not correct about straight spines; advanced designs can be angled and bent as needed when rigging.

 

Steve

Anzovin Studio

[luckbat]

Really? Huh. Now that I've had a chance to examine the TSM-2 skeleton more closely, it seems pretty similar to the TSM-1 one, apart from the doubled arm and leg bones. I mean, the names are all different, but the hierarchy looks about the same.

 

Anyway, I'll do some experimenting while I wait for more information. Hopefully it won't be too bad.

 

By the way, which is the Anzovin preference: "TSM2" or "TSM-2"?

[anzovin]

TSM2 is my usual choice.

 

We'd certainly be interersted in hearing about your rerigging experiences.

 

--Steve

Anzovin Studio

[luckbat]

Well, since you asked...

 

As far as I can tell, converting a TSM1 pre-rig into a TSM2 one really is as straightforward as it looks. It's a little tedious, sure, but not nearly as much as redoing every Smartskin, CP weight, constraint, fan-bone and pose slider in my model. I shudder just thinking about it. Here's how I proceeded:

 

Step 1: In the PWS, rename all the bones in your TSM1 skeleton to their TSM2 equivalents. (Don't forget the foot targets!) A:M is smart enough to preserve all your constraints and relationships when you do this.

 

Step 2: Add the four extra arm bones at their appropriate places in the hierarchy. The best way is to make them children of the original two arm bones and then connect them, because then you can select the original humerus and radius bones, change their bone lengths to half of their original values, and the new bones will, being connected, snap into place. More importantly, doing it this way should preserve any Smartskins on your shoulders, elbows and knees.

 

Step 3: The leg bones are even easier. Grab each thigh bone and option-drag it onto its own parent. This creates duplicates of the entire leg hierarchy, positioned identically to the originals. Delete the superfluous duplicate foot bones, then rearrange the duplicate thigh and shin bones in the PWS to be children of the originals. Connect them; change the originals to be half their original length, and bingo. Legs are done. (You could have used this method on the arms, too, but who wants to manually delete all those finger joints?)

 

Step 4: Go into your constraints and re-assign the targets on your elbow, wrist and knee fan-bones, if any. (Strictly speaking, if we're talking about simple orient-like constraints, you could even skip this step, since the arm and leg bone pairs orient themselves as a unit. But you should do it anyway.)

 

Step 5: Reassign some of your arm and leg CPs to their new secondary bones as you see fit.

 

That's pretty much it. The worst part was renaming all those finger joints, but I've got the bones in there positioned pretty carefully, and would have hated having to rebuild from scratch.

 

I must confess, spending all that time scrutinizing my model's skeleton was a great excuse to go in and address some of the flaws that I'd never bothered to fix. My ankle joints were a little too high, for example, and some of the CPs around the waist worked better when they were assigned to different spine bones.

 

The bottom line: it can be done!

[anzovin]

Neat. After you run it through TSM Rigger, does it have all the functionality--spine squash and stretch, etc?

 

--Steve

Anzovin Studio

[luckbat]

Sure seems like it to me.

 

[Morgan]

Nice.

 

There really wasn't any way for us to automate TSM1->TSM2 conversion, so I'm glad to see that doing it by hand is a reasonable alternative.