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Squetch Rig Installation (Part V)


Rodney

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Presenting Part V in the Squetch Rig Installation tutorial series by David Simmons.

 

SquetchRigPartV.jpg

 

If you have not yet reviewed Parts I through IV please download and view those first.

 

Squetch Rig Installation (Part I)

Squetch Rig Installation (Part II)

Squetch Rig Installation (Part III)

Squetch Rig Installation (Part IV)

Now on to Part V!

 

Here David first refines the face, optimizing the bone setup, hiding the FACE Rig inside the head and testing the poses. He then goes on to demonstrate similar refinement of the feet, hands and fingers.

 

Tip of the Day:

Note how David modifies poses so that bones appear and disappear as you need them.

When you are done rigging and put on the hat of animator this could be useful.

 

Squetch Rig Installation (Part V) with David Simmons (43MB Zip file)

 

Presentations are in MOV format encoded with H.264 which requires Quicktime 7.

Other formats will follow.

 

Commentary and exploration are encouraged.

Let David know what you think!

 

 

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Additional Information

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Download the Install Rig Plugin!

 

The Rigging and Relationships forum has an onongoing discussion of the Squetch Rig. There you will also find the plugin and files used with these tutorials.

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Oh... and David does some of that.. whatchacallit... that new thing... yeah thats the one... CP Weighting! :)

 

Its a great introduction to CP Weighting for those that have never used it.

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Hi,

 

I've been following the Squetch Rig and it is an awesome rigging system. It uses all the best ideas people have come up with over the years, it is well thought out, it includes a complete bone based face rig, it has install bones to help you place it, it is completely documented via these videos, it uses the visime lip sync system and, well, on and on and on. It is impossible 'not' to switch to it (and I intend to).

 

Awesome work!

 

Rusty

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That cp weigting is very interesting and hopefully will almost do away with smart skin.

 

The consensus seems to be that it has.

 

The operative word is 'almost'. I still need that final thin coat of Smart Skin to make all the intermediate bones and CP weighting work. For this, I don't know what would replace SS. Sure wouldn't want Hash to phase it out!

 

Cheers,

Rusty

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The operative word is 'almost'. I still need that final thin coat of Smart Skin to make all the intermediate bones and CP weighting work. For this, I don't know what would replace SS. Sure wouldn't want Hash to phase it out!

 

Agreed.

 

The line has blurred a lot and people refer to CP Weighting more and more as 'Smartskinning'.

This can get confusing.

 

CP Weighting seems (to me) a subset of smartskinning that is larger than the set itself. Is that possible?

 

The following will be too much text for this post perhaps but for those looking in... it might be informative.

From the v12 Tech Ref:

 

About Smart Skin Relationships

What is a relationship?

 

A relationship allows the user to define motion that will be triggered by the changing of a controlling property. In previous Animation Master 8.5 technologies, both Smartskin and Poses were types of relationships. They both are accomplished using relationships now. Smartskin and poses probably will continue to be the most commonly used forms of relationships, but many other uses are now possible.

 

What about Smartskin?

 

In version 8.5 Smartskin was muscle motion which was controlled by the rotation of a bone. In version 9.0 lingo, Smartskin is a relationship which is controlled by the rotate property of a bone, and generally contains muscle motion.

 

How Do Relationships Differ from version 8.5 Smartskin?

 

Several benefits were gained by a more general and robust treatment of these technologies as relationships.

 

- Bias can now be animated in smartskin (a frequently requested feature)

 

- A model can now have multiple smartskins, and they are switchable and combineable

 

- A smartskin can be turned off

 

- Smartskin can control skeletal motion or any other property

 

- All rotational axes are keyed together in the same relationship eliminating the x, y and z axis windows. (This permits keys to be placed at difficult axes combinations)

 

What do I use Smartskin for?

 

This is great for creating bulging bicep muscles, bending elbows, opening jaws, as well as shoulders and hips that look great at any extreme.

 

How do I create Smartskin?

 

Creating the muscle motion for the Smart Skin is much like creating a multi-frame Pose. Select the bone in the model whose rotation will be controlling the muscle. For instance the “Left Bicep”. Right-click (Control-click on a Mac) the bone and select New Smartskin. A new Relationship window will open, and the bone will be rotated 90 degrees about Y. Pick an extreme for the bone that needs muscle applied. To choose the extreme, you may type in angles on the property page or just use the rotate manipulator. Now switch to muscle mode and make any necessary changes to the model. Using a shaded/wireframe view can be useful. Now you can switch back to skeletal to use the bone’s manipulator, or type in values to examine the in-between frames generated towards “0”. If any adjustments are necessary, make them. Adjust again at the negative extreme of motion. This may be -90, maybe more, maybe less depending on the normal ranges of motion encountered for that bone. It is preferable for the blending functions to keep the keyframes somewhat equally spaced.

 

Can I make Smartskin in conjunction with constraints?

 

To create Smart Skin that works in conjunction with constraint bones that utilize blending, either be sure that the pose containing the constraints is set to be on by default in the Model’s properties, or leave Relationship Mode momentarily by using the Relationship button, then turn on the constraints, then turn the Relationship mode back on. If you forgot to leave Relationship mode, the act of turning the constraints on would be part of the Smartskin. Useful sometimes, but not what we want here.

 

While this process may sound tedious for just one bone, these modifications stay with and make sure it looks good regardless of how the skeleton is animated. It is a one time modeling process and can save tremendous amounts of time when animating. Smart Skin can also make libraries of skeletal motion much more reusable across different models, since each model has its own Smart Skin behavior in response to the same skeletal motion.

 

Contrast this with CP Weighting as described in the following also from the Technical Reference:

 

CP Weights

 

Unless mistaken David demonstrates even more clearly the advances in CP Weighting found in current versions of A:M. In any case he provides a nice introduction to CP Weighting.

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I still use Smartskin extensively...just not very much for the model geometry. The Squetch Rig uses quite a bit of Smartskin, most of the FACE controls, the finger curling and the control for the full body squetch are made with it. It is a very powerful tool...so is CP Weighting.

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  • 3 weeks later...

David would you be good enough to take a look at my model please .I am getting some strange things going on with the legs /hips ,kinda hard to explain .If you move the leg in an action slowly you will see what I mean .I looked again at the oiler limits ,maybe there wrong but I can only striaghten the leg when the control is right on the 0 x and y ,as soon as I move a touch it bends at the knee ,bad explanation sorry .Wouls realy appreciate you taking a look if you get time thank's Steve

 

link

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  • 1 year later...
  • 2 years later...

Just want to thank Rodney for posting David Simmon's work on installing the Rig.

David's first MOV provided insight, over and abve, what has taken my years to find the hard way. Now I can understand why my model of Jennifer has been so hard to control.

 

Thanks again David.

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