Stone Elemental

[Drakkheim]

Well hot off the ol renderer, the second elemental unit.

 

Gonna try rigging this fella with the posable squetch install this evening. Which promises to be a challenge. Hey at least this guy has facial features so I might even try hooking up some of the FACE controls.

 

oh an here's a second smaller shot from when Iwas in the middle of texturing him.

 

Updates to follow as I get into rigging him.

[KenH]

Very cool. Is that splines or displacements? Probably splines. What are these for?

[frosteternal]

Well hot off the ol renderer, the second elemental unit.

Gonna try rigging this fella with the posable squetch install this evening. Which promises to be a challenge. Hey at least this guy has

Wow...very nice model!

Complex in its simplicity...

For rigging, might I recommend liberal use of CP weighting - the "Balance Connected" tool will work wonders and keep the various stones as solid objects so they don't flex in an un-stone-like way.

I can't wait to see this one moving....I can see it in my mind already.

[jpappas]

I love it! That's not the type of character model you see everyday.

 

When rigging something made of separate stones like this, do you plan to keep the shape of the stones intact around the bendy parts, or will you make it so the stones themselves bend and flex? I faced the same question when I wanted to rig my voltron model, which still sits un-rigged.

 

-Jim

[Drakkheim]

Very cool. Is that splines or displacements? Probably splines. What are these for?

Its about 150 rock shaped blobs with a slight displacement material on em.

With the exception of the hands & eyes no 2 rocks are identical (very similar yes, identical no)

 

Oh and these are for my game (2-d) . I was orginally working with a sci-fi theme but the robots were just so impersonal so I opted to switch to a fantasy based game instead.. There are going to be 4 sides with 3 units each. The elementals are the first side (still have to do the water elemental)

 

I'm taking a break from the coding side of things since my day job has me coding all day long lately and I need a break after work.

The end result of these guys are going to be some itty bitty 64x64 sprites. But I plan on using the models for marketing materials, splash screens etc etc.

[Drakkheim]

Thanks guys,

 

Frosternal nailed it .. gonna be a lot of CP weighting with the balance connected.

It should keep the stones as steady as possible.

 

Believe it or not most of the joints have fairly straight seams to bend across, they're just hard to see.

 

I just hope they work as intended

I'll find out tonight I guess.

[mtpeak2]

Cool model, Simon. Can't wait to see the rest of your elemental unit. Love the texturing.

[strohbehn]

This is really an attractive model... fun to look at and imagine what this character is going to act like. It's also one of those models that makes me slap my head and say, "why didn't I think of that". Very cool and well done!

[Rodney]

Simon,

Thats one of those "Why didn't I think of that" models.

Simply wonderful.

 

Great stuff. More! More!

[Drakkheim]

Thanks a bunch guys, I appreciate the kind comments.

 

Well rigging the guy wasn't hard with the new Squetch posable rig. Dare I say downright enjoyable.

 

Assigning the cps to the geometry bones.. Well It's been educational. With a little refresher help from Bob's CP weighting tech talk Things are going pretty smoothly.

 

However I have run into another Rig related problem. The model's thighs are rotated 45 degrees when the model is in it's default position. However as soon as I move the foot nulls up or down the thighs snap back into their proper position. I've tried Messing with the Calf euler limits.. and It seemed to help it some..(the thighs were rotating 90 degrees)

 

I tried re-compensating the thigh_orienter but it didn't make much of a difference.

 

Here's an image Illustrating the problem.

And here's 10 frames showing the issue in action.

StoneElemental_kneebug.mov

[itsjustme]

However I have run into another Rig related problem. The model's thighs are rotated 45 degrees when the model is in it's default position. However as soon as I move the foot nulls up or down the thighs snap back into their proper position. I've tried Messing with the Calf euler limits.. and It seemed to help it some..(the thighs were rotating 90 degrees)

 

I tried re-compensating the thigh_orienter but it didn't make much of a difference.

 

 

I couldn't get the video to completely load (sometimes my internet connection doesn't play nice), but, maybe I can point you in a direction that might help.

 

If you turn the euler limits off, does it go away? Usually that would mean that the calf and thigh aren't at the same angle...but the Posable installation doesn't allow that, so I don't think that's the problem.

 

Open the "right_leg_FK_IK" pose, then (in the pose) turn off IK. If the incorrect rotation goes away, then resetting the compensate on the "right_thigh" might cure the problem. Reset the compensate with the Pose off and then with it on. It would actually probably be best to reset the compensates on everything with the Pose off and then on because it could also be the compensates on the "right_foot_control_IK" null. By everything, I mean the (in this order) "right_foot_control_IK", "right_ball_rotate_controller", "right_thigh, "right_foot_IK_roll" and "right_knee_controller".

 

Hope that helps...if it doesn't, we'll try again.

 

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EDIT

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I left off the "right_foot_IK_roll" compensate when IK is on.

[mtpeak2]

First, I'm not sure why the "right_foot_control_IK" is in the position it's in, the translate to and the orient like constraints probably need to be recompensated. But it could be the reordering of poses I did to allow importing the rig and exporting, I'll check it out. If you want me to check it out, just let me know and I'll send you my e-mail address.

 

Also, could you post a render from the action, if you still have it, with the white, black and foot install bones showing, so I can see their position. Thanks

[Drakkheim]

Ahh many thanks for the pointers.

After a good amount of .... well .. guessing really...

I tracked it down.

 

It was a combination of the foot_control_IK's needing to be re-compensated

and

The euler limits for the calves. Unlike the problem with the fire elemental, this time it was the negative Y constraint that needed to be -1 instead of 0. Actually a smaller value than -1 worked fine.. it just seemed to be 0 that was causing the hitch.

 

Thanks for the help guys, and I'm feeling way better about tinkering with the rig after having spend a couple hours with it.. (ps, man there are a LOT of bones when you unhide everything...)

[itsjustme]

(ps, man there are a LOT of bones when you unhide everything...)

 

A little over 700 bones all together.

 

I'm happy to hear you got it figured out.

[Drakkheim]

Stone Elemental Walk cycle. Flash 2mb

 

Still dicovering new problems with the model and such but, hey, progress is progress..

 

Next up fix the wobbly ankle, lift the shoulders and rebuild the floating left hand.

[Rodney]

Simon,

That walk cycle with Stone Elemental... TOO COOL.

 

Thats beautiful stuff.

[KenH]

Abit of popping (and stretching?) but very nice work. That must have been tricky to rig.

 

PS Also, I can see a hole in the pole of one of the rocks on his left leg.

[steve392]

Thats graet ,a little thing here and there but looking real good well done

[agep]

Really enjoyable character. I like it very much

[specter]

That is friggen cool.

[Drakkheim]

Thanks guys.

 

Been plugging a bunch of little holes that you cant see until the dang thing starts moving.

 

Have been tracking down the wonkiness with the feet.

It looks like when the leg bends the foot geometry bone's heel end swings outward, sorta rolling the ankle.

I think I might have re-compensated something I didn't need to and thus broke something.

 

Oh and somehow His left arm is longer than his right. so all the hand bones are off by a bit. so when he closes his hand it looks like a swarm of pebbles.

 

Sigh.. and there's a looong list of other things that I should fix with this guy.. but since the final result is gonna be an itty bitty sprite. I may just call him done after I resolve the angle flipping issue. Gotta keep reminding myself otherwise, I'll go all OCD on it and never finish the other 10 units...

 

Here's QT of the angle roll thing.. and you can also really see the crap behind the curtain

StoneElemental_ankleshift.mov

[itsjustme]

I'm not sure what's happening there, Simon...you could delete the geometry, decals, etc, save it out as another model and post it. It would make it easier to figure out.

[Drakkheim]

I'm not sure what's happening there, Simon...you could delete the geometry, decals, etc, save it out as another model and post it. It would make it easier to figure out.

Good Idea.

Here is the model. I left some leg geometry to make it easier to visualize.

Stone_Elemental__Barren_Rigged.mdl

And thanks for the help.

[robcat2075]

Hey, that's a creature Ray Harryhausen would be proud of! Looks fabulous.

[mtpeak2]

I found a pose in the squetch relationships that needed to be turned off (I have a pose that turns the rig off). This may be the cause of the problem (bones out of position) I'll look into it more. Sorry for the inconvience.

[itsjustme]

I went in and started from scratch with a few poses by dragging new ones from the installation rig into this model. If you delete the "left_leg_IK_constraints", "right_leg_IK_constraints", "leg_constraints", "legs_SQUETCH", "Auto_hips_(IK_LEGS_ONLY)", "left_knee_orient_like_foot_IK", "right_knee_orient_like_foot_IK", "left_leg_FK_IK" and "right_leg_FK_IK" poses and then drag them into your model from this updated model, I think it will fix things.

 

I'm pretty sure that was it, I may have missed some Posable rig specific things.

 

--------------------

EDIT

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I think what threw you off was that the "left/right_foot_FK_control_base" are the only bones in the "leg_constraints" pose that need compensates and that started a domino effect for everything else.

[itsjustme]

While doing some double-checking, I decided I should document the present resetting of compensates. Tonight, I only finished the torso and legs...I'll get more of it done tomorrow.

[Drakkheim]

Wow, thank you guys.

I'll let ya know how it turns out

[Drakkheim]

Wow, thank you guys.

I'll let ya know how it turns out

 

Turns out that worked wonderfully. Thanks David!

 

Now I've got to get back to work work..

[itsjustme]

I updated the compensate resetting documentation, it's located here. It now covers the torso, legs and arms...the face compensates are covered in the installation videos, but I may add that to the written documentation in the next week or so if I get time.