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Rigging my simple rig


Vance

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I'm trying to learn to do rigging on a simplified object, no fingers or feet, but I am interested in doing the more sophisticated kinds of things like switching back and forth between FK and IK on a particular limb. What is your suggestion for the best way to set this up? Do I make my geometry bones completely separate from a set of IK bones and a set of FK bones, and then enable and disable constraints to make them active? Or do I just use one set of bones and enable and disable locking to convert an IK hierarchy to FK?

 

I've used the 2001 rig, but I was really wowed by TSM rig. (Too bad they've dropped support.) I'm interested in also adding some of the squash and stretch that TSM rig has as well as weight balancing to my rig. Any hints on where to start will be appreciated!

 

-Vance

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I'm trying to learn to do rigging on a simplified object, no fingers or feet, but I am interested in doing the more sophisticated kinds of things like switching back and forth between FK and IK on a particular limb. What is your suggestion for the best way to set this up? Do I make my geometry bones completely separate from a set of IK bones and a set of FK bones, and then enable and disable constraints to make them active? Or do I just use one set of bones and enable and disable locking to convert an IK hierarchy to FK?

 

I've used the 2001 rig, but I was really wowed by TSM rig. (Too bad they've dropped support.) I'm interested in also adding some of the squash and stretch that TSM rig has as well as weight balancing to my rig. Any hints on where to start will be appreciated!

 

-Vance

 

I haven't used TSM, so I don't know what method Raf used for squetching...I show how the Squetch Rig accomplishes it in the tutorial for Making an Installation Rig.

 

I have some examples of a simple arm and leg that utilize FK/IK switching here...it's what the Squetch Rig uses.

 

As for auto balancing...I'm not a fan of it, so I have never messed with it.

 

Hope that is helpful, Vance. I realize that this information is skewed toward the Squetch Rig...a TSM expert will no doubt point you in the right direction for more info on TSM.

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Thanks, David.

 

I don't mind at all that you are sharing the secrets of the squetch rig! I just haven't had a lot of experience with it yet. This looks like exactly the kind of information I was looking for. I'll post once I have a chance to go through some of it. It's wonderful to get help from the developer of an extremely popular and powerful rig.

 

-Vance

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  • Hash Fellow

TSM2 works again in v13s.

 

Anzovin never published any commentary on how it does what it does. An industrious person might examine it closely and ascertain that, but I suspect David's info will point you to a similar outcome.

 

But "auto-balance", don't bother recreating that. It's really just averaging the hip position between the feet, which is almost never the right place for a good pose. Do not use auto balance. A good animator knows how to create balanced poses, a bad animator can't be helped by auto-balance.

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Thanks for the info that TSM works in 13s! That's what I'm using.

 

What I've found useful is to sweep the balance pose slider to quickly simulate a character trying, unsteadily, to find a balance point. I agree it is not very useful as a general way to keep a character balanced, but sometimes controls are good for something other than what they were really intended for. Thanks for the hint about how it is implemented.

 

-Vance

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  • 1 month later...

I would love to see TSM work for version 14, and I would buy it in a heart beat. I am actually holding off on ver14 , and keeping ver 12 until then to be honest. Its great to hear that its work for ver13. I think many of us are in the same boat, wishing it would work for ver 14.

 

I just got TSM2 for xmas.

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I would love to see TSM work for version 14, and I would buy it in a heart beat.

 

Get your credit card out, Ruscular, 'cause it works fine for me in A:M 13 and 14. :)

Oh yeah! great news! I'm dancing and dancing!

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I haven't used TSM, so I don't know what method Raf used for squetching...

 

I'm BAAACK after a week away!

 

Hey David---to expound on your statement above... Raf did not do anything in his rig to address squash and stretch at all. At least not on purpose. What he DID do was give the animator the ability to grab any control bone (parent or child) and scale it (and its children) in any XYZ direction... so if you grab the spine bone and hit (S) you will be able to interactively squarsh or stretch or fatten the spine and upper body. It's not much but properly used can be quite sufficient.

 

The 'Squetch' rig works the same way but with the scaling controlled by pose sliders...right? And this is the rig featured in TWO...right?

 

Not to 'dis' TWO...don't take this wrong...PLEASE! But, I would have thought the 'Scarecrow' would be taking much more advantage of 'squetch' than what I have seen. But then again, even in the movie...the real scarecrow was introduced as 'wobbly-gobbly' but then he was stuffed with more straw and was a lot more rigid for the rest of the movie.

 

It's good to be back---stirring things up!

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I haven't used TSM, so I don't know what method Raf used for squetching...

 

I'm BAAACK after a week away!

 

Hey David---to expound on your statement above... Raf did not do anything in his rig to address squash and stretch at all. At least not on purpose. What he DID do was give the animator the ability to grab any control bone (parent or child) and scale it (and its children) in any XYZ direction... so if you grab the spine bone and hit (S) you will be able to interactively squarsh or stretch or fatten the spine and upper body. It's not much but properly used can be quite sufficient.

 

The 'Squetch' rig works the same way but with the scaling controlled by pose sliders...right? And this is the rig featured in TWO...right?

 

Not to 'dis' TWO...don't take this wrong...PLEASE! But, I would have thought the 'Scarecrow' would be taking much more advantage of 'squetch' than what I have seen. But then again, even in the movie...the real scarecrow was introduced as 'wobbly-gobbly' but then he was stuffed with more straw and was a lot more rigid for the rest of the movie.

 

It's good to be back---stirring things up!

 

 

As Mark pointed out, you can also unhide nulls to squetch and pull the geometry bones in all kinds of ways independent of the control rig. The latest version of the rig has the forearm/bicep/calf/thigh subdivided into four, which allows for a lot more control over squetching and also adds the ability to bow the limbs.

 

As for the squetching used on Scarecrow in TWO...he's capable of quite a bit of squetching, it's the animators and Martin that determine how much of it they think is appropriate for each scene. I'm guessing that they just didn't want to over use it, moderation is a good thing.

 

I knew that there was some sort of squetching ability in TSM, I just haven't ever messed with it. TSM is a very cool rig.

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