Gumbo

[itsjustme]

Dave, Mark, Rusty, do you have a preference which weighting method you use, or do you blend between CP Weight editting and freehand CP placement?

 

I tend to use "Auto Assign Bones" to start off, just to get it extremely rough (I don't usually use the bone falloff, but there are instances where I would). Then, I work on large groups of points to rough it in better and work my way down to weighting individual CP's. I use some bones as "neutral" while weighting (like the "head_geom_front" bone for the face) to decrease movement where necessary, later the percentages applied to the "neutral" bones tend to be assigned to other bones...I show how I weight things in the Squetch Rig Installation tutorial somewhere near the end.

 

Hope that helps, Dhar.

[Dhar]

This has been by far the most challenging step in the modeling process (just as Robert warned me about). So, after numerous trials and errors trying to follow tutes or doing everything on my own, I decided to simply see what the CP weights are for Sam and do the same (or close to it) on Gumbo.

 

It is going to be a very tedious work because I will have to look at each and every CP and copy its percentages over, but I don't see how else to do it.

[rusty]

This has been by far the most challenging step in the modeling process (just as Robert warned me about). So, after numerous trials and errors trying to follow tutes or doing everything on my own, I decided to simply see what the CP weights are for Sam and do the same (or close to it) on Gumbo.

 

It is going to be a very tedious work because I will have to look at each and every CP and copy its percentages over, but I don't see how else to do it.

 

Dhar?

 

Are you going one CP at a time looking at the weights on the feet? You do not need weighting on the feet.

 

Rusty

[largento]

Dar, I was doing the same thing with my Spott model and it *is* very tedious. One shortcut to use is to weight rings of CPs at the same time. Then go back to individual CPs if needed. Kind of starting broad and then working to specific.

[Dhar]

Dhar?

 

Are you going one CP at a time looking at the weights on the feet? You do not need weighting on the feet.

 

Rusty

 

That's what I thought too, Rusty. But if you look at Squetchy Sam, hardly a CP is assigned to a bone at 100%. The toe point, which you'd expect it to be 100% toes_geom, is actually weighted to the foot_geom as well. And then there is that "foot_shadow_geom" which came out of nowehere

 

I'm starting at the feet and working my way up.

[Dhar]

Dar, I was doing the same thing with my Spott model and it *is* very tedious. One shortcut to use is to weight rings of CPs at the same time. Then go back to individual CPs if needed. Kind of starting broad and then working to specific.

 

Thanks Mark. I am doing that as well. It is rare that I find an entire ring of CPs weighted the same way, especially on Gumbo who has more CPs than Sam. Trial & error is still a big part of this process.

[rusty]

Dhar?

 

Are you going one CP at a time looking at the weights on the feet? You do not need weighting on the feet.

 

Rusty

 

That's what I thought too, Rusty. But if you look at Squetchy Sam, hardly a CP is assigned to a bone at 100%. The toe point, which you'd expect it to be 100% toes_geom, is actually weighted to the foot_geom as well. And then there is that "foot_shadow_geom" which came out of nowehere

 

I'm starting at the feet and working my way up.

 

The degree of difference such weighting would make... well... I'll just wish you good luck.

 

Rusty

[rusty]

Dhar?

 

Are you going one CP at a time looking at the weights on the feet? You do not need weighting on the feet.

 

Rusty

 

That's what I thought too, Rusty. But if you look at Squetchy Sam, hardly a CP is assigned to a bone at 100%. The toe point, which you'd expect it to be 100% toes_geom, is actually weighted to the foot_geom as well. And then there is that "foot_shadow_geom" which came out of nowehere

 

I'm starting at the feet and working my way up.

 

Oh, what is the 'foot_shadow_geom' bone used for?

 

Cheers,

Rusty

[Dhar]

Oh, what is the 'foot_shadow_geom' bone used for?

 

Cheers,

Rusty

 

I really don't know. But if Sam has it, Gumbo has to have it too

[itsjustme]

Dhar?

 

Are you going one CP at a time looking at the weights on the feet? You do not need weighting on the feet.

 

Rusty

 

That's what I thought too, Rusty. But if you look at Squetchy Sam, hardly a CP is assigned to a bone at 100%. The toe point, which you'd expect it to be 100% toes_geom, is actually weighted to the foot_geom as well. And then there is that "foot_shadow_geom" which came out of nowehere

 

I'm starting at the feet and working my way up.

 

Oh, what is the 'foot_shadow_geom' bone used for?

 

Cheers,

Rusty

 

The foot "shadow" bones are for the back part of the foot...the reason they are there is that when the foot is squetched, you don't necessarily want the back part of the foot to stretch backward. Other than that, they move like the foot "geom" bones. Whenever I weight a character, I try to put it through as many possible combinations of positions and squetching as I can to get the best combination.

 

Hope that helps.

 

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

EDIT

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The weighting on your character is going to vary from Sam's, go with whatever gives you good movement...Sam is just a guide.

[rusty]

... I try to put it through as many possible combinations of positions and squetching as I can to get the best combination.

 

Sounds like a job for an Action... automated quality control... if you find you miss something you add it to the action and never forget it again.

 

Rusty

[Dhar]

Interesting how unstable the program gets when CP weighting. Many Exception 001 crashes that seem to only happen when you change weight values on a CP (or multiple CPs) and you hit Apply and if you don't like what you see you have to click Done, save, and then open that CP again to change the value. Does anyone else experience this, before I send a report?

 

Here is a quick update, I think I'm pretty happy with the leg so far (up to the thigh bone). I'm not going for realistic, but I'm pretty happy with it

Gumbo_Rig_test.mov

[itsjustme]

... I try to put it through as many possible combinations of positions and squetching as I can to get the best combination.

 

Sounds like a job for an Action... automated quality control... if you find you miss something you add it to the action and never forget it again.

 

Rusty

 

You're right, Rusty...I should make some Actions for people to use when weighting. I'll put that on my to-do list (it's becoming a long list again).

 

Interesting how unstable the program gets when CP weighting. Many Exception 001 crashes that seem to only happen when you change weight values on a CP (or multiple CPs) and you hit Apply and if you don't like what you see you have to click Done, save, and then open that CP again to change the value. Does anyone else experience this, before I send a report?

 

Don't hit "Apply"...I never do, Dhar. Just hit "OK" (or whatever it is...it's not in front of me). The CP's will stay selected (if I'm remembering correctly...if not, it's not hard to re-select them), you'll just have to right mouse click and select "Edit CP weights" again. I'm hearing that old joke in my head..."Doc, it hurts when I do this." The doctor says, "Then don't do that".

[rusty]

Dar, I was doing the same thing with my Spott model and it *is* very tedious. One shortcut to use is to weight rings of CPs at the same time. Then go back to individual CPs if needed. Kind of starting broad and then working to specific.

 

Thanks Mark. I am doing that as well. It is rare that I find an entire ring of CPs weighted the same way, especially on Gumbo who has more CPs than Sam. Trial & error is still a big part of this process.

 

I wonder how well this will work? If CP weighting isn't dependent on the model (i.e. the spline placement)... if the same weighting will work for everything... then there's no reason it can't be automated. If a CP is in this area of that bone, then it gets these weights. If nothing else it would take you a long way toward your goal.

 

Due to fixes in my model made by David for problems in the wrists and knees, I'm back to square 12 or somewhere close. I'm doing the weighing by:

= moving the model and seeing what it does

= by realizing what bones I can weight a CP or group of CPs to

= by knowing what effect each bone will have on a CP or group or Cps

 

This was working well for me and I'll continue in this fashion but I've been working with weighted CPs for a year or so and have gotten the hang of it a little better... at first I too based it on what someone had done on another model.

 

Ever since figuring out how much work I've lost I've been reluctant to start in again. I lost almost the entire arm and some of the hand. I also lost the finger web fan bones... which is something you might consider...

 

Just 4 bones that are children of the hand geom bone placed between the fingers like so....

 

 

Associate the CPs in the middle of the finger skin web then in one of the hand poses add orient like constraints to each first finger bone of the fingers around it and reduce the enforcement to 50% on each...

 

And the skin web acts as it should...

 

Cheers,

Rusty

[itsjustme]

A possible aid to initial weighting would be to use a model that is already weighted and transfer that weighting to your model using the Transfer_AW plugin. I did some experimenting a few months ago and it did a decent job for roughing things in. Here is the post where I gave the process and the results I got...it was just a test, so I transferred the weighting from Squetchy Sam to an un-weighted version of the same model (just a proof-of-concept).

 

Hope that helps.

[rusty]

Dar, I was doing the same thing with my Spott model and it *is* very tedious. One shortcut to use is to weight rings of CPs at the same time. Then go back to individual CPs if needed. Kind of starting broad and then working to specific.

 

Thanks Mark. I am doing that as well. It is rare that I find an entire ring of CPs weighted the same way, especially on Gumbo who has more CPs than Sam. Trial & error is still a big part of this process.

 

It just occurred to me that you may need the kind of weighting you're doing for the squash and stretch features of the rig which you certainly need for cartoon characters. I'm doing realistic characters and I will use very little of this kind of squash and stretch however, I will try to use the squash and stretch features of the rig to make one outfit model serve many characters... so I hope anyway.

 

r

[mtpeak2]

The fan bones for the webbing that Rusty added can be done with weighting, just weight it 50/50 to the same bones he constrained the fans to.

[KenH]

Many Exception 001 crashes that seem to only happen when you change weight values on a CP

 

Yes, I experienced it on a character recently in v14. However, I vaguely remember seeing a report on it so it could be fixed/fixed soon. But another report wouldn't hurt if you're using the latest version.

 

BTW...I think the "Apply" button is great in the cp weighting dialog as you don't need to keep going in and out of it to see the results.

[rusty]

The fan bones for the webbing that Rusty added can be done with weighting, just weight it 50/50 to the same bones he constrained the fans to.

 

Are you sure? I thought of doing this... and although you maybe right (and in fact it may work better)... with a bone, the position and length of the bone will affect the movement of the CP(s). Losing this control would certainly make some kind difference (and again, that difference might be for the better). I'll have to try it and find out. I actually thought of it while making the previous post but due to this concern only spoke to what I knew worked.

 

BTW, the original incarnation of this (at least where I got it from) used 3 bones between each finger! Two had orient like constraints to each surrounding finger bone while the middle one had orient like constraints to the first 2 bones at 50% each. I could not see a use for the first two and got rid of them (my older models have all three). As I recall it was on a $25 video from some studio... the main attraction on the video was the rig for the bouncing boobs that they had on some God awesome female warrior model (excuse my language ladies).

 

Cheers,

Rusty

[Dhar]

Don't hit "Apply"...I never do, Dhar. Just hit "OK" (or whatever it is...it's not in front of me). The CP's will stay selected (if I'm remembering correctly...if not, it's not hard to re-select them), you'll just have to right mouse click and select "Edit CP weights" again. I'm hearing that old joke in my head..."Doc, it hurts when I do this." The doctor says, "Then don't do that".

 

It's either Apply or Done. If I hit Apply, the CP will move according to the numbers I put in, but if I don't like what I see and try to input different numbers, that is when it crashes. If I hit Done it will close the box and I'll have to choose the CP again, right-click and CP weight all over again.

[Dhar]

Thanks for the tip on the webbing Rusty.

 

This process has taught me that next time I will look at the rig first, or at least keep it open while modeling a new character. That way I can custom model to the rig in a fashion that will make it easier to assign CPs to. That way, I can have multiple iterations of the same CPs which will make it easier to copy/paste the weighting for another model.

 

All in all, I'm grateful for all your input guys. Please keep'em coming.

 

Next is the hip weighting

[rusty]

Don't hit "Apply"...I never do, Dhar. Just hit "OK" (or whatever it is...it's not in front of me). The CP's will stay selected (if I'm remembering correctly...if not, it's not hard to re-select them), you'll just have to right mouse click and select "Edit CP weights" again. I'm hearing that old joke in my head..."Doc, it hurts when I do this." The doctor says, "Then don't do that".

 

It's either Apply or Done. If I hit Apply, the CP will move according to the numbers I put in, but if I don't like what I see and try to input different numbers, that is when it crashes. If I hit Done it will close the box and I'll have to choose the CP again, right-click and CP weight all over again.

 

I reported this so its on the list but I was also sent a workaround:

 

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sgross - 09-30-07 08:49

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As a workaround, click everytime after clicking .

 

edited on: 09-30-07 08:49

 

This seems to work and it makes life much simplier if you can 'apply' until you have it right.

 

Rusty

[Dhar]

Getting back to where I left off, the hip proved to be more trouble than expected since I have more CPs than Sam around that area. However, i discovered that the hip target is not centered where it should be. Is there a way to fix this?

Gumbo_Rig_test.mov

[mtpeak2]

I'm not sure what you mean Dhar. The hip null? Or the hips lower controller? If you are refering to the hips lower controller not moving with the hip null, auto hips is turn on in the leg controls folder.