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Rigging GalaDM with TSM Workshop


Caroline

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Lol, Jake - it's a terrible animation especially in the shoulders and knees - it was just for fun.

 

There are a number of things wrong with Gala - her fingers, and her ears especially, but I like her the way she is :)

 

At least for the moment. Maybe I'll fix her up on version 2. But thank you for pointing that one out, I actually had not noticed her arm length deficiency.

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Stage 11 - SmartSkin

 

Actually this should come before MirrorBones and MirrorConstraints.

 

Smartskin is a quick way to fix up those wayward CPs that could be fixed by proper fan boning and weighting.

 

Holmes' Tutorial on SmartSkin is here:

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29742

 

I have a couple of CPs in the hips that I don't like.

 

Smartskin works on rotation of the bone. You set the position at 0 degrees rotation, then where the CP should be at, say 90 degrees rotation. The software interpolates the position of the CP between these degrees. It is very similar to creating bone keyframes during an animation.

 

So you need to check where the CP is at all rotations, and if necessary move them. It is best to moved the CPs at fixed rotations, like 90 degrees, 45 degrees, 22.5 degrees etc, just to keep track of them better. A moved CP will go blue, and the movement can be deleted from the Smartskin by highlighting the CP and clicking Delete Keyframe (the icon with the red x as in this picture).

 

post-9673-1218269025.jpg

 

The Delete key does not remove a Smartskin movement.

 

If you have a lot of smartskin, the model's file size will get bigger and less efficient, so it is better to use weighting.

 

In this picture, when the leg swings out, a dent is caused:

 

post-9673-1218269043_thumb.jpg

 

This should be fixed in the model BEFORE the Mirror plugins are run, and before TSM is Rigged.

 

1. In Bones mode, right click the "1 right leg" bone and choose New Smartskin

2. A new Relationship window will open, with the "1 right leg" bone swung in a 90° Y rotation.

3. Open the properties in the PWS for this Relationship, and change the Y rotation to -70°, which is as far as I think the movement should go.

 

post-9673-1218269065_thumb.jpg

 

4. In Front View, go into Muscle Mode (F7, and move the CP to the 'correct' position).

 

post-9673-1218269080_thumb.jpg

 

I also moved some of the surrounding CPs.

 

5. Move the bone around in the Relationship window, to test it out. I do not think that SmartSkin is immediately updated in Actions, so you can't have tiled windows as we did previously. Any Actions have to be closed and reopened to ensure the SmartSkin works there.

 

You can edit the smartskin by right clicking the same bone, and choosing Smartskin > SmartSkin1

I also did a back swing smartskin on 70 degrees in the X rotation.

 

After doing MirrorBones and MirrorConstraints, you can right click in Bones Mode, and choose Mirror All SmartSkin.

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Hi Caroline

Sorry for highjacking Your thread again ...

 

After Mirrorbones
The only issue with the plugin was that I did find that the bones called "right" copied and weighted correctly, but the bones called "Right" copied, but did not weight (I had unticked case-sensitive). I fixed that by renaming the "Right" ones "right".

 

Is now solved , also the rmweight problem .

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Steffen - thanks for fixing that other thing, I haven't tested it yet, but now I am having a weird problem with MirrorConstraints.

 

This is my model.

GalaDM_RigStage011BeforeMirrora.zip

 

I do this:

 

1. In modelling mode select Left Half Group.

2. Right click selected area and do MirrorBone

3. Right click away from model and do MirrorConstraints

4. Open up Relationships > User Property Relationships > Rig Setup Constraints Relationship, and right click Setup > Edit Relationship

 

The problem is under the Setup Constraints. The 50% constraints are now 100%. For example, right knee fan is now 100%.

 

However, if I revert to the saved model, and do step 4 first, and go back and do steps 1 to 3 while the Relationship window is open, the constraints stay at 50% and are mirrored correctly.

 

Do you get this result? It is driving me mad that sometimes my constraints all disappear!

 

Addition - if I leave an Action window open while I do steps 1 - 3 it also works, but if no other windows are open except for the modelling, then all constraints are set to 100%

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:D Here we go then , shoulders that I thought was ok are not and the left elbow is still out I think the shoulder is a waighting prob ,will have to redo that but I prety pleased with it so far ,I think the rig is good to use .Is there a way to limit the rotation on say the head so that it can't look like an owl when I turn it

walk_test.mov

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Hi Caroline

Sorry for highjacking Your thread again ...

 

After Mirrorbones
The only issue with the plugin was that I did find that the bones called "right" copied and weighted correctly, but the bones called "Right" copied, but did not weight (I had unticked case-sensitive). I fixed that by renaming the "Right" ones "right".

 

Is now solved , also the rmweight problem .

 

Stephen, I got the latest version of MirrorBone off your plugins page, but I still find that it is making "left[bonename]"copies for bones that didn't have "right" in their name. This happens on bones that are not centered on X=0. These are off-center bones that appear as if they might warrant a mirrored copy, but that I have intentionally not named "right" so a mirroring program such as the plugin would not make a copy.

 

Sorry to detour Caroline's thread here... I tried emailing, but they keep getting bounced back.

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I have been tweaking this for days now - it's not perfect, but I think it's about as good as I can get with this mesh. I think the pelvic area, which is not very good, even with SmartSkin, needs more splines. However, as long as she's wearing clothes, and not doing too much gymnastics, it should hold up :)

 

GalaDM_RigFinalAlpha.zip

 

post-9673-1218941249_thumb.jpg

post-9673-1218941256_thumb.jpg

 

So unless anyone has suggestions, I will now document up to here without all my mistakes along the way.

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  • 1 month later...

Tryd to learn to work with the mirror-bone plug-in and encounter some difficulties:

 

- using your Gala-model in the premirror-state I save it in version 15, then run the mirror-bones-plugin

, then asign some missed cps around the eye to the head-bone, then save it under a different name

and run the TSM- rigger...... but at the and it faills with TSM2A and unhandled exception 001.

 

What am I missing? The rigger is working fine on other models.

 

 

 

Any help? Hope this thread is still alive or can be revived.....

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....so now I get a "false weighting" detected message and a hind to some conflict text file, which I canot find.

Where is this located?

 

So once again for the stupid like me:

What I do is this:

 

-Load down GalaDM-RigStage008l.mdl

 

-then save it as GalaDM-RigStage008l15N.md

 

- then run the flipper ( Do I have to asign the cps of the left half here manually? I didn`t do that )

 

-then run the rigger

 

- the run mirror bones and get the false weighting alarm

.

 

Any more help would be highly appreciated.

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Jake, that model GalaDM-RigStage008l.mdl was an example to Steffen, for a plugin he had written to correct CP weight errors - I did not intend for that one to be an example.

 

Are you at Stage 10? Try downloading the model from Stage 10

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=278081

 

If you have recently downloaded Steffen's MirrorBone plugin, there is a right click (with no CPs selected) in Modelling mode, and choose Plugins > Wizards > Check CP Weights. This will correct any weighting errors that are in the model. If you do not see that option, download the new MirrorBone plugin from http://www.sgross.com/plugins/.

 

1. I had to go through EVERY CP and delete any 0% weights. - I will ask the question in a separate post

This (quoted from that Stage 10 post) is not necessary, as this is now done by Check CP Weights.

 

After the Check CP Weights, proceed with step 2, after the step 1 above, and then the Mirror Bones plugin as described.

 

Do I have to asign the cps of the left half here manually?

The Mirror Bones will mirror all CP weighting, so you don't have to assign CPs to the left half manually.

 

Then run Flipper, then run Rigger.

 

Mirror Bones should be done BEFORE Flipper. (Flipper does not do anything obvious, but is necessary as part of the TSM setup.)

 

Hope that helps - this is very frustrating the first couple of times, but once you have done it that couple of times, the sequence of doing things does not change, and becomes easier :)

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Hi Caroline,

 

That advise of yours brought me some steps further.

Thanks a lot!

Theres still some puzzling things though.

 

Somehow I get a left foot IK controller, that is missing on the right side....

the kneebones don`t seem to do anything....

Would it be wise to hide all the fanbones before rigging in order to not compilcate the

handeling of the rig?

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Would it be wise to hide all the fanbones before rigging in order to not compilcate the

handeling of the rig?

ABSOLUTELY! A very valid point. Thank you. I will update the 'final' documentation to include this. Hide before Mirror.

 

Somehow I get a left foot IK controller, that is missing on the right side....

I may have accidentally deleted that from the model at some point. The IK controller should not have any cps attached to it, and the right is just the same as the left, but in a different position, so you could copy the left one manually. This would be before doing the final TSM Rigger, as the IK controllers are need for controlling the other bones. Those IK controllers should not be hidden.

 

the kneebones don`t seem to do anything....

There shouldn't be any knee bones - what you are seeing may be unhidden fan bones. There is a pose called 1 right knee control, which if you set it to 100%, another bone is unhidden, so you can control where the knee points.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Finally. I am embarrassed by the length of time it took me to put together "The Ultimate TSM Rigging" document, but here it is. (At the top of the first post).

 

I hope it is useful to people, and if I have made errors (most likely :)), please let me know so that I can correct the document.

 

Thanks.

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Finally. I am embarrassed by the length of time it took me to put together "The Ultimate TSM Rigging" document, but here it is. (At the top of the first post).

Thanks, Caroline! (Anybody who writes a tutorial is A#1 in my book.)

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Caroline, thank you very much for your invaluble tutorial.

 

I am just trying to rework it and have run into some trouble with

setting up the fanbones.

Everything worked fine with elbows-, wrist- and finger-fans.

 

Then, when I came to the knee, somehow the rolloffsets flip away form 0

and even when I put in zeros manually, the relationship somehow is not working.

(Is it broken now?)

 

I hope you have maybe a solution without to rework the whole on/off fanpose again?

 

Thanks for any help available.

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Aggghhh - hope some other rigger chimes in.

 

If that were me, I delete the fan bones and put them back in again. Or go back to a version where everything worked, and put them back in again.

 

Are you able to post the model? I am sure that it can be fixed, but I can't immediately pinpoint it.

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You don't have to redo the whole pose. Edit the fan pose. Delete the constraints on the knee fans. Reapply the constraints to the knees and save model. Make sure you have no other windows active when editing the pose and delete any actions you have in the project.

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Hi Caroline, David, Mark,

 

I am posting the model of my simplerigman from earlier up the line of this thread in Stage2.

Just trying to rig him with TSM and mirror bones with the help of Carolines Tut,

with the exception, that I try to go more with fan-bones and cog-joints instead

of controlpoint-weighting. ( I learned how to use that for the jaw though ).

The cog joints setup-knowledge I took from the 3Dartz-CD and the tut fom Shaun Freeman

from 3D world August 2005.

It seemed all to work niceley constraining the elbow-fans, shoulder-fans=(cogs),

wristfans ( constrained according David Rogers, a complete guide ), finger fans,(just middle-joints)

hip-fans=(cogs),

when with the leg (knee and anklefans) somehow I run out of luck.

 

Maybe I had an other window active or something, anyway the rolloffsets of the fanbones

in the orient-constraints somehow were not set to zero.

O.k. now I try further to investigate, what went wrong.

Maybe I should delete the whole leg and start all over...

SimpleRigMan15D_TSM_St2_130808.mdl

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Hi Caroline, David, Mark,

 

I am posting the model of my simplerigman from earlier up the line of this thread in Stage2.

Just trying to rig him with TSM and mirror bones with the help of Carolines Tut,

with the exception, that I try to go more with fan-bones and cog-joints instead

of controlpoint-weighting. ( I learned how to use that for the jaw though ).

The cog joints setup-knowledge I took from the 3Dartz-CD and the tut fom Shaun Freeman

from 3D world August 2005.

It seemed all to work niceley constraining the elbow-fans, shoulder-fans=(cogs),

wristfans ( constrained according David Rogers, a complete guide ), finger fans,(just middle-joints)

hip-fans=(cogs),

when with the leg (knee and anklefans) somehow I run out of luck.

 

Maybe I had an other window active or something, anyway the rolloffsets of the fanbones

in the orient-constraints somehow were not set to zero.

O.k. now I try further to investigate, what went wrong.

Maybe I should delete the whole leg and start all over...

 

 

When I opened the model, there were no "orient like" constraints on the "1 right leg2 1fan", "1 right leg2 2fan" or "1 right leg2 3fan". I opened the "Fanbones" Pose and set "orient like" constraints on them, with offsets, to orient like the "1 right lowerleg1" bone...enforcement percentages of 25%, 50% and 75%. Everything worked fine, but the offsets were not zero because those bones' original orientations don't match the "1 right lowerleg1" bones' orientation (I ignored the CP assignments...those still need work).

 

I think you probably just had a second window open while you were setting this up, Jake...just a guess though. Whenever I'm editing a Pose, I try to have only that window open.

 

Hope that helps.

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David,

I discovered it was the most stupid of mistakes, I got so confused underway, that I constrained the fanbones upwards in the hierachy

and not downwards, so that it got stuck.

 

So I made some huge leaps forward and got stuck at the next hurdle:

 

When I try to mirror constraints now, AM quits.

What can possibly be still wrong with the model? ( see sttachment )

I observed all the necessary steps, Caroline pointed out.

Only the endpoint of the headbone I could not set to "0", it always jumps back to -0.01,

can that be the location of the problem?

 

 

Caroline, by the way, I think there is a little but confusing mistake in your excellent tutorial:

 

before mirror bones you say to create a "left half group".

I think it has to be a "right half group", doesn`t it?

 

Maybe I could make some pdf-pages with the set-up of the fan-bones and cog-joints,

that you could incorporate into your Tut as alternative for people who prefer to not do so much

cp-weighting?

SimpleRigMan15D_TSM_St2c_241008.mdl

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When I try to mirror constraints now, AM quits.

What can possibly be still wrong with the model? ( see sttachment )

I observed all the necessary steps, Caroline pointed out.

Only the endpoint of the headbone I could not set to "0", it always jumps back to -0.01,

can that be the location of the problem?

 

There are bones on the right side with "left" in their name, that might be the problem.

 

Hope that helps.

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before mirror bones you say to create a "left half group".

I think it has to be a "right half group", doesn`t it?

Thanks, Jake, changing it now.

 

I'm surprised if there's not more of that, because when I look at my monitor the right half is on the left :)

 

Yes, I also turn the maps upside down when driving south.

 

Maybe I could make some pdf-pages with the set-up of the fan-bones and cog-joints,

that you could incorporate into your Tut as alternative for people who prefer to not do so much

cp-weighting?

Anything else you can add will be most welcome.

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>There are bones on the right side with "left" in their name, that might be the problem.

 

Hope that helps.

 

 

 

But now I thought I have the perfect model, metiouscoly controlling every step,

even deleting the eyepointer null again, thinking maybe canot mirror its constraint.

 

still the mirror constrain not working.

 

I am stuck now.

 

Maybe you could take a look at my model in this state again, to see what`s wrong?

SimpleRigMan15D_TSM_St2b_241008.mdl

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>There are bones on the right side with "left" in their name, that might be the problem.

 

Hope that helps.

 

 

 

But now I thought I have the perfect model, metiouscoly controlling every step,

even deleting the eyepointer null again, thinking maybe canot mirror its constraint.

 

still the mirror constrain not working.

 

I am stuck now.

 

Maybe you could take a look at my model in this state again, to see what`s wrong?

 

The crashing problem appears to be caused by the "Error Loading String 4386..|right hand" on the "right wrist 1fan" and "right wrist 2fan" in the "Fanbones" Pose. Delete those and it should work.

 

I also found three other things you might want to correct. The 1, 2, 3 and 4 fingers are missing the last joint of the finger, "1right thumb2 1 fan" was set to orient like its' parent and the "1 left foot IK control" was missing.

 

Hope that helps.

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Can you put a version # on your Training document. I often wonder if you have made updates.

 

Good idea, Jason - I changed the date updated, but a few months down the track, that won't help.

 

So if/when there is another update, I will add the version number to the top of the document, and note it in the post.

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with the consent of Caroline I am posting a "beta-version" of a fanbones-and cog-joints-tutorial for TSM2 charas here as a supplement to Carolines tut.

Please have a look at it and tell me, if something is wrong or quirky.

 

>The crashing problem appears to be caused by the "Error Loading String 4386..|right hand" on the "right wrist 1fan" and "right wrist 2fan" in the "Fanbones" Pose. Delete those and it should work.

 

I would like to incorporate this into the tut, so everybody would be able to handle this problems by themselves.

 

If I get everything working smoothly I would like to post my simplerigman in several steps as well.

 

Would this be better in a different thread?

 

 

;>) Jake

 

(Just corrected one minor mistake)

FanbonesForTSM2.pdf

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David,

 

I am a little bit frustrated.

Reworked all the constraints you pointed me at.

Deleted the wrist constraint and made it all new new according to my tutorial.

 

But still mirror constraints is not working on my model.

 

Maybe you have any further idea?

I would very much like to finish this workshop succsessfully.

 

Maybe is it , that I made the fanbones invisible like Caroline suggested?

 

I enclose the modell in two different stages.

SimpleRigMan15D_TSM_St1_291008.mdl

SimpleRigMan15D_TSM_St3_291008.mdl

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The fastest way to find problems with poses/constraints is to start deleting things (without saving the model).

 

With the problems in your character, I first wanted to make sure that you had the right/left labeling correct since it was one of the problems in the previous version. While checking the bones, I found that the fingers were missing the end joint. Then, I opened the character in an Action and started moving things around to see if the constraints were moving things how I would expect, that's how I found the problem with the constraint on the thumb.

 

Last, I deleted half the constraints in the Pose you made and ran the plugin. Since it still caused a problem with the plugin, I kept deleting constraints (without saving) until the plugin worked. Then, I looked at the last constraints I deleted, found the errors, deleted them and ran the plugin again to confirm that the fix worked.

 

Hope that helps, Jake.

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David,

 

I am a little bit frustrated.

Reworked all the constraints you pointed me at.

Deleted the wrist constraint and made it all new new according to my tutorial.

 

But still mirror constraints is not working on my model.

 

Maybe you have any further idea?

I would very much like to finish this workshop succsessfully.

 

Maybe is it , that I made the fanbones invisible like Caroline suggested?

 

I enclose the modell in two different stages.

 

The first model, "SimpleRigMan15D_TSM_St3_291008.mdl" had no problem when I ran the "MirrorConstraints" plugin.

 

The second model, "SimpleRigMan15D_TSM_St1_291008.mdl" didn't have any bones on the left side of the body. I ran the "MirrorBones" plugin to mirror the arm and leg bones and the CP weighting, ran the "MirrorConstraints" plugin, reset the compensates on the left shoulder COG and left hip COG and everything worked fine.

 

Hope that helps, Jake.

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-Hmm on my behalve "mirror constraints" is still not working.

 

I "reinstalled" the plugin, have the relationshipwindow open, but still 001.

 

I am on PC WinXP with AM 15d.

 

Very strange, I send an e-mail to Steffen Gross, may be he has another idea.

 

 

-David, you talked about "resetting the compensates of the shoulder and hip-cogs"

 

Could you please shed some light on this topic:

Why would this be necessary and how would this be done?

 

-do you have any comments about my tutorial?

 

Thanks a lot for your ongoing help!

 

Jake

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-Hmm on my behalve "mirror constraints" is still not working.

 

I "reinstalled" the plugin, have the relationshipwindow open, but still 001.

 

I am on PC WinXP with AM 15d.

 

Very strange, I send an e-mail to Steffen Gross, may be he has another idea.

 

I'm using an older version of A:M and I don't know if I have installed the latest version of the plugin, so that may be the difference. If the "SimpleRigMan15D_TSM_St3_291008.mdl" gives you an error, I would ask Steffen.

 

 

-David, you talked about "resetting the compensates of the shoulder and hip-cogs"

 

Could you please shed some light on this topic:

Why would this be necessary and how would this be done?

 

In v15 it's not necessary when making a constraint initially because it will automatically set the compensates. However, if the constraint already exists and the bones are moved in the Bones window, the compensates would need to be reset. To reset a compensate, in the Pose change the enforcement of the constraint to "0", hit the "Compensate Mode" button and put the enforcement that was initially applied back in...the offset values will change to what you need.

 

-do you have any comments about my tutorial?

 

I skimmed through it and it seems fine. The one thing I thought though...if you are going to be putting in the same fan bones most of the time, you could make the Pose for them, "drag and drop" that Pose into each character and then just reset the compensates (as long as the bones were named the same every time). You could even modify the TSM2 script to generate the fan bones. For new users, it might be helpful.

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David,

 

I tried AM 13t also with no succsess.

 

Which version do you use?

 

Here's the results of a little more experimentation. The original model would crash the plugin in v13.0t if it wasn't saved as a v13 model, but worked fine if it had been saved using v13. When I saved a version using v14c, it would crash the plugin in v14. The v13 model did not crash the plugin in v14. I made sure that I have the latest posted versions of the plugin as well. Here are the versions I saved for you to test with.

 

Hope that helps, Jake.

 

 

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

EDIT

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

 

When I ran the plugin, I was in modeling mode without any other windows open. I right mouse-clicked on the model in the PWS and selected the "Plug-ins/Wizards/MirrorConstraints" plugin.

 

I also forgot to mention that the v14 model would also crash the plugin in v13 if it had not been saved in v13.

v13_SimpleRigMan15D_TSM_St3_291008_update.mdl

v14_SimpleRigMan15D_TSM_St3_291008_update.mdl

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MirrorConstraints MUST have an action or pose window open in order for the plugin to work correctly, if you don't the offsets will be incorrect. With the TSM rig, your best bet is to setup your fan bones and fan constraints AFTER the flipper plugin and BEFORE you run the rigger plugin. I'm not sure when you are trying to do this, I haven't read all your posts or your PDF.

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