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Hash, Inc. - Animation:Master

Clothing Optional


fae_alba

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Or...Which Approach is Best for Wardrobe changes.

 

When i started the first iteration of Papa Bear I knew he was gonna be cloths wearing bear favoring this wonderful, quiche tropical print shirts (his tastes favor mine, surprisingly). So I modeled him wearing a shirt, still uncertain how to go about changing the decaling on the fly. In rigging I discovered that it was a real pain in the neck trying to get the setup right to prevent the arm mesh from overlapping the sleeve. The solution at the time was to simply remove the mesh from the arm where the sleeves were.

 

Fast forward to the latest contest where I wanted Papa Bear to wear a vest, instead of a shirt. Go figure that presented problems since he hasn't got any arms! Again a quick fix was to leave the shirt on, reduce it's mesh down to be close to the body, color it the same as the body, then add the vest. It worked because I was only interested in a still, I'm sure if I were to try and animate it all sorts of problems would present themselves.

 

I did learn that applying the vest as an action object worked nicely. But again as a still that's fine, but I'm still unclear who to set up a rig so that when animated each article of clothing performs as expected. I'm toying with the idea of backing up a step or two, replaceing the mesh on Papa Bear's arms, rigging without clothes at all, and perhaps adding a series of bones in the shirts and body that can be constrained so that when the action is applied, like magic all works well. Gonna take some serious experimenting, and if anyone has any wild suggestions, let me know.

 

Chow for now from Bear Land!

 

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  • Hash Fellow

The most time-honored tactic, seen in CG movies from Toy Story on, is to not have skin underneath the clothes since the skin under the clothes wont' be seen anyway. Weight the clothes CPs to the bones in the normal fashion of weighting mesh to bones.

 

To say more, we'd have to see whatyou are doing so far.

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It took me awhile to come to what Robert describes. With my puppet models, they start out as full body puppets. Once the clothes are modeled, I then go in and delete the mesh that is covered up by the clothes. Like Robert says, it isn't seen and that way you don't have to worry about the skin breaking through your clothes when you animate.

 

Not to mention, it solves some rigging challenges. For example, If you just have a wrist and hand sticking out from under a sleeve, you don't need to worry about having the wrist twisting when it rotates.

 

I've also started to google sewing patterns when I have to make clothes and see what I can learn from them. Trying to model a button down shirt as one model can be more difficult than modeling the parts (a back panel, two front panels, sleeves and a collar) and joining them together.

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the mesh free approach is what I have now. The issue comes when perhaps your character decides to wear a sleeves shirt...

 

What I need to decide is if I can for see Papa Bear needing this flexibility or not.if not then I can change shirts by simply changing materials. Certainly an easier method to manage.

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Personally I favour "cloning"!
Why only have one model of any given character? Sometimes it's just easier to have different versions for different needs.
I'm going to guess here that you are never going to have Papa Bear actually putting on or taking off clothes on screen, in one continuos shot, which is the only reason I can think of off hand for needing a complete body mesh under the clothing.
It seems to me that this aspect of clothing in 3D animation, i.e. putting on and taking off, is something even large studios with dedicated modellers, riggers and animators would think twice about attempting without some cleaver cutting of the shot.

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  • Hash Fellow

It seems to me that this aspect of clothing in 3D animation, i.e. putting on and taking off, is something even large studios with dedicated modellers, riggers and animators would think twice about attempting without some cleaver cutting of the shot.

Yes, I don't think I've ever seen a CG character put clothes on, it's always suggested with editing.

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  • Hash Fellow

 

Yes, I don't think I've ever seen a CG character put clothes on, it's always suggested with editing.

I think I remember a shot where Bob puts on his super suit in The Incredibles. It's pretty brief though.

 

I've got the DVD, if you can point me to a scene I'll look at it, but my recollection is that it's all suggested with editing.

 

I've never seen a character put on pants or a shirt and do it onscreen.

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