Safely remove bones?

[SteelShark]

Due to a horizontal scrolling issue in the PWS, I would like to reduce the spine bones in a multiped from 4 bones down to 1 bone per segment (Got 20 segments... that's a lot o' bones!). They are hard shelled segments, so I don't need any intermediate bending anyway.

 

Can I safely do this and still have the rigger work? If not, what is the minimum amount that will still work? And what specific named bones will I need to retain?

(1 1 mspine, 1 1 mspine2, 1 1 mspine3, 1 1 mspine4)

 

How about in the IK neck (12 segments including the head, again TSM2 assigned 4 bones per segment)? (1 1 IKneckseg, 1 1 IKneckseg2, etc.).

 

Finally, the head ends with (1 12 neck, 1 12 head). Why does the head get a neck bone? Do the head cps get assigned to the neck or head bone?

[anzovin]

TSM2 Builder assigns the minimum number of basic/geometry bones necessary to allow TSM2 Rigger to rig each assembly type (spine, arm, tail, etc.) properly. No bones are extra; no bones can be removed from within an assembly if you want the rig to work later (though you CAN remove entire basic bone assemblies, such as entire arms, entire fingers, and so on). The spine and tail absolutely require the number of basic/geometry bones they are assigned. These act as an essential framework for the many additional bones (most of them hidden) that will be installed by TSM2 Rigger. In most cases, the "unexpected" basic bones you would like to remove actually support advanced features like flexibility and stretchiness that will be very useful when animating.

 

In short, leave dem bones alone. ;-)

 

The Short option for Head and Neck in the Multiped Builder is for creatures with no real neck to speak of (like insects). In any case, assign head CPs to the head bone, that ought to work fine.

 

Steve

Anzovin Studio

[Morgan]

SteelShark,

 

If you really don't want the extra spine bones, you could delete them all (i.e., removing the entire system rather than taking out specific bones and "breaking" it), and then replace them with a spine from PartsBuilder, reparenting the legs as necessary. I'm not sure that isn't more trouble than it's worth, though.

 

I'm assuming you can't change the number of spine segments because you need a specific number of legs. For the neck, though, if you think twelve segments (times four bones each) results in too many bones, I would consider building fewer segments.

 

Hope that helps!

 

-Morgan

[SteelShark]

Well, I've got 32 segments (12 of them neck) x 4 bones = 128 bones. The neck segments are limited to 10, so I partsbuilt another two, renamed them appropriately, and now need to child them to the end of the IK chain. Also, I need to add mouth and antenna bones to the head, which is also at the end of the chain.

I guess I'm stuck until I can get horizontal scrolling in the PWS. (Bug report already filed.) But I can't get to them (yet, hopefully). I looked at the bone structure in the text .mdl file, and it doesn't look too bad. I may have to use this route.

 

In the mean time, if I have 4 bones per segment, and don't need stretching or bending of the segment itself, which of the 4 bones do I assign the cp's to? The first? the last?

[Morgan]

Hm. On second thought, I don't think you can get the effect you want that way. For one, the legs are going to move with their parent spine bones. For two, Raf just pointed out that whichever bone you pick, the segments aren't going to line up correctly when the spine flexes. It just isn't designed to be used that way.

 

I think what you really need to do is to take out all the mspine bones, and then generate another mspine with PartsBuilder, with four segments, so that you get one mspine bone per modelled segment. That should give you the effect you're looking for, if I understand you correctly.

 

-Morgan