My current reasoning is that I want to have as individual little controls as possible, while still keeping a maximum of movement options. AFAIK this is the general idea of good rigs.
Concerning the spine IK... I think it mirrors the movement of the human spine surprisingly well. In the extreme positions it looks a bit strange though I agree, but this is ment to be used for relative small movements really. And in that range it works quite well. Contrary to most movie rigs I develop this rig with what kind of animations are likely to be done for games in mind. There really isn't going to be a lot of extreme acrobatics going to be involved...even though I think the current rig could actually be used for animating something like Tombraider just fine.
The problem with the movie rigs is that they often use all sort of non bone animation helpers, which will be difficult to tanslate into in-game bone movement. But currently my rig can pretty much do all what is shown with the Mancandy rig.
Edit: Ok I limited the movement of the spine IK and shortend its chain by one so that you can FK control the lowest spine bone, also I improved the handling of the pelvis so that it can now be rotated independantly of the upper body, but the upper body still follows its location. See v71
Could you be more precise what is not working on the spine IK? It works pretty nice on my pc. You are using the head_target to control it right?
Oh and except for a few good tuts on how to do feet, most of the blender rigs you will find on the net are either highly complex movie rigs, or basicly just a chain of bones (and most of the time quite rubbish too). I am basicly forced to innovate here, as there simply is nothing comparable out there for Blender.
I found some nice videos of rigs for Houdini and Maya, which seem to have more advanced controls, but reimplmenting the behaviour in Blender, just by looking at the vids is far from easy.
Added a unified head and torso controler (grab moves upper torso, rotate rotates head and with 0.5 weight the neck) and a pole target to control the rotation of the upper torso. Rather unusual setup for the torso I guess, but for me it seems to work. please test it!
Well... regarding the upload of non-personal stuff. I do it quite regulary too, but then I log out and post it as anonymous. But it's good to have the blender stuff here on OGA. Blender swap ( http://www.blendswap.com/ ) is a pretty good source too ;)
Ahh you are right about the hand target as a parent, fixed it.
Also added a copy-rot. rig to the file (second bone layer first row), seems to work perfectly (see v6)
I had a close look at the meta rig shape files (I just wanted to "steal" the widget wires from there) but I don't like their look so much. Maybe I find some other freely licensed ones to save the touble of making them myself.
There is a finger control, it a bit hard to see as it currently overlaps with the actual finger bones. Rotating it rotates the entire finger, scaling it bends the finger. But I think he also ask for a fist control earlier. Or are you referring to his rotation comment? As I stated earlier that is currently intended like that... I experimented a bit with finding a different solution... but for now the way it is set up seems the best to me (even though the hand does not rotate with the forearm).
A weapon bone is something I forgot about... yes could be usefull. Just right of my head I can't think of a different solution than parenting it of the hand_control, which would not really result in an additional control option (but it might be needed never the less for game-export).
Updated the rig to have an automated hand control. Also tweaked the shoulder so that the IK has a lower influence and the shoulder can now also be easily moved via FK.
Maybe I am a bit stupid right now, but I don't get your point. Currently the shoulders are in that position still as wide as the hips (maybe the head is a bit oversized and thus give the impression of having a very think neck), but I agree that they might be better a bit further apart, but really only a tiny bit.
If I lift my arms to such a position in real life, the shoulders also move inwards as they move upwards to level the gun with the eyes.
Last but not least... yes such extreme yoga movements might be a bit difficult to achive with the current rig (for that FK is needed), but seriously... who is going to make a yoga game ;)
*me likes IK*
My current reasoning is that I want to have as individual little controls as possible, while still keeping a maximum of movement options. AFAIK this is the general idea of good rigs.
Concerning the spine IK... I think it mirrors the movement of the human spine surprisingly well. In the extreme positions it looks a bit strange though I agree, but this is ment to be used for relative small movements really. And in that range it works quite well. Contrary to most movie rigs I develop this rig with what kind of animations are likely to be done for games in mind. There really isn't going to be a lot of extreme acrobatics going to be involved...even though I think the current rig could actually be used for animating something like Tombraider just fine.
The problem with the movie rigs is that they often use all sort of non bone animation helpers, which will be difficult to tanslate into in-game bone movement. But currently my rig can pretty much do all what is shown with the Mancandy rig.
Edit: Ok I limited the movement of the spine IK and shortend its chain by one so that you can FK control the lowest spine bone, also I improved the handling of the pelvis so that it can now be rotated independantly of the upper body, but the upper body still follows its location. See v71
Could you be more precise what is not working on the spine IK? It works pretty nice on my pc. You are using the head_target to control it right?
Oh and except for a few good tuts on how to do feet, most of the blender rigs you will find on the net are either highly complex movie rigs, or basicly just a chain of bones (and most of the time quite rubbish too). I am basicly forced to innovate here, as there simply is nothing comparable out there for Blender.
I found some nice videos of rigs for Houdini and Maya, which seem to have more advanced controls, but reimplmenting the behaviour in Blender, just by looking at the vids is far from easy.
Added a unified head and torso controler (grab moves upper torso, rotate rotates head and with 0.5 weight the neck) and a pole target to control the rotation of the upper torso. Rather unusual setup for the torso I guess, but for me it seems to work. please test it!
Just for reference, good Radiant tutorial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc13oaUau7c
Well... regarding the upload of non-personal stuff. I do it quite regulary too, but then I log out and post it as anonymous. But it's good to have the blender stuff here on OGA. Blender swap ( http://www.blendswap.com/ ) is a pretty good source too ;)
He is cheating a bit by uploading Sintel and Apricot assets though. Nice stuff never the less... and his personal stuff is also very good.
Ahh you are right about the hand target as a parent, fixed it.
Also added a copy-rot. rig to the file (second bone layer first row), seems to work perfectly (see v6)
I had a close look at the meta rig shape files (I just wanted to "steal" the widget wires from there) but I don't like their look so much. Maybe I find some other freely licensed ones to save the touble of making them myself.
There is a finger control, it a bit hard to see as it currently overlaps with the actual finger bones. Rotating it rotates the entire finger, scaling it bends the finger. But I think he also ask for a fist control earlier. Or are you referring to his rotation comment? As I stated earlier that is currently intended like that... I experimented a bit with finding a different solution... but for now the way it is set up seems the best to me (even though the hand does not rotate with the forearm).
A weapon bone is something I forgot about... yes could be usefull. Just right of my head I can't think of a different solution than parenting it of the hand_control, which would not really result in an additional control option (but it might be needed never the less for game-export).
Found this for the widgets btw:
http://www.blendswap.com/3D-models/misc-objects/metarig-shape-library/
Next step will probably be the copy-rot. rig and the widgets. Afterwards I will experiment with the spine control some more.
Updated the rig to have an automated hand control. Also tweaked the shoulder so that the IK has a lower influence and the shoulder can now also be easily moved via FK.
Maybe I am a bit stupid right now, but I don't get your point. Currently the shoulders are in that position still as wide as the hips (maybe the head is a bit oversized and thus give the impression of having a very think neck), but I agree that they might be better a bit further apart, but really only a tiny bit.
If I lift my arms to such a position in real life, the shoulders also move inwards as they move upwards to level the gun with the eyes.
Last but not least... yes such extreme yoga movements might be a bit difficult to achive with the current rig (for that FK is needed), but seriously... who is going to make a yoga game ;)
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