Animating: one huge mess.

[JoeSchmo]

Q-what's the difference between soft and rigid binding and when to use them

A- rigid binding allows 1 point to be influenced by 1 joint,
smooth binding allows 1 point to be influenced by several
joints. (thats the main difference there are others) when
you need smooth deformations use smooth binding.

Q - should I bind the skeleton to my smoothed or lowpoly mesh?
A - I ususally smooth bind the smoothed mesh, and put it on a
separate layer, then cut up the low poly and parent it to the
same skeleton put it on a different layer. I use the low poly
to animate ( because it updates in real time ) and the hi poly
to playblast, tweak and render.

Q is there a standard for where to put the joints?
A usually Inside the body ( every skeleton is different )

Joe

[Garma]

Originally posted by JoeSchmo
Q is there a standard for where to put the joints?
A usually Inside the body ( every skeleton is different )


Thank you very much this clears things up. However with the standard I meant: where in the body. Y'know character rigging: joints go in the knee, ankle, shoulder etc. Where's that for the eyes for example?

A good example picture of a rigged face would be cool too.

[Sciatica]

Hey!

I havent done really any rigging or animation before, but I plan on doing some in the future, so I have collected a few tutorials..

To be honest, I havent looked at them too much, but I'll post them anyway :)

Good luck on this! and if you remember, you could tell me if these tutorials helped at all, since... as I said.. I gotta do this same learning process soon :)


http://www.rigging101.com/
http://www.animationartist.com/2003/08_aug/tutorials/rigging_anatomy.htm
Check the list. I saw at least one section on facial animation using blendshapes (http://www.highend3d.com/boards/showthreaded.php?Cat=1,2&Board=mayaanimation&Number=14773&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&vc=1)
I noticed quite a few rigging/animation tutorials here as well... (http://www.maya3d.dk/links/tutorials/)
Tons of good stuff here (http://www.learning-maya.com/rigging.php)
http://www.spatiallight.net/tutorialsPage/jointTutFiles/pageTwo.html

Lots of these where nabbed from other posts on CGtalk, so thanks to those who origionally posted them!

I believe there are tons more on CGtalk if you search Maya rigging tutorials.. :)

Again... Good Luck! and I hope that helps a bit..

[adavies]

I would say put the joints where there is a joint in the character's skeleton. This is where your anatomy comes in :) It's surprising how much of an impact your rig can have on how the final animation looks. If the propertions are wrong you wont be able to get him to walk correctly - it the feet are too big, or if the shins are too long in proportion to his thigh, for example, he wouldnt be able to walk the same as if he had human proportions as his leg wouldn't be able to swing through, you'd have to bring it round to the side as it does so, for instance. the same goes for the spine, the arms and everything, a good rig is so important and by that I dont mean a rig that has all the controls and gadgets under the sun. a nice clean simple rig with carefully thought out joint placement.

I would say that ALL the aniamtors here HATE sliders, IK spines, automtic footroll, anything like that, purely because it limits you. We like to have total control over the rig and animating 3 joint in an FK spine wont take long at all. How long will it take to animate the ball of the foot ?! As soon as you put something on a slider you are limiting the range of movement of the joint. Imagine if you wanted to rotate the ball of the foot on a different axis to ease out the angle between the foot and the leg, you can't do it unless you add another slider for your z axis or whatever. why not bother just aniting the thing by hand! It'll save sooo much time. simplicity is the key - somebody (richard williams?) once said the shortcut is often the longest route. Just get your hands dirty and animate the thing, forget about fancy automatic controls and sliders, it doesn't take as long as you think, and anyway, I hate having the computer do things for me. total control.

[Garma]

@ sciatica: thanks, checking them out now :wip: Already seen some usefull stuff.

@ adavies: facial expressions are all based on a couple of standard expressions. I really need (!!) the blending property of the blend shapes. It's just that it's exactly what I needed, just dunno how to use them. I really don't want to animate 50 facial expressions with joints while I can do the same with pulling some sliders.

I also hat computers taking control, (die hard notepad programmer here :)) but I don't feel like blendshapes take over here, they just ease the way. It's like using a highlighter instead of notepad.

[Garma]

well it seems I finally got the key :bounce: :bounce:

for facial animation nothing beats clusters & blendshapes!

Only downside is that I now got the following maps in my testfile (left the dog for now):

-colour
-spec
-diffuse
-bump
-fur length
-fur base colour
-fur tip colour
-4X weigth

and I'm not done yet :/

Ow sciatica I stumbled upon the maya tutorial for clusters (which ships with maya) on accident. Blend shapes are also described there. They were good enough for me to get the basics. Got some in-depth infromation from your links, thanks again!

[Sciatica]

Wicked :D Glad its all working out for you.. Thanks for the heads up on the clusters tutorial... Gonna see about hunting it down now... :)

[nottoshabi]

Here is another web site that is prety good..

http://www.learning-maya.com/tutorials.php

I just saw your dog that looks pretty nice, your going to have a great time animating that character. Just I have to worn you four leged characters are not eassy to rig or deform properly.. So ggod luck to you.


P.S. Post if you have any problems.....

[Garma]

@sciatica: yea you should do that. My problem was that I assumed a connection between joints and blendshapes. It's not the case, though they are related very closely in the results. I assume clusters are better for small deformations (facial) and joints work better for animating limbs and such.

@nottoshabi: Yea there's pretty much there but not really anything about either blendshapes or facial animation that was sufficient for a complete noob in animation :) For the dog: yea now that I get the hang of animation it's real fun! I only need the head so the legs won't bother me :) But the cartoony style is real fun animating!

[crgowo]

if you go to www.digital-tutors.com they have really good videos. shows you smooth and rigid bind. takes you step by step to rigging a character.

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