Foot setup

[SheepFactory]

the isner rig foot setup also sucks. It doesnt give you heel pivot control.



you can have a pretty good foot setup using just constraints and parenting , I created one and it works perfectly in all cases i have come across to so far.


I attached the file , you can open and check it out.

[violet903]

Hi Eraq,

Xsifox made 3 excellent videos about character rigging :
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=139583&page=3&highlight=xsifox

hope that helps !

[SheepFactory]

Hi Eraq,

Xsifox made 3 excellent videos about character rigging :
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=139583&page=3&highlight=xsifox

hope that helps !

Someone else did the exact same foot setup and he had vids online , i forgot the link.

Anyway , that setup is very limited imho , you dont have heel pivot (toe stay planted and heel pivots around the toe.) and vice versa. the modifiable curve is a good idea but pointless since the foot roll does not change unless your character have morphing abilities.

[Facial Deluxe]

Hello Sheep Factory,

Any chance to have a 3.5 version of that setup ? Seems it was done either with 3.5.1 or with 4.

[Heber]

Hi Eraq,

Xsifox made 3 excellent videos about character rigging :
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=139583&page=3&highlight=xsifox

hope that helps !



he didnt make those...

[SheepFactory]

Hello Sheep Factory,

Any chance to have a 3.5 version of that setup ? Seems it was done either with 3.5.1 or with 4.

sure ,

here is a 3.5 version:

[SheepFactory]

Hellbring sent me this PM , I'll answer here:

"Thanks for the Rig Sheep. Im trying to rip it apart and see what all these expressions u made. Im coming from LW so my terms might be wrong.

I see that there are controllers on the Hips and Feet. Which I take it are like sliders in LW. When I tracked down what each slider actually is I notice its useing a Fcurve. Is an Fcurve pretty much the ability to use a "Slider"(which is linear) to control something that can be used to make it act nonlinear?"


I havent used a single expression since I am incapable of writing one.

All the expression connections you see under schematic view are a result of "link with" if you select the main foot control on the bottom and hit F3 , than double click on "C-Footcontrols" it'll open up the sliders in the property editor which controls all the actions. I prefer to work with sliders but you can easi;y link those to nulls and control them in the viewport like in the isner rig.

When you create a link with , it'll create an f-curve which might be weird , especially if you set 3 keys by accident. just clean up the f-curve after creation , select all in between keys and delete them , the curve should look straight. you can just play with that and see what it does , its better than me explaining here.

One limitation of my rig is that the foot comes off , which is not a big problem for me but you can fix it easily by expressions. i dont know how to write one so you have to figure that out yourself :)

hope this helps.

[Eraq]

Hey all.

Thank you very much for all your replys. Im gonna dig into it right away.

Erik

[Sil3]

Jason from 3D Buzz has a tutorial on the latest 3D World mag, it´s a simple rig for a supposed HL 2 character, he shows how to build a foot setup.

[Hellbring]

2 questions

1)OK so now that I got a great Left foot rig (useing sheepfactory's setup) and the whole hierarchy starts with L_ how do I duplicate it so that the right Leg is called R_ instead of it adding a 1 to all the names. I know of duplicating and also useing duplicate symmetry but I have to manualy go through and rename every object in that chain now. Is there a way to mass edit names like adding a suffix/prefix or substituting a string with another?

2)Also can u not duplicate a hierarchy of implicit shapes and bone chains at the same time? Sheep's setup has 4 heirarchys for a leg they are: hip->ankle, Ball->ankle,Ball->toe, and a few implicits parented together to control the whole setup. This control hier is used to control all the movement/rot of the entire foot rig(some through fcurves others through pose contraints).

If I select all of this and try to duplicate it only duplicates the implicit hier, (the controls) and leaves the bone chains as is. However if I just duplicate the bone chains they still contrain to the control shapes. :( Is there away to copy all of the items or should I just disconnect the control objects and duplicate them seperate?

[Stoehr]

I had great success with Adam Sale's foot setup. It sounds similar to what Sheep is doing.

Hellbring: I'm currently making a simple script to rename *R_* to *L_* and vice versa. I'll post it when I'm done.

[Hellbring]

I figured out how to add to a name with a script but I have not figured out how to take away. If I name all my items L_ then duplicate Id like to be able to substitute the L_ for R_ and also get rid of the 1 added to the duplicate. Pretty much all I need is to know is how to read characters of a name and i think I could figure the rest out. Here is I got for adding to a name, got this from xsibase.

//jscript

var osel = Selection;

for (i=0; i<osel.count; i++) {

var oname = osel(i).name ;

var onewname = "L_" + osel(i).name ;

osel(i).name = onewname ;

}

//end script

[ThE_JacO]

in the netview you have a renaming tool page that supports full fledged regular expressions.
use that and be done with it.

and btw, always check the netview and then xsinet and then XSIBase.com before you start scripting things.

if something is trivial and/or very frequently needed chances are it's already out there.

if you wanted to grab the chance to learn scripting that's a whole different ballgame obviously, but for getting things done the netview has tools that in other softwares you'd prolly find slapped in in the interface as plug-ins.

[Stoehr]

if you wanted to grab the chance to learn scripting that's a whole different ballgame obviously.That's what I'm doing. A small task like this is very educating.

Edit: Well, the script on netview is nice. (now I must disect it...)

[ThE_JacO]

go for it then.
btw if you want to do it properly implementing a regular expressions system is a great starting point.
it has very little to do with the SDK (except for walking hierarchies) and a lot to do with dataprocessing, it will most likely be a struggle at the beginning, but it involves everything, from string processing to optimization to the use of a lot of common routines. There also is a ton of code around you can learn from and an already implemented solution in XSI you can study when you get stuck.


when you are done with that move to SCOPs and geometry operators and then to advanced rigging to get a hang of the SDK and some of the maths involved in 3D :)

[Stoehr]

What do you mean by a "regular expression system"? Do you mean working from the script window or the scripted operator window, or something else?

My biggest trouble at this point is translating my knowledge of Actionscript to VBscript. I know I can use Jscript in XSI; which is basically what Actionscript is based from, but it seems everything I see created for XSI is VB. So I thought it'd be logical to learn it.

I have already done a little bit of scripting. I've made a few tools of my own; which I learned from Adam Sale's series.

[ThE_JacO]

regular expressions have little to do with XSI, it's an ancient word nowadays ;)
you use them all the time when dealing with shells, searches, strings and so on, unix powerusers are well acquainted with them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression

as for vbsVSjs.. I know some people will hate me but.. I happen to like vbs and always managed to keep my vbs scripts, no matter how long and complex, clean and easily handlable (altho the lack of including external classes is very daunting). but most people will tell you it's inelegant (very true), messy (true to the extent you consider it allows you to be messy, but doesn't force you to) and most of all MS, that means it uses its very own and non portable conventions (carriage return as a terminator, commenting with apostrophes etc.).

said that Softimage itself is violently sterring toward js with the docs as well, due to popular demand, and in v4 90% of the new examples are JS only.
if you like, and are already familiar with to a certain extent, c-like syntax then go for it, in just a few months the avaliability of scripts and documentation will flip in favor of JS.

[Stoehr]

Ooo! This IS good news! Thanks Jaco. You most likely saved me a headache. Outward with JS! Yes, I'm getting quite handy with Actionscript, and there's things I've done in Flash that I've been wanting to see the equavilent to in XSI. :)

[foxco]

hahaha ya i didnt make those videos Micheal malowinsky did. i just made links to them www.starlitestudios.net (http://www.starlitestudios.net) the foot setup on these vids is an niteresting way to make a foot but its not a way i will use again. by use of the regular scripted operators, constraints and parenting i was able to create a nice foot rig with pivots on heel ball and toe, and options to disable and enable foot roll, the end users choice should always be kept in mind ;)
if i remeber, i will post it when i get back from my travels



stoer making the script to change the names would be awsome, its the one thing i hate hahahah

/fox

[Eraq]

"i will post it when i get back from my travels"

Please do, thatll be great.

[SheepFactory]

and options to disable and enable foot roll,
/fox

Why would you enable\disable the foot roll? Just curious cause I cant see a situation where that would be necessary.

[Hellbring]

a guy on xsibase came up with this to rename multiple thigns at once.


/* jscript - works with xsi 4 (not 3.5 or earlier)

This builds a small ppg with a string input and a checkbox. It then takes
the input of the string and ads that to the start or end of the selected
obects name depending on whether the checkbox is checked or not.

rev 001:

now has a slider to determine the number of characters to remove from the end of the name.




written by phil barrenger
phil@whiz.com.au (phil@whiz.com.au)
*/



var oPSet=ActiveSceneRoot.AddProperty("CustomProperty",false,"name changer") ;

oPSet.AddParameter3( "pstring", sistring) ;
oPSet.AddParameter3( "preffix", siBool) ;
oPSet.AddParameter3( "endcut", siint4) ;

var oPPGLayout = oPSet.PPGLayout ;

ostirng = oPPGLayout.Addstring( "pstring", "name to prefix/suffix")
ocheck = oPPGLayout.Additem( "preffix", "preffix = checked : suffix = unchecked", sicontrolcheck )
ocut = oPPGLayout.Additem("endcut", "number of characters to cut from the end",siControlNumber)


//____________________________________________________________________

try
{
InspectObj( oPSet, "", "name changer", siModal );
prefix()
}

catch( e )
{
Logmessage( "You Pressed Cancel!! U fool! whddaya doin?" );
}

//____________________________________________________________________


function prefix ()
{
var osel = Selection;
var onewstring = oPSet.pstring.value ;

if (oPSet.preffix.value == false)
{

for (i=0; i<osel.count; i++)
{
var oname = osel(i).name;
var olength = oname.length;
var oval = oPSet.endcut.value;

if (oval>=olength) {
osel(i).name = onewstring ;
}

if (oval<olength) {
osel(i).name = oname.slice(0, -oval)

oname = osel(i).name;
var onewname = oname + onewstring ;
osel(i).name = onewname ;

}



}
}


//____________________________________________________________________

if (oPSet.preffix.value == true)
{
for (i=0; i<osel.count; i++)
{
var oname = osel(i).name;

var olength = oname.length;
var oval = oPSet.endcut.value;

if (oval>=olength) {
osel(i).name = "_"

oname = osel(i).name ;
var onewname = onewstring + oname ;
osel(i).name = onewname ;
}

if (oval<olength) {
osel(i).name = oname.slice(0, -oval)

oname = osel(i).name ;
var onewname = onewstring + oname ;
osel(i).name = onewname ;
}



}
}


}

DeleteObj( oPSet ) ;


//end of script

[ThE_JacO]

Why would you enable\disable the foot roll? Just curious cause I cant see a situation where that would be necessary.
here it's always request number one from all animators, but it becomes even more important for quadrupeds.

footrolls are important for walk cycles, but for anything else, especially if the character gets airborne, even for only a few frames, disabling it and blending into FK is of paramount importance.

[foxco]

Hey that script doesnt work :S says expected statement on the */

i dont know j script yet so i have no idea

fox

[Hellbring]

hmm that doesnt make sense, every thing between /* and */ is how you add comments in js and lots of othre programs, everythign between those 2 symbols are not read in the program.

You are useing xsi4? and are u making sure its set to jscript not vb?

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