Rigging a Holster with straps in 3ds Max

[Xploder]

I'd say the best option would to make the holster body geometry so it moves with the body because if you had it independant then you would have 2 things to keep an eye on if you are animating it. When I did an animation with a mother catching a baby, as soon as the baby reached the mothers arms I changed it to the mothers geometry even though the baby could still move due to its own bones

[clalan]

I don't think it makes that much difference...

the advantage of making it part of the body geometry is that it makes it easier when you are painting weights as you are only dealing with one object, otherwise you would have to skin the body and then match up the straps.

the advantage of keeping them independent is that you can make the straps shift a little when the body moves. apart from that it's more realistic and it keeps the body topology cleaner.

I would go for the independent approach, it's a little bit harder, but can produce better results.

[kobeone]

I would have to agree that keeping the holster as an independent object would be best but rigging the holster to follow the character rig is something that I have no experience with. After spending a number of hours trying to find out how to accomplish this with no luck, I think it will be easier to just attach it to the body geometry. Time is running out and I have a deadline. On a side note, I would still like to know how to rig a holster as an independent object. So if anyone wouldn’t mind explaining it that would be great.

Thanks
Kobeone

[Mahlon]

I'd kind of like to know some techniques here, too. I have little experience in rigging extra items to the body. Does the Skin Wrap Modifier fit in here somewhere?

Mahlon

[clalan]

let's assume the holster is non-deformable (after all, we want our gun to fit in there at all time). It's connected to the body on two positions, so either the holster is allowed to slide over one of those connections or those two positions have to keep the same distance at all time. If the holster is fixed on both straps this would result in something really impractical to wear as it would restrict your movement. If you really want it like that you'll have to create an extra holster-bone (and do some constraining as described below) and then do some tedious vertex weighting on the straps. I would go for a setup where the holster is fixed on the thigh strap (only allowed to rotate), but can slide up and down over the waist strap.

I don't know which program you are using, but this is how I would try to do it max:

the straps are skinned to follow the body (using the thigh and lower spine bones). once you have those set up you can make the holster follow the straps (I would keep em all as seperate objects). I would attach a helper to each strap using the attachment constraint, this will constrain the helper to a face of the strap. the constraint will automaticly place the helper on face 0, but by clicking the "set position" button on the motion panel (attachment parameters for the constraint) you can put in in the right place.

now you have two helpers that follow the straps when you move your body. I would then create another helper, align and link it to the helper on the thigh strap. then use a look-at constraint to make it orient towards the helper on the waist strap. you can use the thigh bone as an upnode to make sure it's orientation is correct.

and then just link the holster to that last helper :) but make sure that you use a controller there too so you can always adjust the holster manually in animation if crashing does occur. In this setup the straps will always nicely follow the body, they wont be pulled away by the holster, which isnt very realistic either. so you could create a holster bone and then partially weigh the straps to this bone. in a very similar way as described above, constrain two helpers directly on the body, position constrain another helper to both body-following helpers (you can play with the weights of the constraints to make the holster move in a realistic way). then just link a holster bone to that helper and then skin the straps partially using that new holster bone.

does this make any sense? :)

in maya you can do the same, just use clusters instead of attachment constraints.

[kobeone]

This makes perfect sense, thank you so much. Its amazeing how easy it really is. Rigging is not one of my strong suits and is something that I will devote more time to my next project around. Thanks for the teaching lesson Clalan



Kobeone

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