elastigirl

[machsumo]

Not sure if exactly how Elastigirl was rigged can be disclosed, but I can tell you the guy
responsible for the stunt rig:

Mark Therrell.

The regular model (face/body )was articulated by Austin Lee with animator-buddy Dave Mullins. These guys deserve props as well.

machsumo

[seven6ty]

Yeah, I was wondering the same thing as well... I was guessing just several of the stretchy joint solvers??? I've yet to delve into that type of setup, so I don't know too much about the details of it, but I know there are several tutorials around for stretchy limbs and such, so I'm guessing something similar?

But yeah, I was also figuring they might have to have special models for those stretchy scenes, so that the textures/wireframe would deform correctly.

[PEN]

I'm going to guess a stretchy spline IK setup for the arms, legs and body. Kudos to all involved:)

[Harvey]

I would tend to agree with Paul that it must have been a form of stretchy spline IK. I have used the same technique in max to achieve very similar results (extremely stretchy limbs)...and basically had a switch to lock and unlock the spline system to a regular arm rig.

However I think that there must have been more to it than that for some of the more extreme deformations (such as flattening or drastic changes in shape such as the parachute shot). I also expect that they probably had custom rigging going on to achieve some shot specific effects.

Regardless the results look fantastic!

[xasteycracker]

well well a friend showed me this the other day comes from the aol stream. In it it talks about how they rigged the character, muscle system and clothes.
PIXAR VIDEO (http://progressive.stream.aol.com/aol/us/moviefone/movies/2004/incrediblesthe_015960/incredibles_fl_dl.mov)

[cg219]

Its called Bend Bone, says it on the video. I wish Pixar would release some of there tools like Blur Studio does.

[vrljc]

That video was great, really inspiring. Yeah I wish they would release some tools, but unfortunately I don't have marrionate sitting on my desktop. :banghead: Do you? I mean...

[IkerCLoN]

Carlos Baena and Rodrigo Blaas, spanish animators from the movie, told in a 3D festival that the elastic girl's arms were so difficult to animate, because they had several "arm morph targets" depending how long was the arm. I mean, it seems that they used several meshes with different resolution depending the lenght of the arm. They didn't explain it with detail, since the event was full of "not-3d-users" people.

Hope it helps...

[Ithuriel]

Hey all
although this isn't elastagirl arms, it is bendy arms (round elbows)

Jason Osipa Thread (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=107944&perpage=15&pagenumber=2)

same sort of principle can be applied to create long stretchy arms with diffrent joint targets along the path that can bend/displace the arm.
So you could have your normal arm joints,
then create a joint (several joints depending on the degree of control you wish all parented to the shoulder) system that stays within % range of say shoulder and elbow

by using a expressions like;
UpprMidArm_joint01.translateZ=Elbow.rotate X*-.001*Control.bend

Create a controller that controls bendyness from 0-1 which control the magnitute of bendyness..

NB: I haven't tried to do this with a joint "system" only with one mid joint, but im presuming the principle could apply to all...


-Chris


i

[seven6ty]

Yeah, I was beginning to think that they may have used those stretchy joints on a spline IK system, probably not as hard as I had originally thought, maybe.

[JasonOsipa]

Sorry, should have done this originally:

SPOILERS!!






Heh, the arms and legs aren't the hard part; there are about a zilion ways to do that, it's just a matter of picking what's most stable. The twisting the limbs up in the "suit shot" and the turning to-and-from a flat "parachute" type structure back into a normal character -THAT's the fun stuff! -J.

[Ithuriel]

parachute structure??

now you've made me even more excited about it....

oh man, i really want to see the incredibles, its not out over here till boxing day...

[eek]

It can be done just needs a little lateral thinking:

>>PLAY<< (http://www.eekstudios.com/cgtalk/leg_test.avi)

I'll tell you more once i can show you guys how to set it up.

eek

[CoreyJAvitar]

Wow!
What did you do that in?
Was it easy? am I missing something?
please explain!!!
Thanks!
(Edit:
I just understood what your wrote:
That would rock if you could tell us! thanks!)

[Terkonn]

It would be dang cool if could figure out how to do "stretchy limbs". Sooo much can be done with it. What program are you guys discussing? What program did pixar to it in?

[CoreyJAvitar]

Pixar wrote their own proprietary software. I use max, but I don't know what eek is using!
just think what could be done!

[eek]

I did that in max 4.2!, built on an existing setup of mine.


Was it easy? am I missing something?
please explain!!!
Thanks!Not too difficult, the hardest part is making it accessible/easy to the animators. That was just proof of concept, it needs a lot of refinement.

A pic of the rig:-
http://www.eekstudios.com/cgtalk/sl_pic.jpg



Heres some more crazy bendy action!:

>>PLAY<< (http://www.eekstudios.com/cgtalk/bendy.avi)

The final version will probably be built on expressions. Also in Incredibles i rekon they have different setups for different scenes.

eek

[CoreyJAvitar]

Crazy!
That is really cool! I have used expressions a bit for rigging, but not much. mostly in PMG.
So about how long did it take you to set that up? from the pic, it looked like a real headache!

[CoreyJAvitar]

Hey I loved the video BTW~
It was amazing.
I wish i could work with those guys.

[bobzilla]

Actually, if anyone is using Cinema 4D and they have CD IK Tools, I believe there are settings for making bones stretchy.

I don't have it in front of me right now so I don't know if it's in all the set ups or just the Spline IK set up.

BTW CD IK Tools...highly recommended!

[Ithuriel]

Nice eek, looks good,

Im not to familiar with max, so im don't really understand the pic you posted, im more familiar with maya.

I presume the blue lines are the IK handles and the green is the bone structure
with two sets one bendy.bones, ik.bones and i presume there is skinable.bones (constrained between both) in there somewhere.

and the bendy bones try to maintain a curvature but still have a expression that effects there scale??

As you can see above, still a little bit confused.. but thats what im understanding here

Nice work thou eek, i know what im going to be playing around with tonight =)

[seven6ty]

Yeah, please explain the set-up when you get some time.

[Harvey]

Eek, thats very cool looking, couple of questions. How fast is it as far as animator interactivity? And can it handle more extreme deformations...things like wrapping around other objects, etc...?

I built a fully stretchable rig a few months back (not as extreme as Elasti Girl, but the limbs and torso could contort and stretch in pretty much anyway you wanted...but not into things like the parachute seen in the Increadibles). I would love to share some screen shots from the RnD phase but I will have to get clearence first due to NDA's. The biggest issue for me was speed (I had to have huge number of bones do to the extreme actions it needed to perform). Strangely enough the biggest slowdown was from a series of nested position constraints that were put into the rig to aid the animators.

Anyway looking foward to seeing more of your rig...I will try to get permission to upload something.

[eek]

Hey Harvey,

Well thats was just proof of concept.

Eek, thats very cool looking, couple of questions. How fast is it as far as animator interactivity? And can it handle more extreme deformations...things like wrapping around other objects, etc...?Its pretty fast, theres a tiny slow down when you beginning moving things. Your exaclty right about the nested constraints, there the things that cause the slowdown. Thats why im gunna go to into expressions.(fry my head for a day or two).

I dont see why not for bending round corners, its just more of the same. Its making it fun for the animators thats the hard part -more controls more complex.

As for the parachute/boat stuff, there must be morphs going on in there. I watched the vid and the key is generally the stretch comes from extreme, it looks like the arm can stretch from the elbow to wrist, and shoulder to elbow - so basically a floating elbow. Now i dont know if the arm is fk or ik or both.

Its how you approach it eg. do you do a fk/ik rig with a stretch rig over the top? Thats how i would do it. But its a little more complex than that. e.g Does the fk follow the ik stretching? can the fk stretch. Does this break the laws or whats meant to happen? is it too complex for the animators?

Do you blend from fk to ik? What if ik's stretched and you do a blend to it from fk? I think you keep fk/ik seperate and blend rig between the two that bends and stretches as generally elastigirl is acting with out stretching - only in extremes does she stretch plus when shes angry with mr incredible hehe. So its where you approach it from.

I'll post some more Harvey hopefully over the weekend, more to come.

Hey I loved the video BTW~
It was amazing.
I wish i could work with those guys.Its pretty complex a little overly, so im gunna trim it down.

Yeah, please explain the set-up when you get some time.Yes, definately. The basic premise to most of my complex setups is a floating rig. But ill show you guys more soon.

eek


Edit:

More thinking... stick to rotation/transform rules. Fk joints should only be rotated. Ik joints are driven by position. Therefore the stretchyness should should come off the back end of the ik transform data, not fk. So the rig ill make will be a stretchy/bendy ik rig that can blend back and forth to fk. Performance would be fk/ik but stretchyness would come off ik but could blend back and forth for ik/fk. If that made any sence...(sorry its my brain talking)

Plus maybe a tweakable elbow wrist area for things like knots etc etc...

Also looking at the vid, it looks like there driving the arms with a morphjoint, basically a poly(with lots of sides), riged up to hinge but also stretch/bend/twist. This means they can use a clever skinning approach.

[Harvey]

Eek you are sooo right about the hard part being making it fun and simple for the animators..and yet still maintain a complex system with lots of control.

As to the set-up I used its was basically a basic IK/FK arm rig with a third stretch rig that sat on top. The stretch rig is what actually did all of the deformation and would just blend into a constrained position on either the IK or FK rig. When constrainded it would simply follow the basic rig, but when unconstrained, it's controls would be free to move around however you wished. Of course its controls have a series of things layered on top of them to assist the animators so things didn't get "tangled" up.

I definately would like to revist it sometime to make some improvements...one being speed, and the second being ease of use for an animator (as I said I did have controls in there but I think it could be better). What I did like about it was that is really did have almost unlimited flexiblilty (limited only by the geometry itself).

[eek]

Haha Harvey,


We think alike, thats exactly the setup ive done, and what ive read on Pixars set. Basically an IK/FK setup but with a curvy setup ontop.

One important thing here were trying to achieve is a goofy artistic stretch not reality. Its more contorsion than stretch. E.g an elastic band when stretched doesnt bend, round corners its sheers, so we want more artistic freedom.

Atm my rig is a bit slow, so i need to do a biggish re think, im gunna start writting a new expression system called "goof" this weekend. And if youd like to get together on this, you have my email and msn - be great to work together.

eek

[seven6ty]

The basic premise to most of my complex setups is a floating rig
What do you mean by a "floating rig"? Like as in one that just has the geometry bound to it, but has it's movement driven by other joint chains, that kind of a thing??

[eek]

Umm kinda seventy,

"Floating rigs" are old old techniques in rigging as are "floating pivots" ; Floating rigs are rigs that in essence float on another rig, either by expressions or constraints etc etc. So with my stretchy setup i have a stretchy rig that "floats" on an ik setup controlled by constraints, expressions and all manner of things.

So as promised i worked on a faster setup over the weekend, and also managed to pick up some more info on elastigirl. There able to control the curve like the f-curve. So i decided to make the f-curve 3d!, this way theres still only 3 points on the curve but now you have the ability to control the tangents too. So you can make sharp 90 degree bends, or curly loop the loop, zig zag etc etc. (ah i love you max) The tangents are also controlled by constraints.


Pic:

http://www.eekstudios.com/cgtalk/tangent_test.jpg


Vid:

>>PLAY<< (http://www.eekstudios.com/cgtalk/tt.avi)


Theres lots more to do:

Stable twist
F.A.A.P deformer(flat as a pancake) -possibly using a patch model and driving the bezier handles between it and a flat surface.

eek

[PEN]

Very nice eek. I have done some interesting setups like this as well. On application was actualy for a robot that has stretchy arms as well as defined joints. It all works fast but you are right that expressions where ever possible should be used.

[Kizza]

This is fantastic. I've been trying to do the same thing in Maya.

[Fabiomussarela]

Wooowww, very nice, I think I have understood 50% of the whole stuff!!
after trying a lot of things, I kind of get some stretchy bones, but how to control the bezier handle without getting in the subObject mode ????

In Maya you just select the bezier handle and create a cluster, but in 3dMax......???

The LinkedXform just grab the vertex but not the handle!!!

Is there a way to do that ????

Thanks a lot :)

[eek]

There is,

Im using a float point3 on the point, which basically exposes the handles, which then im driving with an expression.



eek

[eek]

Im thinking of developing this system even further , i.e the entire body. After reading "the illusion of life" and taking a look at baloo the bear, its got some amazing squash and stretch, heads bending and squishing, and his entire body stretches. So im gunna develope a system that either completely works from scratch, or takes an existing skeleton and turns it into a stretch based/2d sytem.

it will control:

Bone stretchiness
its curviture
squashiness

more to come...


eek

[Harvey]

Check out this thread and the 10second club if you haven't seen it already Eek. Jason is doing some very cool rig stuff with 2d squash and stretch feel.

http://10secondclub.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=69&st=90

I haven't had a chance but I have been meaning to make one in max myself.

[eek]

Yep Jasons, rig is very clever, it seems as if the skin interpolation changes from a straight skin to bones and a curved between each joint. This and stretching is not too hard to replicate( i think), im gunna add the functionality of handles, so the animator can actually control and in essence draw the curve, for instance a character walking to running, i'll have a slider that gives a bend to the legs and arms, but also they curve control the curve -make it wobble invert it, all manner of things.

eek

[Fabiomussarela]

Hi Eek, thanks a lot for the tip :)

I´m able to control the bezier handle now!!! it´s giving me more control

I´ll post a test rig I made, but as you said, it´s very slow because the lots of position constraints :)

This thread is becoming very interesting :)

It opened my mind to new kind of rigging styles

Thanks a lot for everyone :)

[eek]

mmm... shouldnt be that slow. Mine works realtime.


eek

[nottoshabi]

Verry cool discusion guys. :thumbsup:

[eek]

Im gunna be working on a new bone system, with all this lot in. Im calling it D-Bone, and thats all i can say atm, but hopefully if i can get it working, will be very cool!.

More to come...

eek

btw, Harvey what was that site for scripting expressions.

[Harvey]

Hey Eek, the site is http://www.boomerlabs.com/freeware.html

By the way drop me an email.


Also regarding the rig slowdown, do you have nested position constraints (ie position constraints controling position contraints) I have noticed that can slow thigns down. But in general as Eek said it shouldn't slow things down...I have a custom spine system that uses some aspects of the bezier control that Eek is talking about and it has no slowdown at all.


-Chris

[soulburn3d]

SPOILERS!!!

The twisting the limbs up in the "suit shot" and the turning to-and-from a flat "parachute" type structure back into a normal character -THAT's the fun stuff! -J.

Just to note, the twisting the suit part was done as a second unit shot, and was a special rig in 3dsmax. It's cheated like hell, and definately a one off rig that's good for nothing but that twist.

- Neil

[eek]

As Harvey said,

My system use just 4 constraints, the rest is driven by expressions which makes it very fast.
As to using max as a twist hack for Incredibles, thats cool! Ive gotta add my Faap(flat as a pancake) into it and twist functionality. But the whole aproach to the system should be really nice.

Harvey ill send you a mail today.

eek

[king21]

Hi!

I made up setup for streychy leg but look what came out bones are moving perfect just when i bind skin to them it get all nasty, any suggestions.

I can post a scene to if you want.

[nottoshabi]

Please post a scene. I will like to take a look at that.

[littlepixel]

I think they had tons of rigs. Pixar is full of PHD's.

[sevenka]

there's answer in this link ===> www.s_like_gim.ca (linoczka.blox.pl/html)

[mikefeil]

really wish I understood polish

[king21]

Here is mzy setup (wrong)

[nottoshabi]

What language is that link? I tied This. (http://www.freetranslation.com) and it did not translate right:sad:

[biosim]

Hi all, this is my result :

www.simoworks.com/other/stretchy.mov (http://www.simoworks.com/other/stretchy.mov) - 1.2 Mb

Max 7/ Posetool

[Fabiomussarela]

Hi, here I am again :)

I made some tests with a simple cartoon character and decided to stop being shy and post something :)

here it goes :)

http://usuarios.cmg.com.br/~hp-mussarlz/MussaRLZ_Rig.avi

(700kb - DivX)

I'm still having some problems with bone flipping and this rig its very slow!!

Thanks Eek for the tips! :)

[mikefeil]

is that in maya fabio...thats the best attempt I have seen so far.

[Fabiomussarela]

Oh, sorry, I forgot to mention that !! I'm using 3dmax !

I've tried to do some kind of rig in maya, but I don't know the software enough to do so!

Thanks for the compliments Isometrix :)

[biosim]

Superb! That's Great Result !!! Can you share more details ? Maybe a sample scene if it's not a secret ?



get Animator's PoseTool at www.simoworks.com (http://www.simoworks.com/) for free !

[eek]

as i showed Tughan today, in a kind of masterclass in stretchy rigs. Theres so many ways.


1. you could drive bones via there subcontrol, build the stretch into a CA slider.
2. you could drive the rig via a very simple(as a showed tughan), constraint based system.
3. you could drive the rig into a curve, then drive the tangent bezier handles,
4. you could do a floating rig that is built on to a fk/ik setup

and a host of others.

The important thing is speed and fun for the animator. The stretching of a rig is notoriously hard for the animator, loads of controls, sliders, which can in essence detach the animation from the stretching.

I.e the rule being is that stretching is either an integral part of the character, or something that happens on occasions i.e one offs.

Theres in essence three parts to a good rig,

1. stretch this is you everyday stretchy rig.
2. its curve. Which must be very user friendly. Either slider based, node,handle. But something that is intiative and not, causing counter animation.

And 3. Squash and scale, the ability to flattern the rig out flat, but also inflate it. This must also be user friendly, slider driven for area effect but also localised control.

onto of this is twist, which is in one sence very difficult as it incorporates two idea. Pole vector twist, and bone twist. This is whole other area.

Now we could aproach this to have a specialise bone, that is its own right Can squash, stretch, have a changeable curviture, twist and flat/inflate. Which then could be bound onto and existing stretchy setup.

Driving a bone with a point on a spline, cause issues as a point is a point in space and though it may contain, matrix transform data doesnt contain rotational data.

So a the bone will take rotation offset from transform offset via the pole vector/swivel angle but wont take is own rotation from the points as they have non.

so to break it up even further,

the stretch part is simple,

lets say we drive the bone chain with a standard constraint rig.(ill post this)

Next curviture,

well we could pull another copy of our skinned poly leg and drive it via morph, which is skinned to a curve, but this may cause rotation offset issues, but may not. This is the hardest part, to call on a curve that does break rotations.

Next squash/iflation/scale ,

this can all be acheived either via vertex control, skining, morphs. Expressions.

The squash/inflation/scale is built onto the curviture, and this then is built onto a stretch rig.


The curviture is the hardest part and its rig in theory is driven by the user, essentially you want to tweak how the curve forms, straighten it, twist it,( would possibly drive a morph), rap it around things. So straight away your looking at a spline, with bezier handles to control the rig.

But to maintain twist, that is the question.

If i get sometime this week, ill show you guys how i'll aproach each area and hopefully we can all come up with a stable solution, that will work in both maya and max.

eek

[Tughan]

Pixar will regret the day they showed us that ElastiGirl character. :p

[joconnell]

Heya Eek - I've been chasing you over a few threads now - I'd love to get in on some of this stuff too if possible - Your facial rig looks like the type of direction I want to be going as regards rigging - Any chance I can snoop on some of your msn bits at some stage?

Cheers,

john

[mikefeil]

me and fabio have been going over trying to get something like this going in maya, but yeah, some of the concepts are just a bit whacky (plus the language barrier) can anyone put this system into maya terms ?

From what I have learnt so far, u need two joint chains, one that is for the normal leg, but then this normal leg is constrained to the stretch leg.

?

[eek]

The rules are:

basic rig that stretches

secondary rig - with curve control

third rig - squash/flatening and inflation.

Combining them, thats hard. With twist ontop.

eek

p.s jo, i sent you a PM.

[raillard]

Hello.

I'm busy working on an elastigirl type rig for Animation Master. I just noticed this thread, over here.

Anyway, here's a simple(?) attempt at an arm, done in AMv10.5q. This doesn't have any mesh distortion yet. What I mean is, the arm does not get skinny as it grows taut. It's just a rough thing that I did, this afternoon.

http://www.cgtalk.com/showpost.php?p=1982666&postcount=13

Zipped file at bottom.

Sincerely,

Carl Raillard

[machsumo]

Its called Bend Bone, says it on the video. I wish Pixar would release some of there tools like Blur Studio does.

bendbows.

Pixar could not really could not release any of our tools, because they are entirely proprietary. It is all studio specific.

machsumo

[coolwizj]

Is there a way to achieve this effect in Blender? If so, how?:)

- Ian

[gabio]

Is there a way to achieve this effect in Blender? If so, how?:)

- Ian
yes. with hooks, or some sort of complex stuff of constraint scaling...
you know it's already complex to set a ik solver in there. Would be interesting to do a chalendge over at elysiun

[coolwizj]

I figured out a really cool method for achieving this effect in Blender! :) I will post some videos soon. ;)

- Ian

[D-3]

hello guys.. in don´t read all post..
but i will show my rig test..
i will try to finish the model and the rig in next week ok

coments and questions is welcome

click in the image to get the video demo.. 1.7 mb

http://www.d-3studio.com/wip/elastbot/rig.jpg (http://www.d-3studio.com/wip/elastbot/elastbot.rar)

Thanks guys and cya!!

[coolwizj]

Nice rig, D3. :D But could you make an a quicktime format version of your rig test? I couldn't get the window media file to play.

- Ian

[Tughan]

Good and interesting rig my friend. But I think you'll need to simplify the stretchy controllers a bit. Because animating it looks difficult that way. But I think you're working on it. Keep it up. :thumbsup:

[D-3]

coolwizj - i will try to provide a .mov format.. ok!! but try to get a convert on the net.. ok


Tughan - i´m studing inumerous solutions for this.. an i´m trying to simplify this controlers hehe

but on this rig i´m have 3 diferents types of control..

1 - human arm ik/fh
2 freeforma deformations for army..
3 spline controler

and i´m have a slider to control the transition..

i´m don´t see dificult to control... and i´m searchg the best solution for this... hehe

[CoreyJAvitar]

CoolWizJ: Please! post a video or tutorial or something! If I could see something like this in blender I would be ultimately astounded.
THanks :bounce:

[Tughan]

Actually I think that main challange is making rig easy for the animator. Like Eek said a few posts before. So, it'll will be also fun to animate. :)

[D-3]

CoreyJAvitar
i´m can try to make a video.. because my inglesh is poor ok.. i´m don´t know if the blender have tecnical suport to make some this but you can try...

i´m will try to do somethinks in the next week ok..


Tughan
that is the point. man ehehe i´m trying to do the best control and manipulators for this character.. i´m not a scripter. i´m start to learm maxscript yesterday hehe but i´m will try to automatizate the show/hiden ik controlers. and another thinks, any coments and suggestion to make this rig better is very very welcome!!

thanks all

[coolwizj]

I'll try to make a tutorial (written or video) as soon as I can. :bounce: I'm still working out all the glitches and stuff like that. :D

[eek]

Right i should reply firstly as im finally getting a website up (not the blog i have), cheers for the help jo. And to say interesting rig D-3.

The problem with stretchy rig especially ones that are reliant on curves to deform them is usage to the animator. With any rig, form and function are a double edged sword and must compliment functionality to the rig and to the animator. Generally rigs have three parts, the underlying part which drives muscles, deformation, bones etc. Then the top layer of rig whcih drives combination parts eg, foot roll driving three controls. And thirdly gui and control to the animator, which has to be simple, fun and relivant the each of the other layers in both position eg. knee control you put it on the knee and functionality.You want to give both automated and manual control- and thats pretty hard to do.

The problem with curve/stretchy setup is that the gui - the control to the animator bridges the gap into the rig you dont want to touch, essentially there the same, your driving the rig and the gui. And this is why so many studios, pixar, R&h find thes rig very hard to pipe for. Heck i spent a month just thinking about it and working the three areas - stretch, curve and squash.

The idea of a two tier structure for this rig, may be difficult for an animator, relying on a curve to match. With Pixar two setups, 1 fk/ik, 1 stretchy. So they would animate fk, hit a button the stretch would match and they could control that, all they need to do was match the fk back and hit the button. So it was a kind of stretch match process.

Essentially you want to animate fk/ik, get you character ready, bring in stretch in slowly blend and continue, then blend back. And essentially the the rigs to float off each other. This combined with the essential three layers, and fk/ik structure over the top is very very hard. Not just interms of rig, but also control for the animator. Thats why i wanted as few controls and used bezier tangents to control the curve, - you driving the curves structure not the node/points on it. Also it seamlessly blends to and from a fk/ik rig. Problems then occur as your driving skinning info of a spline which each point doesnt have rotational values and a whole load a problems happen. Also do you want to stretch at the elbow, the wrist, is bendy a fact of going round corners, by the wind - so it not a simple open and shut case.


And aslo stretch should be for specific reasons, does the character have special powers and can stretch, or are they just bendy. Generally your use it as little as often as you want only to exaggerate movement, or have a specific purpose.

The key is it should be developed in a way thats either seamless to the animator, or for specific shots, otherwise it'll become ovebearing. Also you have loads of issues such as pinning, but i'll discuss this a little more next week.

If i can work up a example this weekend, ill post it next week.

eek

[TheCelt]

there's answer in this link ===> www.s_like_gim.ca (linoczka.blox.pl/html)

That link is a load of old cobblers! I tried http://www.poltran.com/pl.php4 to translate it and it seems a bit dodgy.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong Mr. JAVA

[therrell]

whoa!
i did not even realize this conversation was going on until now, i kinda thought nobody really cared.

its amazing, some of you guys really got some stuff right.
ultimately it really is about the over-all control structure you present to the animator.
there were some comments about a "blend to each target thing" and that the rig was hard to control and animate.

well, dificulty in control is a relative thing. how many things do you want the rig to do? how much time and money do you have to make it easy and "fool-proof"?
for the most part, elastigirl and normal fk/ik helen is one rig in these effects shots. this is because many of the effects shots had to show her actually existing in all of these states in a continuos sequence of frames. it would suck to tell the director that he had to rethink the edits in an action sequence because she was just a bunch of one-offs that could not transistion to and from eachother. the helen boat is really the only exception where we had a one-off model. some of the animators found her controll structure tollerable at best, and some actually had fun with her, others just didn't take a hankerin to her at all. but what had to be done had to be done... by the way, there is one degree of freedom in this rig that has not been mentioned yet in this thread, (i oppologize if it has been mentioned and i missed it.) ...and that is sliding/path motion.

here is the basic breakdown:
a special curve deformer was written. the curves that make it up were posed by "anchors" with an in-house version of constraints by the same deformers that pose the fk/ik body. (these speacial curve deformers are not spline ik). these curve deformers then pose a two dimensional flat "ginger bread boy" or flat shadow of helen's sillouette.
this geometry then feeds a proprietary surface deformer that drives a topologically identical version of helen that is always invisible.

the "constrainted" anchors, curves and gingerbread-boy are represented by animatable guides and provide a spline based fk'ik analouge that is "piggy-backed" to the real helen. you could then "blend" various parts of her body to and from this piggy-backed analouge without really noticing any difference between the curve and rigid fk/ik unless you deformed the curve control guides away from the fk'ik rig. the "gingerbread-boy" stage of the deformation tree provided the sliding or path animation degree of freedom when it was needed. the in-house constraints, being "anchored" to various points in the fk'ik body could be animated with guides away from and independently of the fkik body.

when you wanted to return to normal fk'ik operation you simply re-apply the original anchor constraints to the anchors points themselves with an automatically gnereated compensation transform, and then animate the transform values to zero. this in combination with "blending" various body parts back to the original fk/ik source helen geometry provided controllable "to and from" stretchy effect, and seemless transistion between controll structures.

the Helen topology that was used for these effects shots was only one point density. it was higher res than the helen without these controls that was used more often, but no variability of resolution. she had limits to how far she could stretch and still hold up.

well, there you go. these concepts of coarse are applicable no matter what software you use. having the ability to write your own deformers is very important however. that, carefull planning, and the freedom to go through several iterations before you hit the "magic" formula are key to hitting the balance between useability and "just get it done".
i may or may not have hit that perfect balance very well, but in the end, she was at least a useable model and got the job done.
-mt

[nottoshabi]

Wow.... Now that is a brain twister and a half.. :scream: My head hurts.:scream: I'm going to sleep.

[Kizza]

Thanks for that! A good insight to the wonders and woes of Elastigirl.
I'm primarily an animator so I'm praying someone creates a tutorial that I can follow and convert into Maya terms if it's not already done. Why would I do this? Well I'd just love to do a Reed Richards animation. (Don't we just torture ourselves with our ideas sometimes?)

The Incredibles DVD came out yesterday in Australia. I'm pumped, all of tomorrow is dedicated to "research"... in other words, watching every single thing on the DVD at least once.

[eek]

Thx for the info Therrell:

this geometry then feeds a proprietary surface deformer that drives a topologically identical version of helen that is always invisible.


This was the bit i was stuck on how to do. Pretty much everything else had been worked out, from papers,magazines, dvd. I'll look into this. Also ill probably use tracking based ik/fk. So you only need to use one chain.

more to come...

eek

[Harvey]

Good read Therrel. I mentioned way back on page to that I had built a rig while back (last summer now) that had full stretch capabilities. It was interesting to read through how you guys had Elastigirl set-up because it sounds extremely close to the set-up I had, including the sliding path motion.

I am curious how many points "anchors" you had in the curve control to allow for both lots of flexibility and yet balance animator friendliness.

[joconnell]

Thx for the info Therrell:



This was the bit i was stuck on how to do. Pretty much everything else had been worked out, from papers,magazines, dvd. I'll look into this. Also ill probably use tracking based ik/fk. So you only need to use one chain.

more to come...

eek

I wonder could you do something simple like use an ffd before your skin with a set of sliders for the control points to add flattening controls? I used something like this for a caveman getting stomped on by a dinosaur recently and it work for basic stuff...

[eek]

Hey Jo,

I wonder could you do something simple like use an ffd before your skin with a set of sliders for the control points to add flattening controls? I used something like this for a caveman getting stomped on by a dinosaur recently and it work for basic stuff...

Thats what im thinking, some deformer layering system. Im also working on a system called "GIM" well a rig actually.

eek
p.s i sent you a hotmail.

[ngrava]

Wow! Thanks Therrell. That's probably the most technically based information that I've see about anything to do with the incredibles. It's funny because out of all the pixar movies, the technology part seems almost secret. ;)

So, from what I was able to understand about what you just said, You have a system of splines that actually control the mesh through a custom plug in that works like a "curve deformer" but with some way of handling branching and hierarchy (the main reason this can't be done now). Then that's attached to a standard IK/FK skeleton that has all the regular controllers of a human rig. When you want to stretch and squash, you just animate the splines with your curve controls that are attached to the skeleton... Is that right? If so, all that's needed is the curve deformer. It seems as if this is exactly what eek built but I don't see how his rig could work on an entire body as the standard curve deformer in Max can't handle more then one curve at a time. Could you tell us a bit more about the custom spline deformer that you guys wrote?

Thanks so much!!

-=GB=-

[eek]

Hi Ngrave,

My system could work on the entire body, its does use curves and has a simliar layering and constraint system via the use of tangent handles. But doesnt rely on a curve deformer. Currently it relies on path deformation techniques, and this is why i was explaining the issues of acheiving rotational offset. Thats why ive got to look into api,script and mesh interpolation stuff. Either based on whole mesh, implicit or edge to edge explicit. Basically ripping out vertex data and playing with it. Its very very fast atm, and so i need to keep this speed.

this geometry then feeds a proprietary surface deformer that drives a topologically identical version of helen that is always invisible.

Geometry affecting/driving vertex data can be achieved in max. Take the skin modifier for instance. And access to vertex data is relatively straight forward with script and sdk. Ive even have a muscle pipe im working on the does this exact thing, -spline>poly>mesh. Basically im making sheets of muscles.

As to a whole rig, i think each area would be slightly different, arms, legs, body, so slightly different versions of the same pipe. Speed is the key. What would be nice is statistical modelling in max, mmm that'll be the next step.

eek
p.s if i get an aproach that is as fast as my current pipe, and acheives true rotational offset ill post it.

eek

[TheCelt]

Hi guys,

Great topic!

Very nice link on more information:
http://www.computerarts.co.uk/in_depth/features/inside_the_incredibles

I'm an animator primarily learning the ins/outs of rigging. so here goes:

I know this thread is more about Elastigirl and her stretchiness. But can anyone please give me more info on how to make a pseudo "Bendbow" type arm rig? where it bends just from the elbow/wrist area. viva Tex Avery!

Also another question: How can I setup in an IK arm rig with a degree of movement not usually allowed by IK in the forearm (like when one arm-wrestles, the direction the forearm is pushed (+) and to a less extent (-) )

Any help at all would be most appreciated! :)

- Somhairle

[JasonOsipa]

SPOILERS!!!



Just to note, the twisting the suit part was done as a second unit shot, and was a special rig in 3dsmax. It's cheated like hell, and definately a one off rig that's good for nothing but that twist.

- Neil

But of course. But can you get the same mesh to behave one way, and then the other in one shot, without doing some sort of kludgey swap?

Like I said, THAT'S the fun stuff... :)

[azozel]

I know there's an easyer way look

at the link (http://www.staphylas.com/lebuilding...ing_PAL_web.mov) look at the character rig.

[Weisz]

That link's broken.

[IkerCLoN]

Im using a float point3 on the point, which basically exposes the handles, which then im driving with an expression.

I'm trying to achieve something similar to yours, Eek, but I'm not able to fully understand the sentence above. Where are you using the Float Point3 controller? Can you explain me a little, please? It'd be very appreciated!!!

Thanks!

[eek]

ah ok, so to get at handle of b-spline first they have to be animated. So make a go into sub-edit mode make a key at frame one with the handle.

Now open up the graph editor go to you spline>object>master and you should get a:

vertex 1,2,3 etc
InVec 1,2,3 etc
OutVec 1,2,3 etc

where you can place expressions/scripts on. B-spline handles have odd tranform axis, they exist as only a point in space. And to that seem to have an inverted axis -y,x,-x. With my setup im using an expression to link the handle to a point. Then driving that point with scripts/etc.

So all i do is first put a list controller on the InVec/OutVec/Vertex, then on its avalible controller a point3 expression.

With the expression as im not splitting its axis into three, im using a vector. So the expression looks like :

[-a.y,a.z,-a.x]

'a' being a vector name ( you could call it anything) , with a controller being the point. Now you need a list controller because generally the handle never sits bang on the point and may even fly off. So the list controller enables you to align it.

Also when you add this approach to other vertex[s] the previous may get moved, so its best to put the expression on everything your going to control then align them all up with whatever there being controlled.

point3 is for (x,y,z)

ive got some more tech on this i'll have to show you guys sometime.


eek

[IkerCLoN]

Have I ever told you that I love you, eek? ;) OK, now it's time to test it :)

Thanks!!!

[Tughan]

We love him indeed. :)

Like the Batman of Gotham City, or the Spiderman of NewYork, he's the Eek of CGTalk. :bounce:

[eek]

Hehe, thankyou!

If i have a little time today, ill post up some more stuff on elasti-girl research and some theories ive been looking into from the clone-wars. Which is an artistic curve/bend rather than incredibles style squelch!

A little more:

So with the clone wars, ren and stimpy, dexters lab. They have an artistic curve at the tops and bottom off the legs and arms.

With the legs, with fast or dynamic posing you have two values, firstly a general slight curve the leg, this is minimal. Secondly the top edge of the leg, becomes one fluid curve. Similiar to the action line in animation. - this is when the leg is slightly bent from being straight.

The underside retains its natural shape/muscle and only takes on a little curving.

When bent the legs have an altogether effect going on, namly the low leg (knee down), has an inverted curve. Breaking the whole arc of the leg but retaining dynamism and strong posing. The back of this still retains its muscle shape. With the upper leg, the upper edge retains its curviture from the previous, but may become stronger, its underside remains the same. - for when the leg is sharpy bent.


Arms are different matter altogether.

In a dynamic shot in the 'clone wars', mase windo is fighting tons of robots, the arms are either in a bend bone style with a generous arc, that tapers to the wrist, or very sharp, tight angles.


It all though, depends on the character, mase is a bulky, heavy so not much deformation goes on. Also his legs dont taper at the feet, so its a dynamic is heavy/solid.

Anakin on the other hand, is light footed and quick, his feet are tiny, so the arcs give a 'fleet of foot' feeling. It accentuates the performance.


So with this in mind developing a stretching system needs the following:

ik/fk - the ability to break joints. Now it could be an entirely ik system that references an fk for special situations.

Bone scaling/length adjustments - vital for dynamism

stretching in conjunction with bone scalling (plus the ability to turn it off/down) - this is vital, because one goes in hand with the other. The ability to stretch is one thing, but those bones need to be able to adjust in length too.

Generalised curviture - basically a general curve that runs through all the bones, in other words bend bone.

specialised curviture - the ability to drive the whole curviture of the leg. This can be achieved with splineIK, custom setups etc


shape curving - now this is different, the ability to direct the curve of the leg/arm/body on its top edge and bottom edge. This allow for great dynamics, and breaking of poses.



This basically covers all the bases for a good setup. Achieving this in a reliable solution is difficult, as you dealing with odd rotations, positions etc so working out which order each system goes is vital.

Also it has tp be readable fo the animator, is access to controls and vitally keeping up with everything so they can easily reset each part.

eek

[ngrava]

Hey Eek,

This year at Siggraph I had a chance to really check out the chicken Little/Disney Rigs. At first (when I saw them last year) I thought they where incredibly complex and that they had programmed some kind of custom deformers. But, after really taking a good look and talking to the TDs I found that they where incredibly simple. All that's really happening (in general) is that the mesh is actually skinned to a spline (in Maya it's called a wire). The points on the spline have no hierarchy so they can move totally independently of each other. Then, the points on the splines (wires, actually) are skinned to a ridged human type skeleton. This skeleton has your standard real-time stretching. In other words, the stretching happens in reaction to pulling the IK past the length of the bone instead of controlling it with a slider.

The animator poses the skeleton rig like normal. Then, either after or during poses, the animator selectively ppulls the curve points away from the bones. This is how they get all the weird cuviture to there limbs. The limbs usually only had one extra curve point between each bone. The points still move with the bones, they are just offset in order to curve the limbs in nice ways. It's important to note that this is effect is pretty primary to the fact that the mesh is attached to a curve and thus flowing with the curve. This is also the issue with doing something like this in Max and most other programs. You could simulate the curves with a lot of little bones but that still doesn't take into account that curves can stretch in between points where as, bones are usually static. You can obviously program this behavior in but I have no idea how to do that. :)

Anyway, I'd love to see a wire deformer in Max.

-=GB=-

[eek]

That is the exact same system i have. And it can be done in max quiet easily, but as you say im skinning to bones snd not a curve.

I did however do a test (probably to one you saw) with sklnning to a spline, that is driven via tangent handle. This stop you from having tons of points to control. The main issue with this is that a bezier point is just that a point and therefore has positional data, but no rotation. So when turning the rig, the rig would follow but it wouldnt gain any twist, unless you develop some vertex offsetting program, that say goes through each frame looks how the spline is behaving and 'tweaks' the mesh acoordingly.

In mine i had all the same control, but didnt even use bones!. The version im working on now has:

length adjustment
stretch control
Bend bone/manual control

And the order of each system is as follows:

curviture layer >ontop> bend bone layer >ontop> stretch layer >ontop> length layer

because everything is recursive, i.e it looks back at the last layer, each layer works seamlessly. Manual curviture is a state of bend bone which inturn called be dialled on/off - which is built on a stretch system (diallable) built on top of a length system.

The big slowdowns is driving lots of bones with a spline, so im looking into other ways.


Did you find how they solved the twist issue?, i know with pixar they have a custom spline deformer they wrote. I do know of a cheapish way of doing it - but i wont let that out of the bag yet. I'll get a clip of the system up soon.

eek

[ngrava]

The only problem I have with building a system like yours is that it's just to much for my tiny brain to handle. ;) I'd like to keep it as simple as possible. In fact, I've been trying to figure out how to put an IK chain on a curve in Maya. So basically, you pose a character with a simple spline rig. Nothing more.

The twisting is still a problem and I can only assume that Disney had to write something like Pixar did. I just have to be careful. Another issue is that points on a curve don't respond correctly when edited with any kind of compound deformation on them. Like skinned to a bone. It's the old, X is Y and Z is... wait... I hate Maya for that kind of crap. :)

[eek]

Thats why im driving my spline with bezier tangent handles, far more control. For an ik chain cant you just make a cv spline, cluster each point to a locator, parent those points together and run an ik chain through the lot?

You could then do all the funky stuff, like stretching, etc etc. eg make a spline with 5 points. then cluster each. Parent the 5th,3rd and 1st together, then drive the 2nd and 4th via a constraint based on its closest pair, give the 2nd/4th additional control so you can still move them and that should be it.

You could probably only use the clusters themselves, i did some stuff like this ages ago - in maya funnily enough for my facial rig. Btw im digging this discussion were having!:thumbsup:

please continue...

eek

[ngrava]

Thats why im driving my spline with bezier tangent handles, far more control. For an ik chain cant you just make a cv spline, cluster each point to a locator, parent those points together and run an ik chain through the lot?
Yeah, that'd be cool. But alas... I haven't figured out how to run an IK chain through anything other then bones. When you activate the IK handle tool, it wont select any other types. I'll bet someone has figured it out or it's probably possible with Mel. I'm just not privy to that knowledge. :)

Doesn't really matter though. I'm much more into Max these days. Maya is very badly organized program if you know what I mean. We really need is a wire control for Max. ;)

You could then do all the funky stuff, like stretching, etc etc. eg make a spline with 5 points. then cluster each. Parent the 5th,3rd and 1st together, then drive the 2nd and 4th via a constraint based on its closest pair, give the 2nd/4th additional control so you can still move them and that should be it.

You could probably only use the clusters themselves, i did some stuff like this ages ago - in maya funnily enough for my facial rig. Btw im digging this discussion were having!:thumbsup:

please continue...

eek

Yeah, to make matters worse in Maya, you only have NURBS curves. So, what would only take 5 points with Bezeir takes a lot more. When Designing this system, I had a hard time figuring out what to do with some of the extras. Now that I've messed with it for a while I can see that Disney must have done some custom coding to get the wires to behave like you would expect. for instance, say you have a wire skinned to a two bone chain. Now, when you rotate the lower bone up at a 90 degree angle, the points are now at a 90 degree angle. So, when you try to move them X moves up and down and Y moved right and left and so on. There's probably a simple way to get around this using Mel but sheesh! Why should I have to deal with this in the first place. :P

So, I'm really interested in finding out how how your skinning things to splines in Max? BTW I did see that Elastagirl leg you made a while back. Freaking awesome is all I can say. That would be optimal if it could work on a full character.

Something just occurred to me; (in Max) If I made a bunch of bones, parented each to a dummy, pointed each to the next dummy in the chain, then somehow got them to also stretch to that dummy... Hmmm. I seem to remember something like this in LightWave a while back. Bone length=the distance between the two dummys (parent and next in chain). Anyway, that could have a similar effect as a spline. At least that way you could get rotational deformation as well as positional. Hmmm. I need to study Max script more. :)

-=GB=-

[AsaMovshovitz]

Hey,

i have been reading this thread for a long time and this is my little test
http://www.zippyvideos.com/6558287461070946/streachy_arm_test/
simple ik bone setup with a spline going in the middle of the bones. each vertex is link xform to a dummy which can always be snapped back and be align to the to of the bones, the dummy are linked to the bones.
The arm mesh is skinned to the spline.


Asa

[IkerCLoN]

I experimented some while ago with 'spline skinning'. While it works not quite bad on lips, for example (skinning a spline for the lip and control it via LinkedXForm), it seems to deform a simple cylinder in a non-wanted way. Imagine a cylinder, a 3-vertex spline skinned to it, and some kind of helpers to control vertex positions. If you move any helper, the mesh will follow the spline shape because of the skinning, but it gets some weird deformation too.

So Asa, how did you get rid of that deformation?

p.s.: if what I'm talking about it's not clear, I can attach some images to explain it better.

[AsaMovshovitz]

I experimented some while ago with 'spline skinning'. While it works not quite bad on lips, for example (skinning a spline for the lip and control it via LinkedXForm), it seems to deform a simple cylinder in a non-wanted way. Imagine a cylinder, a 3-vertex spline skinned to it, and some kind of helpers to control vertex positions. If you move any helper, the mesh will follow the spline shape because of the skinning, but it gets some weird deformation too.

So Asa, how did you get rid of that deformation?

p.s.: if what I'm talking about it's not clear, I can attach some images to explain it better.

yes i had the same problem, i tryed to make all the vertex as corners, or smoothed but i found that the best way to avoid any bad deformation of the spline is too make the middle vertex a Beizer corner with very little handles, so they are very close to the vertex. that seemed to help it. can take a look at my setup in the attached file - it is max 7.

[eek]

Ngrava & all,

I wouldnt skin a spline to bones, your gunna get additional offset issues, combined axis etc. Plus i wouldnt use linked xform - it will kill your system if you have lots (trust me ive done it)

--- continued

Yes ngrava i see, plus your skinning a nurbs-curve; isnt that a no no for memory issues? What im doing with besier stuff is firstly controlling each vertex via an expression with a simple point.

[-a.y,a.z,-a.x] - a being your vector controller. Its an inverted axis, for some reason.

Its just for linking the besier point to a helper point. Now i do this with all the besier handles that are being controlled. Then i have a very simple (ish), constraint system to weight the besier handles and link it into the ik stuff. It means you can weight it down, but still have stretch etc etc.

For the leg clip, there no bones in that system at all!, just point heirachies etc etc. If you want ngrave do you have msn? - we can discuss more there i'll send you a PM with mine.

eek

[Harvey]

Hey Eek...why are you going to the trouble of controlling the points along the spline with expressions. Wouldn't you get the same results with the "Spline IK Control" modifier?

Most people think that this modifier is only used for spline IK...but its acutally not. All it really does is create a helper at each vertex that controls that vertex.

Then you can control the tangents the same as you normally do...via expressions or whatever. I do this and it seems to work fine. And even though expressions are fast the modifier is probably fast since its compiled. Its also a lot less to set-up :)

[eek]

light goes off in head..BANG...BANG.....BANG



*sound of head hitting desk....*


Harvey, sometimes all this stuff goes to my head! Never thought of that!

eek

[Tughan]

Harvey, sometimes all this stuff goes to my head! Never thought of that!

Well, actually I thought of that, but I scared to tell it (and sound confused) after reading all that complicated expression stuff you've done heheheh. :beer:

Anyway, keep the progress goin' on!:wip:

[Harvey]

Hahaha....I know exactly how you feel Eek. Many a time I have called someone over to my desk and said...hey look at this really cool thing i set-up...its all controlled via these funky expressions/constraints/other mysterious rigging magic....and they tilt there head sideways and say "yah...but what about this button....doesn't that do the same thing?"

heheh.

[AsaMovshovitz]

Ngrava & all,

I wouldnt skin a spline to bones, your gunna get additional offset issues, combined axis etc. Plus i wouldnt use linked xform - it will kill your system if you have lots (trust me ive done it)

eek

this is my second try of streachy arm without Linked xform or any splines, since it is a ik system you can't break the joint.

Asa

[eek]

i did some research a while back on using *path deform. The nice thing about this is firstly its a deformer so you could tweak it with the sdk. Also it has controls such as twist, which is a really important factor in stretchy stuff.

You can also get at its controls:

rotation
stretch
percentage
twist

Ive found out how set its stretch against the length of your object just by doing a script on the stretch value.

d1 = $object.height/length
d2 = curvelength $line0X


d2/d1


Now you can do the same with the rotation against the swivel angle of the ik - or whatevers controlling it. Theres probably a degtorad thing going off in there. Ill post up some pics later today.

eek


edit:

So this idea does infact work and you can drive the rotation off the swivel angle, the only issue now is speed. So im gunna try and bridge the length system with the stretch system.

[Aearon]

hey guys,

i wrote a little script a while back that creates control objects for splineShapes... it creates controls for bezier handles as well and is intelligent about the type of knot (creates independent handles for bezier corner knots, linked handles for beziers, no handles for corners and smooth knots, and only one handle at the ends of the spline)

it has no interface yet (it's basically one big hack) but i plan to take this further pretty soon

known issues:
- one of the handles on bezier curves has inverse translation when you drag in the viewport because of 2way wiring
- i use script controllers so it's not the fastest way possible, and it's name-dependent (until max8 comes out ;) ) i might switch to splineIk for the knots themselves (thanks harvey ;) )
- (sort-of-issue) i have a seperate object that contains all the script controllers (i just put them in a scale list)

hope this can be of some use!

Expose_Spline_Handles.ms (http://www.kaistavginski.de/files/maxscript/Expose_Spline_Handles.ms)

http://www.kaistavginski.de/files/maxscript/Expose_Spline_Handles.jpg

[IkerCLoN]

Fantastic, Kai! Thanks for sharing :)

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