CGTalk - Clusters... clusters.

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HAYK´AP

01-17-2005, 08:07 PM

Hi, I am trying to RIG a facial setup for a character susing clusters

I cant use bones anymore cause I already smooth skinned the character, and I lost the low poly version of the model.

My main problem is that if I create a sphere to use it as a Dummy to drive the animation of the clustes, and parent each cluster to a diferente sphere, when I move the sphere the cluster would move following its parent sphere too, but not the vertices associated with the cluster, these vertices would just move if I move just the cluster.
How can I solve this, so I can shape the face moving the spheres and not the clusters directly?

Is there any other better way to drive the clusters? lets say just lik a curve or something alike that I can reshape??

Hope that is clear..

Thank you !!!

tfall

01-20-2005, 12:42 AM

If you want to use joints to animate the face you can add them as influence objects and paint their weights like the originally bound joints.

If you want to use clusters, then set them to be "relative", look at the attribute editor to find this setting. Then you parent them to the spheres or just group them with themselves. This parent object will be parented to the head so the clusters travel with the head (without deforming the vertices).

When the clusters are relative, the deformation of the vertices only occurs if the transform node of the cluster is changed. The world-space location of the cluster doesn't matter.

When the cluster is set to "absolute", then the change in the world-space location of the cluster from its default location drives the deformation.

- Terry

TimMurphy

01-21-2005, 05:47 AM

If I understand your problem the solution above wont help.

What you want to do is make the clusters "relative" and then use a "parent constraint" to parent them to the control spheres. That way the cluster should adjust the verticies when you move the control sphere but not when you move the parent sphere.

I hope this works.
Good luck.

tfall

01-21-2005, 06:38 PM

There is no "parent constraint". There is a "point constraint", but this will apply transformations to the cluster, which will induce a deformation.

If you create a cluster, set it to "relative", then parent it to the head joint, Maya will automatically group the cluster with itself and parent that to the head joint. This keeps the cluster's transforms at zero so no deformation occurs. Then you move the cluster itself to induce the deformation.

- Terry

M.E.L.

01-21-2005, 09:08 PM

There is no "parent constraint".
- Terry

Maya has been shipping with a Parent constraint for some time now, and yes, Gizzy's idea is correct :)

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