V8 Character Tools and Speed?

[MJV]

Originally posted by Ejecta
Hey,
Im really starting to look at getting into C4D but I really would like to know if anyone out there with an advanced version of V8 tell me how are the new character tools? The soft IK and IK dapening look SWEET! But how easy is it to modify the skeleton such a joint placement after it has been skinned and last how is the feedback on a fully skinned character? Slow or fast? Does it slow down when your using a fully smoothed mesh?

Thanks in advance.

The new character tools are excellent, but to answer your two specific questions, the skeleton is not easily modified and there is no feedback with a fully smoothed mesh. Basically, you can have expressions, or you can have smooth, but you can't have expressions and smooth at the same time. If you want to see a hypernurbs smoothed character walk you have to make a test render. Even on a Dual Athlon 1800 with ATI8500, a hypernurbs smoothed character won't play in the editor.

[MJV]

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[Per-Anders]

hypernurbs boned characters seem to work ok on the mac... but perhaps i've not played with mocca as much as you. as far as the skeleton modifi cation is concerned... it's not that hard. select the bottom bone, right click select "reset bones" and they're then turned off ready for you to play around with using the bone tool, then once you're done righ click and choose fix bones and they're re-set up. however i've not played that much with this, and i have no idea what happens to an ik or soft ik rig if you were to add/remove bones or do this.

[MJV]

Originally posted by mdme_sadie
hypernurbs boned characters seem to work ok on the mac... but perhaps i've not played with mocca as much as you. as far as the skeleton modifi cation is concerned... it's not that hard. select the bottom bone, right click select "reset bones" and they're then turned off ready for you to play around with using the bone tool, then once you're done righ click and choose fix bones and they're re-set up. however i've not played that much with this, and i have no idea what happens to an ik or soft ik rig if you were to add/remove bones or do this.

Like I said, Mocca is expression based, and you can have expressions, or you can have smooth, but you can't have both. I always turn off Generators (which deactivates hypernurbs in the editor) to work on CA. You have to because the expressions are slow and just can't handle the smoothing on top of everything else. Even with hypernurbs off, Soft IK is slow, and you usually can't even get real playback speed in the editor. RAM preview is desperately needed but unfortunately didn't make it into XL8.

[AdamT]

I've only been playing with a low-poly control cage, but using Mocca and HN smoothing at the same time is totally smooth for me. But I haven't added any expressions to the rig either, so that might kill realtime playback.

[LucentDreams]

Sorry MV I can't confirm this myself, my moose rig has expresso expressions and SIK, and he perfroms just fine at 3 subdivisions n HN with a little edge weighting I might add. I can move him around no troubles he plays reasonably well, and with timewarp I can get him to move really smooth.

[MJV]

Originally posted by Kaiskai
Sorry MV I can't confirm this myself, my moose rig has expresso expressions and SIK, and he perfroms just fine at 3 subdivisions n HN with a little edge weighting I might add. I can move him around no troubles he plays reasonably well, and with timewarp I can get him to move really smooth.

Define reasonably well. My candyman character defaults to wireframe and plays at just two frames per second. This with 2 subdivisions, no dynamics and 6 expressions. Of course he's probably a more complicated rig than the moose, having fingers, a complex foot, etc.

[AdamT]

I guess this would be one area where Messiah still reigns.

[LucentDreams]

I'm talking stays in quickshaded while playing, change to wireframe and its flying 24 FPs. HN level 3 Medium LOD.

true he has no fingers, the foot rig isn't as complicated as it could be, but works for what I have been doing with him. And I'm using software shading or OGL. Only two expressions on him both fairly simple. I am using backface culliing granted as well.

[AdamT]

I'll have to experiment and see how this turns out. As fast as my simple character rig moves, it's hard to believe that it would slow down to a 2/fps with a few more bones and expressions. Mine is moving at at least 30 fps with HN level 2, soft IK & gourade shading. Using OGL on a Ti-4600.

[LucentDreams]

so you finally got it eh? why no big announcement?

[AdamT]

why no big announcement?
I had a sneaking suspicion that y'all didn't *really* care. But since I'm here, I GOT IT!! IT'S GREAT!! :thumbsup: My freakin' inlaws are town this weekend so I won't be able to play with it. :thumbsdow

[Ejecta]

Thanks for the info guys. Seems like there are two very different views on te subject. Well I quess I will just have to play with the demo when it is released. Me and my buddy are LW users. LW is great but its character tools are still lacking. There is messiah and we both like it but they are really droping the ball with getting messiah stable and the connection with LW solid. Im sure it will get there but we saw what C4D v8 was offering and the main thing we were wondering about was the ease of like moving joints once you skinned the skeleton to make tweaks to deformations and the speed of the feedback when animating a character. All the rest of C4D looks very cool.

I guess we will just have to wait and test drive it for ourselves.

Thanks for the info.

[MJV]

Originally posted by Ejecta
Thanks for the info guys. Seems like there are two very different views on te subject. Well I quess I will just have to play with the demo when it is released. Me and my buddy are LW users. LW is great but its character tools are still lacking. There is messiah and we both like it but they are really droping the ball with getting messiah stable and the connection with LW solid. Im sure it will get there but we saw what C4D v8 was offering and the main thing we were wondering about was the ease of like moving joints once you skinned the skeleton to make tweaks to deformations and the speed of the feedback when animating a character. All the rest of C4D looks very cool.

I guess we will just have to wait and test drive it for ourselves.

Thanks for the info.

I don't want to be responsible for scaring you away. Since my initial post I've played around some more. One thing I was having trouble with Soft IK was the fact that when you set bones, the setting info was also written into the soft IK tags, so when you reset the bones, you'd also have to reset the soft IK, and this was giving me trouble. Another thing I discovered is that by increasing the redraw time limit in prefs, I was able to get my character to play in shaded mode while smoothed, albeit at a frame rate of less than 1fps. Turning off smoothing returns performance to normal. As far as fine tuning a rig goes, I'm finding that restriction vertex maps coupled with bone limits and the ability to rework the bones all add up to lots of control over the mesh. Additionally the new spline deformation tool is just incredible and allows adding very specialized local control over parts of the mesh you want to bend to your will, and can be animated too. The reality of expression based animation and Soft IK though is that there is a performance hit. Additionally since it works sequentially, relying on a previous position to determine the next position, Soft IK does not scrub well. You have to play it to see it work, you can't just jump around the timeline or scrub back and forth quickly. That said, there is a lot of new CA stuff in V8 that makes it definitely worth trying.

[LucentDreams]

Are you using Timewarp for scrubbing. Maybe its just cause I have so many keys, that my scrubbing in timewarp seems to be pretty good. Yes just plain scrubbing with the timeline is terrible and highly innaccurate for SIK feedback though.

The spline deformer has so much potential I just wish I had time to sit around and play with nothing but. maybe in a month (where have I heard that a thousand times before.)

[Thalaxis]

Originally posted by mdme_sadie
hypernurbs boned characters seem to work ok on the mac... but perhaps i've not played with mocca as much as you. as far as the skeleton modifi cation is concerned... it's not that hard. select the bottom bone, right click select "reset bones" and they're then turned off ready for you to play around with using the bone tool, then once you're done righ click and choose fix bones and they're re-set up. however i've not played that much with this, and i have no idea what happens to an ik or soft ik rig if you were to add/remove bones or do this.

Ideally this would reset the entire IK setup without affecting animation. I.e. I should be able to click on a "return to rest" button, edit the rig, and then go back to where I left off.

The best example I can give for this is Messiah.

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