Fact: Shoulders are the hardest joint to rig! (it's true!)

[That Adrian Guy]

Oh yeah... I almost forgot...

HERE'S MY MODEL! It's not copyright so do with it as you will... and if you can fix it... my gash that would be sweet.

http://wattupyo.tripod.com/wattupyo/shoulderprob.zip

Right click and "SAVE AS"

Thanks!

[captain3d]

check the file it does not seem to download.

Any way take your shirt off and look at yourself in the mirror (ugly isnt it) when you raise your arm like that you will see that the hand can only come up to shoulder level. To go higher the shoulder it self raises from a pivot point at the front of your neck until it finally touches your ear.

So raising the arm must also raise the shouder controlled by a bone going from the spine to the shoulder.


Phil

[Caravaggio]

Worked for me. Nice model.

The way I see it, placing the bone in the middle of a joint is kind of strange, you could put it towards the upper part (as most of the muscle and fat is under the shoulder, not above), but then you'd have to worry about creasing on the bottom. Maybe a lot of falloff in bone strength or vertex weighting (the weaker parts directly under the joint).

Maybe an anti-anatomical route would be best, pull it in slightly and put it towards the bottom half where the crease is supposed to be and maybe add a few extra poly rows to the upper part to accomodate the stretching. I think stretching is slightly preferable to creasing.

At least that's my opinion.

What can I say, Yes, shoulders are damn hard.

[That Adrian Guy]

I was just recommended to use a clavicle bone by an amigo. Now I gotta find out what they are!

Another tip I got was to use the arm bone for moving the arm straight and and everything below it... but to use a shoulder bone when I move the arm above shoulders. It sounds like a really good idea!!!

[wuensch]

Try to understand the anatonomy, which points have to move where, then place bones that only keep geometrie in place (shoulder, upperarm and Lattisimus have a fixer bone).
Hope this helps,
Olli

[wuensch]

--I have to add that the shoulder is the most difficult part indeed, especially if you want the arm to lift as yours as well as swing to the hip--
there is alot more than just the bones in my example.
What I do in advanced rigs is add muscle bones to the upperbody/Upperarm area to contract and strtch the area (if you use V8, then check the expresso muscle example file).
You could also make a morph target and pull it through morph mixer expression when the angle of the shoulder/upperarm rises over a certain radiant.
Olli

[That Adrian Guy]

Wow.....


Very... very good answer!


Is there any chance I can get that rig E-mailed to me??

Or is there a tutorial around for this? I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've seen this technique in use. It's really, really good!


and on another note, I'm surprised I haven't seen more of you in this forum! It's nice havin ya!

[wuensch]

well, I am actually reading through CGtalk quite frequently, but I just recently started to post a little more, giving back to the community some of the things I picked up here and there over the last 2 years.
There is not too much about advanced rigging for especially C4d now (I am sure there will be a lot in near future, because XL8 rocks seriously), I picked up most of my knowledge through messiah:Animate and through the Lightwave and Hash Animationmaster forums.

Most of it can be adapted to C4D easily, since basically all bones work similar.There are alot of differences in the featureset of the apps, but in the end all bones do nothing else but push points around.
I can mail you the testrig I did for your character, but it is nowhere near perfect, only a hint in the direction how to play with the bones.
Oh BTW, it is in Cinema8 fileformat--
do you use 8?Ortherwise it will not open.
If you have 8, check the Goodies and Tutorial files, there is a completely rigged very well done Character "Mime" by Naam that comes with it and is just perfect.It may be a little too sophisticated to start with, but it is definitely the way to go.
Olli

[wuensch]

--to be able to send you the file--
I improved it a little so it works both ways up and down half-ok.
The email on your homepage is either not working or I could not read it properly--
Olli

[That Adrian Guy]

Can you send it to "A d r a n M o r @ y a h o o . c o m" ??
(Minus the spaces)

It's going to be a really long time before I'm able to upgrade to v8 though... so I (sadly) won't be able to use the espresso bit. Is there a way of setting it to v7 compatibility when you save? I know illustrator does that :)


If not... it's okay, I can probably get pretty close based on the picture of the rig you made.

Thanks for all of your help. You, Kaiskai, and MDME-sadie know too much for your own good = )

[LucentDreams]

the easiest wayto understand how a shoulder works is to place your opposite hand on yooour should andthen lift that arm straight out to the side, it shouldn't go past around 100 degrees at most. If it does your aren't applying enough pressure with you hand.

[That Adrian Guy]

Kaiskai...

That's the first time I ever noticed that bending limit! crazy stuff!

The fun part I'm going to have with the shoulder is having it work when the arms are spread straight out in front of him (as if doing vertical push-ups)... Maybe I can just hide the creasing that will be caused with tricky camera angles = )

[wuensch]

Try not to use too many vertex maps or keep the edges as soft as you can in the problem area.
Maybe move a fixerbone for the pose that corrects the seam.
Best is to create muscle bones for the chest that contract with the movement (is most realistic,too)
In C4d 7 if you do not own Golem you will have to program an expression that scales the appropriate axis of the bone when the upper arms rotation exceeds a certain level--
complicated,
or, easier:
make a special setup for the movement, one that you only use in this scene and that works for the movement. It is very hard to make a rig that suits every occasion .
Olli

[LucentDreams]

for those interested in more complicated rigging but lacking in expression writing skills, NAAM has released the puppeteer plugin for the general public as is, no support that I know of simply because he is discontinuing the plugin. you can check it out in the lab at www.happyship.com

[fxgogo]

I suggest all of you follow what advice Olli says and check out the Animation Master, Messiah and Lightwave forums for character rigging advice. I learnt so much about rigging from Animation Master when I bought it. Things like having base bones and a seperate set of controller bones. All good stuff. I will try and dig up some links at home and post them here.

[That Adrian Guy]

Olli... Every bone needs it's own map though... doesn't it?

Otherwise you get that really annoying distortion... like when using a full arm map for a forearm bone... or maybe I'm wrong... hmmm

[wuensch]

--when you give one bone a vertex, you have to assin avertex to all.
but a dummy vertex with no selected polys like "selection Noselection, 0%" is fine.
Just dont try to split the mesh into amillion parts by vertexes. This will likely destroy the natural organic distortion that you need for most of the body.
This is how I start: first with only the modt imortant bones, no vertexes(or ClaudeBonnets in 8) exept one for each Arm and Leg to keep them separate.
Try to place the bones so good in geometrie that at best most works nice.
then add shape- keeping bones in UpperChest side front (breast) and back (small bone, maybe not full force), hip fixers too. See where the best position is, play with different positions to see what works best when the arm is liftes ord the body is bent.
Then add fixerbone for upperarm or shoulder or both to make it more natural there, ellbow too, rotational helperbones for lower arm etc-- all the little things that add detail (and take a lot of time,d epends on your perfectionism).
These might have to be restricted by vertexes, depends on mesh.
At last I usually tweak the mesh a little, so the points in problem areas move better with the bones.

If all is good, then I add musclebones (or do the legs in a similar fashion) or secondary motion (belly, floppy ears --whatever)
--Then, when everything (or as much as i need which is more likely) deforms OK I start doing IK/ProxyObjects (or in R8 softIK, I am just starting with it but it is very interesting).
Also what you can do and what is very good when working with MotionCapture is make a simple Skeleton as a RemoteControl for the complicated one (as fxgogo said in his mail) via expressions.

As a summary my main advice is: Try to keep it as simple as possible.
It is so much easier to make changes when you still know what you have done after a week.

Olli

[kiwi]

Great stuff :thumbsup:


Adding a bone for the trapezius muscle as well would help even more would it not?


Stu.

[wuensch]

---yup,I forgot the proper word, thats what I wanted to say with upperbody side fixer.
with some characters a muscle bone can work wonders here--depends on the geometrie of course .
Trapezius.
Olli

[ajmotley]

Hey Adrian Guy, you may have this all wrapped up, but there is an excellent anatomically working shoulder example in the latest version of 3D World (issue 32). The example is on the front cover CD and the skin has been removed. When you move the arm you get to see how the muscle interacts with the bone and you get to see how everything works together (include how the back muscle comes into play). Sort of a Gray's anatomy example. I have attached a snapshot.

Hope this helps a little.

[ajmotley]

Here is the arm up shot.

[That Adrian Guy]

Woah... excellent post!

The picture illustrates the shoulder perfectly

[kiwi]

Cool :thumbsup:



I knew the pec and deltoid and lats all moved as a unit,but I didnt know the lateral head of the triceps also stretched when we lift our arms as well,cheers for that ajmotely :)



Stu.

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