CD Joints And Skins on Segmented character?

[Cactus Dan]

Howdy,

Well, it doesn't really need one single mesh. You don't have to skin a mesh to the Root joint of the skeleton. For example, if you have a character with a separate legs mesh and arms mesh, you can select just the leg joint chains for the legs mesh and just the arm joint chains for the arms mesh.

The CD Bind Skin tool supports shift clicking to select more than one joint chain:
http://www.cactus3d.com/ShiftClick.jpg
The above screen shot is from skinning the arms mesh to only the arm joint chains.

The CD Add Joints and CD Delete Joints can be use do remove or add joints to a selected Skin tag, so you can have the mesh skinned to only those joints in the skeleton that are needed.

You can also skin the mesh to the joint chains before you move them into the whole skeleton hierarchy. For example, you can have all the appendiges joint chains in separate hierarchies and skin all your meshes to whichever chain they need. Then once all the meshes have been skinned to a joint chain, you can then add all the appendiges joint chains to the main body joint chain hierarchy.

Adios,
Cactus Dan

[rgw3]

Dan, thanks for the reply. This set of tools is amazing! I'm inbetween projects right now so I'm trying to dive in as hard as I can before I have to get back to paying the house note...

Hmmm. So it seems like the best bet for this guy would be to merge select parts rather than the whole thing. That way I only have Skin tags for the major groups (body, L leg, R leg, L arm, R arm, Head, L Ant, R ant) as opposed to having tags for each individual body part. (L leg 1, L leg 2, etc...)

Is that the correct interpretation?

[Cactus Dan]

Howdy,

Yeah, you could do it that way. ;)

Adios,
Cactus Dan

[rgw3]

Success!! I merged both sets of arms into a single object, same with the legs. I've now successfully skinned the arms *** using the mirror weight tool**** to simplify the process!! (That took a couple of trys to understand but it worked perfectly!) gotta love that "return to bind pose" button!!! THANK YOU DAN!!!

I have know idea how to rig it yet, so I'll be buggin you some more Dan!:D

thanks!

(hmmm the posting engine wouldn't let me put enough exclamation points behind that thank you so here's a couple extra... !!)

[rgw3]

I got him skinned and partially rigged! Dan's tools are amaizing! I never got this far with mocca before! Joints and skin in so easy to use, I didn't even have the manual! just the movies that dan has published so far. so much easier to use!!

here's a flailing motion test just to make sure that nothing is acting weird...

http://www.bendingpixels.com/test/motest_1.html

He still cant shrug, but that should be pretty easy to rig up using the cluster tags.

now to the facial rig!

[robotbob]

well done dude.

[Rich-Art]

Haha, I like this one.

Peace,
Rich-Art. :thumbsup:

[Decade]

Yes, cool character.

[Cactus Dan]

Howdy,

Nice job! :thumbsup:

Although, there seems to be a small problem with the lower leg flipping. That's probably from the joints passing a stationary Solver Object in your IK setup.

Adios,
Cactus Dan

[rgw3]

Dan is absolutely amazing! :applause:
He has given me some invaluable advice and help via email!

Here is another Motion test. this one with secondary motion on the nose and antennae, and a smoothly rotating jaw!

http://www.bendingpixels.com/test/motest_3.html

Still need to do a bit of work on the antennae, they are not flopping so much as "breaking" right now.

Next thing I'm gonna try to tackle are the facial expressions. Need to do a bit of modleing for the morph targets first...

WHOOO HOOOOO!!!

[Rich-Art]

Looking great....


Peace,
Rich-Art. :thumbsup:

[AdamT]

Great character, Rob! :thumbsup:

[Jannis]

Still need to do a bit of work on the antennae, they are not flopping so much as "breaking" right now. You might find that soft IK will work very well here. All the CD tools work very well with Mocca. Also if you have Hair that makes great jiggle effects. I have used both those solutions for exactly the same effect with great success.

good luck

[rgw3]

Adam, Whats up!!

Jannis, it's funny (but sad) I've always had this crazy phobia with Mocca. I've never had success with it, and it was clunky and slow (partly due to mocca, partly due to my lack of ability/understanding). One of the reasons I was so excited about Dan's plugs. but it looks like I might have to get over it. I'm gonna try everything I can NOT to use it first, and then I'm gonna bust out that dinosaur tail tutorial and have at it!

[Jannis]

Listen it is very simple.


Make a bone or joint chain

Go to Mocca palete and choose Make IK chain

Go to the first tag, the Anker tag and disable Hard IK

Enable Dynamics

Delete the Tip Effector cause you dont need it! If you press play the chain will point down because of the gravity.

Have the play button on so you can see the results

Now choose all the remaining Mocca IK tags and on the Rest Tab choose something like 40% for Rotation rest. Your antena is ready now.

If you rotate it so it points upwards and move it about it will jiggle beautifuly!

You can animate the Gravity on the Anker tag for softer/harder motion or the rotation strength for the simple IK tags or the strength in the Dynamics.

Simple and very effective.

Good luck

[Cactus Dan]

Howdy,

One thing you can do is add a Distance Constraint before the Position Constraint.

The lag created with the Strength setting on the Position Constraint is dependent on how far the movement is. If you move the target object very far very fast, then the constrained object will lag further. By adding the Distance Constraint before the Position Constraint, you are in effect limiting the distance by which the constrained object can lag behind. So when it gets to that limit, the Distance Constraint will pull it along first, and then when the target object stops moving, the constrained object will catch up. See the attached file.

Adios,
Cactus Dan

[rgw3]

Jannis, thanks for that step by step, It does seem very simple...

Thanks for the file Dan! that makes sense, One thing I noticed about your antennae, is the placement of the spline IK targets. there is a wide gap between the second and third that causes a nice gentle bend in the middle areas. Your setup tool seems to distribute the targets evenly on the spline. Is there a way to move the targets and controlers around so I can have that same gap? I tried the "use IK" button on the spline IK tag. I was able to move the targets (by pulling the controller nulls) but it didnt seem to change the behavior any (at least on my antennae).

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