it can be done!

[Uncle-Ox]

It definitly looks like you've got some potential there. I'd love to see a little lipsyncing.

My only crit would be that the constant brow movement is a little over the top.

[soccerrprp]

V. nice Kainor!:thumbsup: Man, i wish i could just sit down and get myself to finish some of the stuff that i've started!:shrug:

With the start of the new school year, i feel refreshed. My goal is by Christmas!:scream:

[Jannis]

Hi Kainor,

I have seen for a while now that you are very keen on learning rigging and character animation. There is very little one can say about the animation but it looks like you have good eye for motion. The rigging however needs more attention.

If I can offer some observations,

The eyelids, especially the lower ones don't slide over the eyeballs, giving a feeling of the eyes floating in the sockets.

The mouth creases not smooth enough in the lough lines and when it opens the cheeks should slightly suck in to maintain volume. When it closes the crease is to strong.

The hands and elbow joints flatten in the bend. This means that the finger joints need to be placed better and you might need a morph for the elbows. With CD morph and CD IK this is done almost automatic.

Most of the problems could be because the edge loops on the mesh are not modelled with animation in mind or because you need to pay more attention when creating the morphs and how to mix them. All those points should be taken into account from a rigging aspect.

Having said all this, I think it is cool you are taking on character animation and it looks like you are thinking about it.

Hope this is helpful.

[crackle]

thanks all for the intrest.

Jannis@ i have posted the rig here:

http://webpages.charter.net/deolsons/genredux3.zip

for anyone to use, it would honor me if youd take a look and maybe give me some suggestions? i have literally spent weeks making this rig, adding everything i could to get the most flexability and ease of use. but it only takes a master to realized whats messed up in 6 seconds of film.

thanks again.

[Jannis]

Hi Kainor,


There are some nice things in this rigg. You have obviously worked very hard on this.

The main problem is that the mesh doesn't do justice to your rigg. Especially the head. The edge loops around the mouth need to flow nicely into the jaw, nose and eyes. You can feel that when you speak the muscles moving the mouth and jaw start near the ear and almost above the cheek bone. The edge flow needs to reflect this. You can't create real subtle facial animation with joints either, because muscles don't only change in length but also in volume, even in a cartoon character. For this reason morph targets are a much better solution. I don't know if you have CD morph, but I would suggest you buy it if you don't and use it if you have.

I am not a fan of the target object method of the eyes, it is much better to use a box slider that comes with CD morph. The same for the facial morphs, most CAnimators prefer to use either a on the face control system or box sliders for mixing morphs like Jason Osipa. In fact one of the problem with learning to rigg is to discipline yourself and not to make an over complicated rigg because you can. Limit the sliders to only what is important and use controlers that you can grab with Visual selector or directly in the viewport.

A workflow I use is to make all my controlers out of splines cause they let me also model nicer visuals but also by turning off the visual filter for nuls, it cleans up the view port form all the up vectors and such.

Another thing I dislike is keyframing the T position. You can either make your own expresso or you can use CD constrains lock position on the controlers, link them to a bool user data and return to T position like that.

Alot of riggers prefer to use joints for opening and closing the eyelids, but I prefer to use morphs as they tent to feel more organinc because the are sculpted. You can also mix additional morphs for giving the feeling of the softness of the eye lids.

Basically, I use custom 4, 3, and 2 box sliders and Dan has made an amazing job with them, giving you fantastic flexibility for facial animation.

With CD morph you have the option linking the morph to a joint rotation so you can add a moph to elbows and knees to keep them from getting to flat when they bend.

Something I saw in the animation, when you animate hands, make sure that not all the fingers bend in the same degree. If you look at your own bending and opening you will see that the pinky closes more and first, while index closes less and last. They also have a different timing.

Finaly, the best way to test your rigg is to animate it. You will find that alot of the controls you have at the moment you would not use and there would be others that you need to add or invent. Keep the rigg light though and flexible.

Hope this is of help.

[crackle]

it seems i have a lot to learn, and thanks Jannis for taking the time to examine the rig.

i know there are a few problems with the mesh, but i'm no modeler and creating morphs tend to create nightmares for me. i was really hoping this mesh would have been ready since it was such a popular character in maya, ten second club, and the like.

i like the idea of using box sliders and changing the controllers to splines, and how that cleans up the viewport.

i like to keyframe the T, especially for testing the rig, and i always record in the negative frame. ie -12. but i'll have to try out the constraint idea...

i'll get working on the morphs( i have cd's whole suite, finally) here soon, and hopefully show some progress later this week.

thanks again.

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