R10 rigging questions

[Per-Anders]

Well the Morphs one i can answer. Yes you can, two ways. If you want to mirror the whole shebang then use VAMP to do it. If you just want to mirror a particular morph target then just right click on it and up should pop a little menu with the controls you want.

Some other interesting things about the morphs:

Dragging an existing clone of the mesh (e.g. an old morphmixer style morph target that was just a clone with a new shape) into the list will allow you to create either a standard active morph (thus dispensing with the original mesh) or a target morph (thereby linking to the original mesh), you can drag multiple objects in at once.

Using the "Edit in place" option allows you to edit the morph literally in place with other morphs active and blended to whatever values you want. Just select the moprhs you want to blend up, edit their values so that it's however you want to see, then simply select the morph you want to edit and edit away (you can edit the morph while it's own strength is less or greater than 100% too).

Freeze state will even freeze in deformers states currently acting on the mesh, but other than that deformation can be on the mesh while you edit it.

The "Full Refresh Mode" will slow things down, so don't use it unless you're mixing rotational morphs and your normal "relative" morphs (in which case most of the time it's needed).

In the new interface you can multi select sliders then strl drag them to move them all at once, or ctrl+shift drag them to move them all at once but relative to each other, this is very useful in the "Animate" mode of the morphs.

That should do for now.

[Opelfruits]

No you cant freeze transformations, yes this is VERY annoying

yes you can mirror a morph, right click on the morph and press mirror x, y or z

im not sure about the knee roll, i should think you probably can. If you dont like floating knee targets you could parent contraint the knee target to the hips so it stays in place most of the time.

[robotbob]

hey there

what do you mean by 'freeze transforms on an object?' ?

thanks
pedro

[Opelfruits]

in XSI for example, when you freeze the transformations on an object wherever the pivot of that object is in the scene becomes 0,0,0. This is very handy when rigging so you can always get objects back to there original position.
If you watch any maya rigging dvd's they always freeze the transformations on bones and controllers. It just makes life easier.

[robotbob]

right so freeze means zeroing ? man that is very strange if you cant do that ??????

you can do this with CD tools. Zeroed joints is also vital for any expresso stuff. i use zeroed joints also to check weights. . . bend here , bend back , paint paint. . . then enter zeros in the feilds to get them back to the original position. are you sure we cant zero joints as this was a major complaint in mocca 2 ??? this must be possible surely.

pedro

[wuensch]

I have also been looking for a zero-out function but have not had any luck yet--
Since a change to a joint-based concept has been made I would assume that this option has been implemented.The question is, where is it hidden--

like with the old bones you can seta preferred state to return to the rotation,, but it does not zero out the joints.

Will have to wait for the manuals I guess.

[LucentDreams]

Have to be careful how I talk about this one with NDA and such.

There was at one point the same hack as Cactus Dan's, but thats all it is, a hack method, and its therfore faces some limiation. Now many testers were willing to have this, and it was planned to fix in a future version, but and I"ll take full blame for this, I pointed out that if the hack was put in and then fixed later on, any rig built using the hack woudl then be destroyed.



Here is why it is a hack.

The way these systems work is that objects have two Transforms (PSR) When you Freeze, what it does is stores the actual values of the object (say its at 100x, 200Y and 300Z and has rotations of 5H, 10P, and 15B) in the second transform (in mayas joitns its called the joint orientation) and this allows its main orientation to be 0,0,0.

Now Dan's system as well as the new cinema one, are backwards, they add a second transformation, but the new second one is the one that goes to 0,0,0 while the first one is the one that maintains the 100,200,300 5,10,15. Where is the problem with this?

1)Keyframing, Particularly FK, it uses the master cordinates, which are not 0,0,0 anymore, this means one woudl have to use keyframe selections just to be able to record their second transofrmatiosn PSR since cinema records only to the master. Studing Fcurves also wouldnt' benefit as you'd have weird values instead of values based around 0.

2)xpressions, one would have to keep track when setting up xpressions, all standard objects would use PSR, while joints would have to sue their secondary PSR instead of just PSR.

3)The system would only be on joints objects, not all cineam 4D objects. (you'll note in maya and XSI all objects can be frozen, in CDjoints only joints can be) If your usign any controller obejcts liek nulls, your zeroing out has just becoming mostly ineffective.


It means the joint system is harder to use for R10, but I along with other testers will pressure very hard to make sure this is done right and for all objects in the future.

at olli, there is still the reset pose command, its in the weight tags again this only applies to joints not to controller objects, you need to be able to freeze anything, not just joints.

[LucentDreams]

that said, in terms of it being for painting weights, if you dont' use the auto align function in the joint tool your joints should all have 0,0,0 rotations, its just their positions that won't be zero.


(till we get a version of cinema with the second oreintation, I'm only using align where I absolutely need it, otherwise I'm sticking to non aligned joints so that I have 0,0,0 rotations, you will see this in the R10 tutorials and on cineversity)

[robotbob]

hmmm. well i respect your vision for a correct toolset.

but would it not have been possible to have a legacy option in any new version of mocca to protect older rigs ?.

this has implications not just for mocca users but also those of us who use a combination of other softs such as motionbuilder which expects zeroed joints and thus dans 'hack' works perfectly for this.

I am not saying my rigging methods are by anyones standards something important to think about - to be honest i barely have begun to really figure out good rigging practice as it is a pretty big subject - but i guess i need to learn to do this your way to use mocca 3 properly which means i cant hit the ground running.

you are probably not going to tell us - but when would you epect true zeroing to be implemented ?

pedro

[Rich-Art]

that said, in terms of it being for painting weights, if you dont' use the auto align function in the joint tool your joints should all have 0,0,0 rotations, its just their positions that won't be zero.


(till we get a version of cinema with the second oreintation, I'm only using align where I absolutely need it, otherwise I'm sticking to non aligned joints so that I have 0,0,0 rotations, you will see this in the R10 tutorials and on cineversity)

If I'm correct you say that it is better to turn off the Align Axis option in the joints tool when you putting joints in your mesh?
If I do that the rotations of the axis are indeed all set to 0.
But why is the option there (align axis) ? does it make the rig more stable if the axis are aligned to the joints??

Peace,
Rich-Art. :thumbsup:

[Zendorf]

Per-Anders...thanks for all the info on morphs, that clears up a few issues for me. This morph system really is nicely thought out and easy to use, certainly the best I have seen. Going on your info, I realised that you can put the morph tag into animation mode and create a combo morph with the sliders , do a "current state to object" and then then drag this new shape back in to the morph list... a nice way to combine several morph shapes into a new one.

Kai...I appreciate the insight that you have gone into about the internal mechanisms of the "freeze" issue...I hadn't realised it was such a big deal , but I gather it will take a reworking of the current PSR sytem to implement it properly. I would certainly prefer to see a universal system that works on all objects , so I think you made a good call on that one. Hopefully we won't have to wait till R11 to see it implemented:wise:

My usual hack way of doing a freeze transform in C4d has been to select my null/controller and hit ctrl-g to group it. Then my controller is zeroed out with the original PSR in the parent null. Makes the hierarchy messier but seems to work ok.

Turning off the "auto align" option in the joint tool is exactly what I was after :thumbsup:

Maybe you could answer my afore mentioned query about controling the rotate plane for a 2d ik chain. Can I control this numerically rather than using an up vector object, like the twist attribute in Maya?

Cheers....

[fabianR]

Maybe you could answer my afore mentioned query about controling the rotate plane for a 2d ik chain. Can I control this numerically rather than using an up vector object, like the twist attribute in Maya?

Cheers....

Well, what you can do is to place your IK chain in a parent Null. (Remember that since joints are no deformers, it is now very well possible to have nulls in a joint hierarchy.) Now you can rotate that parent null to control the 2d IK plane, either directly or via an expression. This gives you some advantages over the use of a pole vector object, since now the 2d IK's internal pole vector will be used, which is always in a 90° angle to the root-goal line, so you don't have to take care to avoid flipping, like you would have to with an pole vector object.

[LucentDreams]

Well, what you can do is to place your IK chain in a parent Null. (Remember that since joints are no deformers, it is now very well possible to have nulls in a joint hierarchy.) Now you can rotate that parent null to control the 2d IK plane, either directly or via an expression. This gives you some advantages over the use of a pole vector object, since now the 2d IK's internal pole vector will be used, which is always in a 90° angle to the root-goal line, so you don't have to take care to avoid flipping, like you would have to with an pole vector object.

What he said, thats why there is the root null option in the joint tool is specifically for this kind of setup, (and for the axis mode joints which need a null at the start) BTW, if you ever have a joint that you need a nul in the same place (say you have a leg hierarchy already and jsut want to add a root null) you can select any joint and use the convert to nulls command to make a null at the exact same PSR so and place the hierarchy as a child.

The convert to nulls command is brilliant if you ask me, useful for anyone. Also check out the Selection to joints command command. Select a bunch of polygon loops in areas where you'd like a joint, and the SHIFT click on the Selection to Joints command to make joints at the perfect volume center of each loop. You will have to place them in the hierarcy yourself, but its an easy way to get well placed joints

[bobzilla]

Hopefully some of this stuff will be demonstrated on the training material that comes with the final release.

The one thing I find with MAXON, is they implement cool and useful features, but don't explain them well. If I don't know they're there, or don't imediately know their usefulness, I can't take advantage of that feature.

[wuensch]

Thanks to all of you for the insights.
To not use the align function is just what is needed-- good enough for my purpose.

It will take some time (and documentation) to fully understand all the features, but it looks as if it is *very* capable.

Great work, Maxonians.
Olli

[Per-Anders]

Per-Anders...thanks for all the info on morphs, that clears up a few issues for me. This morph system really is nicely thought out and easy to use, certainly the best I have seen. Going on your info, I realised that you can put the morph tag into animation mode and create a combo morph with the sliders , do a "current state to object" and then then drag this new shape back in to the morph list... a nice way to combine several morph shapes into a new one.

Actualyl you don't need to do this, instead just turn on "Edit in place" mode then switch between tehmorphs changing their strengths, then press the "Freeze State" button.

[Zendorf]

Just to revisit the "freeze" issue briefly....

Since I am only using the demo I am only putting together basic test rigs to try out the new tools. Upon trying my standard FK(I mostly hate IK arms) arm rig with forearm roll and FK fingers it becomes really apparent that no zeroing out of joints is going to become a real pain. When setting up expressions, of course it is so much easier to use zeroed out joints.

My last couple of C4d rigs used CD's tools and this kind of stuff is easy to do, since his joints can be zeroed out (even if it is a "hack"). So my point of the this post is to ask if there are likely to be any dramas when mixing CD's joints with the the new native skinning system? I tried a small test and it seemed to work out alright....can any CD tools beta testers shed any light on this?

Hopefully freeze transforms is a high priority for the Maxon team, as it does marr an otherwise very nice CA toolset...especially if they are trying to woo some of the traditional Maya/XSI animators to use it....

[LucentDreams]

I think its been said several times that the systems should have no problems mixing.

[MJV]

Have to be careful how I talk about this one with NDA and such.

There was at one point the same hack as Cactus Dan's, but thats all it is, a hack method, and its therfore faces some limiation. Now many testers were willing to have this, and it was planned to fix in a future version, but and I"ll take full blame for this, I pointed out that if the hack was put in and then fixed later on, any rig built using the hack woudl then be destroyed.

That's a mighty interesting memory you have there.

[Jannis]

In the Weight tool can you adjust numericaly multple points? I realy hope you can, for the time being the control/entre with multiple selection does not work here.

[MJV]

In the Weight tool can you adjust numericaly multple points? I realy hope you can, for the time being the control/entre with multiple selection does not work here.

In options set the mode to Add and then use the slider or input field. All selected points will be adjusted by the plus or minus add amount. The slider will still say percentage but that's a dsiplay error.

[Kokosing]

In IK Spline, what should I put in the END field?

Thanks,

W

[Jannis]

In options set the mode to Add and then use the slider or input field. All selected points will be adjusted by the plus or minus add amount. The slider will still say percentage but that's a dsiplay error.
That is good but, What I mean is there a way to select an edge loop of points and then in the weights tab of the weight painting tool set all their weights to a given percent? Surely you should be able to do this?

So far I can select this way single points and set their value numerically but not multiple.

edit

Maybe there is time to fix some minor things. One of them which is an oversight is that when you create an IK chain the controlers inherit their rotations from the joints. It is very unusual that you want controlers with such rotations most of the time you want them to have zero rotations and since they are created outside the joint hierarchy they should be zeroed out. This means that you have to go and by hand zero them out. I think this and the naming of controlers should be easy to fix for the commercial version

[fabianR]

In IK Spline, what should I put in the END field?

Thanks,

W

The end of the chain, the last joint you want to be influenced by the spline. This is the same for the IK tag as well. You need to tell the IK where to stop.

[xfon5168]

That is good but, What I mean is there a way to select an edge loop of points and then in the weights tab of the weight painting tool set all their weights to a given percent? Surely you should be able to do this?

So far I can select this way single points and set their value numerically but not multiple.

edit

Maybe there is time to fix some minor things. One of them which is an oversight is that when you create an IK chain the controlers inherit their rotations from the joints. It is very unusual that you want controlers with such rotations most of the time you want them to have zero rotations and since they are created outside the joint hierarchy they should be zeroed out. This means that you have to go and by hand zero them out. I think this and the naming of controlers should be easy to fix for the commercial version

You can select multiple loops and set them all to the same weight using the "Apply Selected" button in the Weight tool.

Quick Example: You have a leg rig, You start at the top of the thigh and select all the loops all the way down until the loop for the knee. Click on your Thigh Joint, then activate the Weight Tool and then Set the Slider to the number you want (in my case it'd be 100%), and the click Apply Selected. Then all those loops would have 100%.

[LucentDreams]

You can modify multiple selected points using the weights tab. This is like a semi weights manager

[LucentDreams]

yes jannis the aligning of goals is very stupid, its one of those weird remnants of rht old mocca systems design that I wish woudln't stay around, but sadly hasn't changed, and I don't even think any testers fighting for it to stay as is. either :/

some day hopfully. Easiest way around it, is before putting all goals into their appropriate hierarchies or setting up constraints etc I select them all and enter 0,0,0 rotation, its annoying no doubt.

[LucentDreams]

That's a mighty interesting memory you have there.

Yes you were involved in the discussion too michael, if thats what your looking for. the details of what went on are hardly up for discussion in this public forum but if you wanna talk over why it happened we can of course discuss it elsewhere.

[Jannis]

Thanks Kai and Mjv for answering. It does work like you say you can indeed edit multple points.

It is strange though why the Maxon guys can't see the importance of being able to edjust multiple numerical inputs? They obviusly have done a wonderful job with the Attribute editor and multiple inputs, why not cary this over to the weight manager and the Structure manager? In fact all the managers would bennefit from the control/click multiple slots.

Using the slider for this would have been superficail if you could adjust multiple slots. I think this kind of thing illustrates a point I made elsewere about the fact that some wonderful inovations in certain areas of the application don't wash over in other areas which ara badly needed. This is not so much a critisism but it is pointing out an obvius missed opportunity.

[Zendorf]

Yes , the new weighting system is very nice...a big improvement! Just a couple of things I can't figure out:

- Can I smooth the weights on selected joints without having to paint them...something similar to the "apply smooth" function in XSI?

- How do I paint my weights on the actual Hypernurbs smooth mesh, not the cage? I have isoline editing and deformed editing function turned on, but am still only able to paint on the HN cage.

Cheers...

[LucentDreams]

current limitation that the weight tool doesn't support HN.

[daevid]

Do you know if there is a standardized rig available for cinema4d like biped or CAT for 3dmax? IE a rig that can easily be scaled to different characters and that makes it possbile to easily reuse and transfer animations between characters?

/David

[dAfTiE]

Do you know if there is a standardized rig available for cinema4d like biped or CAT for 3dmax? IE a rig that can easily be scaled to different characters and that makes it possbile to easily reuse and transfer animations between characters?

/David

Can't find the post again now,but I'm fairly sure I read something about there being one or more premade rigs for the goodies CD?
Kinda hard searching for stuff atm with all the new posts lately,I'll edit with a link if I see it again :)

edit:
found it.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=3908935&postcount=233

[LucentDreams]

There is a premaderig with handles to easily refit to another model. Vamp does a really good job of transfering weights, though people ned to understadn that solutions like GATR and VAMP realy on projecting from one mesh to antoher, so areas that don't line up whatsoever won't transfer well. Finally there is motion retargetting if you simply need to transfer aniamtions from one rig to another. Its a very different system than Biped and CAT though I will say, they have internal links to help with animation transfering and such. A hand bone is recognized as a hand specifically where in standard riggin solutios a hand boen is whtever you say a hand bone is.

Its relatively easy to build a pipeline for transfering rigs with R10 though.

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