drop toes or clavicle?

[bentllama]

IMO I would DROP THE TOES.

while it might not be ideal to have a limited "boot foot" through having no toes...having clavicles on the model can greatly improve animation.

clavicles give the following benefits when used properly:

- larger range of motion for arms
- improved skin weighting in shoulder region
- can provide a greater sense of weight to the character through clever use of overlapping action **[a big plus]
- more range for body language [ie: shoulder shrug, stretching, etc]
- Darrin's Dance Grooves tought me that the lock n pop techniques need shoulder action. be like Darrin. :)

and to get around the "boot foot" syndrome, be sure to pitch the foot while stepping slightly...if you keep a boot foot limited to one axis of rotation [front and back] the ankle will look so stiff that the character might as well be on the Alpine slopes :)

:wavey: my 2.5 cents...

:beer:

EDIT: also you might want to try a more aggresive compression scheme on the toes and hinge joints [toes, shins, forearm] for your engine. you can afford the compression to be a little more lossy at ends of chains...ie: fingers n toes...

also, since they are only rotating in one axis, have the engine ignore the unused rotation channel data at runtime or even ignore the channels at export...

[Michael Chen]

DROP the toe... I can't think of a better explanation than what bentllama has up there. It makes sense and sounds logical... pros outweigh cons. :)

[stanleyscupus]

Thanks for putting so much thought into a response. It's appreciated dude.

with what you said, I agree with you that the clavicle is more important.

but some follow-up questions :)

-won't an aggressive compression scheme in the shins (as you suggest) lead to problems with the feet sliding? To me that's not a good tradoff if that's the case, just to keep toes.

-are you sure that you'd get a greater sense of weight by overlapping the shoulders than you would with the toes? I tend to think of the footslap as an effective and easy way to show impact (thus weight).

thanks again!

[bentllama]

Originally posted by stanleyscupus
-won't an aggressive compression scheme in the shins (as you suggest) lead to problems with the feet sliding? To me that's not a good tradoff if that's the case, just to keep toes.

-are you sure that you'd get a greater sense of weight by overlapping the shoulders than you would with the toes? I tend to think of the footslap as an effective and easy way to show impact (thus weight).


again, being more agressive with the compression on hinge joints at the ends of chains...tips of fingers, toes...using the other method I mentioned on hinge joints where the exporter or engine at runtime omit the loading of blank/consistent channel data [ie: shin rotates on X, you do not need to export or look for Y and Z rotation]

foot slap, unless the character has a considerable toe does alot less to provide a sense of weight in my opinion. ask yourself a few Q's.

- does the character run fast? do I need a toe if his legs are making brisk contact with the ground.

- is the character holding a weapon, handlebars etc. if he is I bet the clavicles can provide a good range of motion and overlapping action and weight.

- you can show impact on a "boot foot" rig by slightly leaning the foot as weight is applied. slightly is the key word, as not to have the character walking on his ankles. :)

- a boot foot will be more reliable in an engine if that engine uses IK to plant feet on uneven terrain.

- omitting the toe depends on if your aniamtion is cartoony or real-world stylized. foot slaps are overdone in cartoony where as in real world anim, you wont see "toe-slaps" be that prevalent.

- how is the lighting in your game? can dark shadows stemming from the character's feet hide the lack of a toe?


just a few additional thoughts. glad to help, stanleyscupus. talk to ya later, and good luck with the engine constraints. I hate them personally. :) sounds like it is time to ruough up a programmer to get what you want! :) /joking

my 2.5 cents worth

:beer:

[goosh]

Yeah... kill the toes!!

Even though it's nice to have... you can do without them.. but you can't do without a clavicle... your arms would fall off!!! :)

Goosh

[stanleyscupus]

compression won't be an issue...we just need too many characters on the screen at once. The fewer joints the more characters we can have.

To be clear, this isn't for the playable character. It's for ambiant characters. I'd shoot myself if I didn't have either for the main character. We won't have multi joint skinning for this particular character either.

So how does this sound?
Remove the need of a clavicle joint by translating the Bicep joint as a way to mimic the shoulder movement.

Quickly looking at it, it seems like it might work. Any warnings?

[bentllama]

it would be more sound if your exporter could handle omitting the clavicle [marking as unsused int your 3d package through naming scheme or custom attribute], thereby throwing translation onto the joint below it. I know of one exporter that works this way. ;)

you would be able to animate it more accurately with a clavicle guiding the biceps position. i just fear of dangerous "swimmy" action/position of the bicep if it has no clavicle to guide it's position.

you can also cheat this by rigging control objects in a clever way to mimic the benefits of a clavicle without an actual joint being present.

:beer:

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