CGTalk - Muscle TK problems

R3ckless

01-07-2007, 09:23 AM

Hi, im resonably new to the use of plugins and even maya tbh but im having to use Muscle TK for a project and finding it very difficult to get it to work correctly. i can construct the muscles ok but am having problems parenting them to the bones/rig i have created - i cannot connect it correctly so i obtain the right deformation.

for example when i connect a bicep muscle, i rotate the elbow joint (as if it were lifting a weight upwards) and the muscle never interacts correctly.

are there any tutorials/guides out there that can help me as the documentation they provide i think is very poor in explaining how to use the program correctly.

thank you for any help u can give

sporadic

01-08-2007, 02:21 PM

I haven't worked with Muscle TK in awhile, so things might have changed with later releases, but I found that the only way to work it was to test and retest. Sometimes small movements of the origin and/or insertion can make a huge difference to the result. Be very careful of rotations of the locators, as they can make the muscles behave very strangely (if you have that turned on, of course).

Since the muscles, once created were difficult to manage (resculpting, for example), I would build and unbuild the muscles frequently until I got it right. To do this I set up a bunch of scripts to manage things for me. Each nurbs surface had attributes for which scene object to parent the insertion, belly (if used), and origin. Made for much faster turn around when trying to tweak things.

Hope this helps!

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