soft IK animation

[AdamT]

I think rigging is hard work in any program, although I only have experience in Cinema and Messiah. Messiah is considered easier/better than LW's rigging, but I didn't find it easier than R8.

[LucentDreams]

Originally posted by mimo8
my question concerenes the simple steps after you rigged up your figure. bringing him/her in the starting position, doing a walkcircle...



Uhm the starting position and animating a walkcycle isn't hard in any app once the rig is finished. I mean animating a good one requires a good animator, but animating one itself with a good rig should take no time at all.

The thing that mocca makes a big difference on really is the rigging part.

[bobzilla]

Soft IK isn't necessarily the answer for an entire rig. I'm just about finishing up a dinosaur rig and it uses lots of different rigging approaches. The only place I used Soft IK was in the tail, which worked out nicely (so far). Regular IK for the legs, PoseMixer for hands, arms, and feet, Xpresso and Set Driven Keys for neck, head. So far so good. Now I just have to learn to animate!!!!!!

[robertkist]

I have to agree, Soft IK isn't the answer for the whole rig, at least that's my take on it. While the Maxon mime tutorial shows you what is possible with Soft IK, I found that the whole thing is almost overly complex.
I set up various characters with a mime-style rig and found that while the characters can be used universally it is also more work to keep track of all those handles and controllers and animate it. Right now I'm creating different rigs for different scenes rather than a universal rig. Taught me that ever situation is different and that universal approaches aren't always the best.

...mime tutorial is still nice to show you what you can do tho.

[LucentDreams]

ever seen a feature rig, talk about handles. Thats what a plug like Visual Selector is for to make the selecting a lot easier.

but you'll find a mix of soft IK and hard IK will typically provide the best results.

[michaeli]

Originally posted by Kaiskai
......but you'll find a mix of soft IK and hard IK will typically provide the best results.

Does that (hard IK) mean adjust the strength of some parametres of the soft IK tag to simulate hard IK or just not use soft IK tag on some bones?

[LucentDreams]

it eans to use softIk tags on some areas in the rig and some areas treat almost as wou would in XL 7, though with the benefits of expresso.

[michaeli]

Thanks, Kai.
Then what is the rule for mixing soft IK and hard IK, under what circumatance should we use a whole soft IK like the mime tut and when should we use a mix of soft IK and hard IK to get the best result?

[LucentDreams]

even the mime, personally I would go over and add some hard IK as I'm sure NAAM might do as well if he needed too. Thing is what flexibilty do you need, if your going to need an arm to stretch way over to another table like in an old WB cartoon, then soft IK is the only way, if you want some dynamics, SIK is the best way, but for a leg rig, HARD IK seems to be better suited. there are no set rules, its all a matter of what you are trying to do. No I'd give a better answer but like all of you I"m just diving into serious rigging with R8 and SIK myself, and Motion builder at the same time, so a lot on my plate to leanr all at once, I'm just sharing my findings from what I have seen.

[Anadin]

Just throwing in my thoughts from using SIK as well, the impression I got and it seems to be working is that as long as you set the strengths, the advantage of using SIK only is not having to set limits on the bones etc. I think the Soft bit is a little bit of a misnomer, it can be configured to be completely hard.

[Anadin]

Saying that, I do have a problem. Have any of you tried to add a SoftIK tag to the OO bone in the shoulder of the mime so that if you pull the hand, the spine moves. I can do it sometimes but if for instance you download littleCupOfMOCCA from Fabians' website, and add the tag, reset the rest and rotation and then turn SIK on the shoulders spin around - really annoying!

[lildragon]

Hmm so from what I gather the soft IK mime tute is pretty much useless but there's no tuts for the hard IK rig? That kinda takes the fun outta don't it? :hmm: Well I just got done with the leg rig and tho it's very easy to work it's also a bit umm like jello, I guess I have to adjust the strength there so the knee doesn't sway like that but if the mime tut will prove useless in the end why should I continue with it?

salud

[Srek]

Hi,
the Mime rig was created at a time where Soft IK was completely new and the main goal was to implement it, not to create a perfect (or nearly perfect) rig. At this time CINEMA and Mocca have the great disadvantage that there is no big CA animation history behind it which makes it rather hard to show well thought out rigs as examples.
I'm confident this will change over time and give all the Mocca beginners something to work with.
WHen you have experience with rigging in other apps Mocca should give you several more great tools in your toolset to work with. Although the focus regarding CA lies on Mocca i think it's Xpresso that will make CA in CINEMA realy powerfull.
Regards
Srek

[CosmicBear]

Originally posted by Srek
WHen you have experience with rigging in other apps Mocca should give you several more great tools in your toolset to work with.

i can only agree with srek about this! i've been doing all of my characters in animation:master and used cinema 'only' for other animations. i've played around with XL7 for a while to create 'workable' rigs for characters, but i never really got it to a point where i was satisfied with it compared to animation:master (V8 back then)

with the introduction of mocca things have changed for sure. it takes some time to find the right solutions for what you need, but there's always a way.

i'm doing about 8 minutes of char-animation for my ma-project and haven't been in a situation where i couldn't find a solution for a problem.

mocca rocks - and i think, we all agree that there's always room for improvement.. no matter what app ;)

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