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peepshow
03-21-2007, 11:26 PM
After creating anatomical arm and hand skeleton and all hand and arm muscles..i have rigged the skeletal arm to good effect with pronation/supination movement. I have created a series of bones along the forearm which the muscles are skinned to and wired to the wrist controller to get good twist of the muscles during the pronation/supination of the arm.

The problem is that some of the muscles will not rotate well, mainly the ones nearest the radius bone, or intersect with the mesh bones or other muscles. I have just applied basic skin modifier at the mo and will later be applying skin morph, although this wont stop the muscles deforming and intersecting.

i think its partly due to the way the radius rotates around the ulna that messes up the twist.
Are there any good ways of skinning or rigging muscles so as to follow more efficiently the orientation of the radius and ulna bones of the forearm and maintain there original form??
peepshow
03-23-2007, 01:16 PM
ok, i figured out that using more bones for the mesh muscles to be skinned to is better. With six bones in the forearm, the wiring and skin weighting can be more evenly applied along the arm to give nicer twist. With nub bones at the ends, for example at the humerus where the muscle tendons end and at the wrist, you have more control over the postioning of the muscles. Overall i used 10 bones with various wire parameter values and this seems to work well.
Dreppan
08-22-2007, 12:41 AM
Very nice -- can you post a movie of this rig in action?
PEN
08-23-2007, 01:13 AM
Generaly I want about 4 to 5 twist bones in a forarm rig to get a good result. With the type of setup that you are looking at doing going with six is more like it. There are also ways of setting up some of this with what I call muscle bones that stretch and twist around the forearm as well.
peepshow
08-31-2007, 11:09 PM
this was an extended low res version of the arm and muscles working before editing etc....its kinda hard to see good movement but u get the gist!!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5dWTGYQ6PU
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