J-Dude
08-07-2007, 02:53 AM
I've been doing 3D animation for a significant while, but I've never had a teacher who taught any sort of specifics in rigging, so in rigging I feel almost woefully ignorant. I use 3D Studio Max 7.
Basically, I designed my character specifically to start out as low-poly as possible so rigging would be easy. This approach has payed off greatly thus far in the creation process, and nearly the whole rig behaves exactly as I would wish it to. At least this was my impression, until I remembered the twist of the forearm.
As far as rigging goes, I use the biped for my bone-structure and I use physique as my rigging modifier. When I first tested out the twist of the forearm (with the wrist of course) I did not have, nor have I ever used the "forearm twist" bones option, and so the wrist would twist independent of the arm, and the wrist would twist into a poly-collapse.
To fix this, I tried editing envelopes and vertex influence between the forearm and the wrist, and got a half-way decent twist. This however, backfired when I realized the changes I had made in favor of the twist, gave the wrist far too much influence over the arm when performed simple "up-down" flexing.
Finally, I remembered the forearm twist bones which before had sounded entirely unnecessary, and tried applying them to the rig. However, to my disappointment, I discovered that either the rig did not recognize the new bones, or else I had no control over their degree of influence.
I decided to test what I could do with the skin modifier instead. But in my opinion, skin is a heavy-handed and clumsy tool in comparison to physique. While I got a half-way decent twist out of it, I was less than satisfied with how skin handles the rigging.
I want to find a happy-medium between the two. Perhaps I'm doing something wrong in physique? Could anyone perhaps offer a little friendly advice to this conundrum?
Basically, I designed my character specifically to start out as low-poly as possible so rigging would be easy. This approach has payed off greatly thus far in the creation process, and nearly the whole rig behaves exactly as I would wish it to. At least this was my impression, until I remembered the twist of the forearm.
As far as rigging goes, I use the biped for my bone-structure and I use physique as my rigging modifier. When I first tested out the twist of the forearm (with the wrist of course) I did not have, nor have I ever used the "forearm twist" bones option, and so the wrist would twist independent of the arm, and the wrist would twist into a poly-collapse.
To fix this, I tried editing envelopes and vertex influence between the forearm and the wrist, and got a half-way decent twist. This however, backfired when I realized the changes I had made in favor of the twist, gave the wrist far too much influence over the arm when performed simple "up-down" flexing.
Finally, I remembered the forearm twist bones which before had sounded entirely unnecessary, and tried applying them to the rig. However, to my disappointment, I discovered that either the rig did not recognize the new bones, or else I had no control over their degree of influence.
I decided to test what I could do with the skin modifier instead. But in my opinion, skin is a heavy-handed and clumsy tool in comparison to physique. While I got a half-way decent twist out of it, I was less than satisfied with how skin handles the rigging.
I want to find a happy-medium between the two. Perhaps I'm doing something wrong in physique? Could anyone perhaps offer a little friendly advice to this conundrum?