CGTalk - Creating a Rig with weights on Joints?

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darth

10-03-2007, 07:58 AM

I am researching and wondering weather it is possible to create a generic rig that has all the skinning information attahced to the joints. I will try and explain what I am wanting and then people can tell me if it might be plausible.

I want to know how or if it would be possible to construct a rig and then parent spheres or some form of geometry to the joints as influence type objects forming the underlying structure of a person or thing. Than get the mesh of the character and attach it to the geometry driven by the bones. Not having to worry about painting weights. Then being able to re-use the rig with the geometry base connected to it for other models as well.

I am not sure if I am explaining myself that well. I am not hundred percent sure of terms, I don't know mel and not even very good at rigging.

Just wanting to know if this is a plausible way to create a reusable rig that has the weights attached to the joints in the way of spheres and geometry, or if something is out there already. I am guessing it is like a muscle system or something.

How could I make the character mesh be influenced by the geometry parented or skinned to each joint. Wrap deformer? Or is this to much for a system and would slow it down a lot. I am just wanting to creating something that can rig a lot of characters that are all pretty similar in stature.

Because if I could spend sometime on attaching spheres and geometry to a rig than somehow using these to drive meshes of different characters. Without having to go in and adjust to much of the underlying rig.

Please tell me if I am dreaming. If so can people point me of the right direction for other techniques.

Cheers

Mark

djx

10-03-2007, 12:15 PM

Maybe what you are suggesting could work, but I think I would start with something like a simple generic body mesh rather than the spheres. Paint the weights on that and then use the transfer weights feature to copy them to your other meshes.

There is a movie on the autodesk site that shows an example of this.
http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/videos/5_mk8_Web_Rig.mov

good luck
-- David

refract

10-06-2007, 06:59 AM

I believe Setup machine does something like that. (correct me if i'm wrong here guys)/ It uses wireframe boxes to 'encompass' the volume of your mesh, and from that it will do its best to skin your character.
So, no, you're not dreaming, and it can be done.
What DJX says also, is something we have done at work. Setting up a basic generic skinned rig, and transferring weights works really good.
Maybe have a reusable, rescalable rig with properly named joints to match a script, and when you set up your new character, have it reference it (behind the scenes), to get good skin job?
It all depends on the number of joints and size of the new character, but its a spider or fish, I kinda had the idea of making a script to /duplicate mesh, invert normals, raytrace out from joints, weight, and delete the inverted normal mesh. Not sure if it would work or not, just thinking.

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