Best way to controll fingers ?

[twedzel]

I treat them like any other part of the body. So I use a controler at the base of each finger that has two attributes on them that control the second and third knuckles (these two attributes are to balance the amount of screen cluter that too many controllers can have, and is easier to edit in the fcurves than 3 seperate controllers). This base controller can roate and translate to reflect rotating the finger or curling the hand (metacarpal movement). It works, its easy and its simple. If I want to get really funky I throw in an Ik control option over top of it all, but that's only if I want to get really funky.

I derived this solution because I hate long lists of attributes to hunt through and I hated setting up a bazillion driven attributes. I like visual representations in the view port that you move or rotate to control things. This sort of visual manipulation allows animators to keep their focus and mouse on their character as much as possible. I feel it is far more right brain than dealing with sliders that don't have that direct visual connection to what they are manipulating. With the controlers set up this way the animators can move, break, manipulate knuckles to their hearts content and not be limited by what the rigger thought would be a set of good control attributes. Which is really what it is all about, giving the animators the tools by which they will best be able to create a performance.

[scroll-lock]

Heya Leffler,
In my blog a time ago I wrote a post about finger controls.
You can see it here if you are interested:
http://www.scroll-lock.eu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=85&Itemid=1

The thing I make and find it very very easy to rig and animate with /you have a lot of control ;)/ is that:
I use joints called sdk joints /from set Driven Key/ On top of every joint in my finger hierarchy I add one joint called _sdk:
For example:
Finger_01_sdk
|_Finger_01_jnt
|_Finger_02_sdk
|_Finger_02_jnt

After that I only Set Driven Animate the _sdk joints.
And my "underjointts" are free for animating.
You can setup some poses /curls, bends, etc/ and on TOP of that, animate further with the finger joints.
I have done this for years and my animators are very happy with it :)

[Leffler]

Hey guys, thanks for your good answers

The thing is though .... I reed it, I think I understand what you mean but I still can´t really visualise it in my head how you mean :hmm: I guess my understanding in English isn´t top notch :sad:

Can you post images of the setup? Just a few printscreens I guess will make "the curtain fall down" ...

Regards, Otto

[scroll-lock]

Hmm, well, try to think that way:
When you set driven key on something, you lock the channels of it. So... you are no longer able to animate it by hand. By adding additional object /joint in my case with set driven keys on it/ on top of the object you want to animate you can mix both - the set driven key object drives the other one and the other one is free to animate.
Try to think of it and you'll snap it :)

[archanex]

Maybe I'm the minority here, but as an animator I really like FK fingers... I suppose if the character was going to walk on his fingertips, IK fingers would be nice to have, but honestly I'd rather just rotate each joint independantly than try to find the slider I want

[JamesLane]

I agree with archanex, I much rather animating with FK fingers. The only time I ever used IK fingers was a close-up shot of a hand on a rock climber i was animating, and for that I used a seperate hand rig.

[edwardG]

FK fingers seem to work best. It is just as fast to select all the controls on 1 finger and rotate them simultaneously.

There is a small argument for IK/FK fingers, but the actions you can achieve with IK fingers are so rare and specific that they generally aren't used. In the time it takes you to set up IK/FK fingers, the animator could have animated the fingers in FK and moved onto other animations.

Easiest way said:

Just create circle curves, snap them to the joints, orient those controls down the joints, and then orient (rotate) constrain the joints to the control. You will also need to parent the controls going up the finger so that the rotation you are getting is consistent FK motion.

[Leffler]

Hello again, some great opinions and tips here

I saw one thing I liked in a tutorial:

For each fingers, this guy had an little arrow pointing away from the body to controll the curl. The method was something "translate the arrow +1 in X gets the finger fully curled". I like that, thought it was a good thing ...

.. but, with that solution and driven keys, you are hooking up the (lets say) rotate Y for the joints you are controlling. So, if I want that solution and then ALSO one extra controllcurve for each joint, then i´m in trouble. Doh :D ...

Well, to be clear: What i´m looking for is a way so that I can curl the fingers EASY and yet controll the rotation of each joint in the hand. And to do it with as few controllers as possible and keeping the design simple

Am I making things more complicated than it is?

Regards from sunny Sweden :cool:
Otto

[JamesLane]

well Im pretty sure you are talking about Maya, with the SDKs and such, but anyways. In Max...you can wire the fingers curl to a slider/spinner then add another euler control in the rotation list over the one you used to do the wireing, then you can still maintain FK control of each joint. (although this needs done on each joint after wireing, can be time consuming to set up, but it offers the control your looking for.)

James

[finalgathering]

Being a rigger and animator, I know the importance of quickly setting a pose but also personalizing the individual fingers for curl.
Here's an interesting thread on the topic with scene examples in XSI:
http://community.softimage.com/showthread.php?t=324
I made a quick "layered" system that allows you to set the profile of each finger with a controler (yellow) . Then allows for individual bone rotation.
I must say I really like it.
It's very simple and works great with no scripting/expressions...
1 rotate 5 yellow controlers
2 rotate the finger bones (if needed)...

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