CGTalk - Faceless Man - Help with Rigging + Animation

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cgisoul

01-31-2009, 01:59 PM

Dear All,

I am currently taking my Master’s in Design and I’m doing my final project, a Running Man.
For this project I used two tutorials:
1. Freedom of Teach tutorial to build the Man: human anatomy - male.
2. Eva Wild tutorial for rigging and animation.

I am quite new to rigging and animation procedure and despite my efforts, I haven’t been able to make the enveloping right for the legs. I tried to use the biped but it looked weird, you can look at it through this link: http://www.mduque.com/3dsmax/test1.avi It’s an avi test render I did with the biped, enveloped with the running man. But since the result was so weird, I opted to build the whole skeleton body from scratch for the running man.

You can download the rar file, which is the running man model with the skeleton and some helpers added as well:
http://www.mduque.com/3dsmax/FacelessManNeedHelp.rar (http://www.mduque.com/3dsmax/FacelessManNeedHelp.rar)

From Eva Wild tutorials, it is good no doubt, however, I don’t need so many features like helpers and constraints. Just need the guy run with his arms moving forward and backwards.

Appreciate if there is any professional or experienced user who is familiar with rigging and animation and could help me out please. All I need is to make the man run and with his arms moving. Thank you and appreciate who can really give me a hand here please.

musashidan

01-31-2009, 02:54 PM

The problem isn't whether you use bbiped or a custom rig.It's the skinning.Using envelopes is only for a rough skinning pass.A means to an end.You have to go in there and manually assign vert weights.it can take a long time and alot of perseverance first time around.

also,on a side note.If you intend to hand this in as a Masters assignment,it might be no harm to do abit of research on animation.:)

cgisoul

01-31-2009, 03:56 PM

Hi musashidan,

Thank you for the reply. I'm trying hard here believe me and keep trying, but no results. This is only a small part of my assignment. I understand that this is an art to master, however, rigging and animation is not what I really would love to carry on, but only have it done for this assignment. Any help would be appreciated really. Thanks for replying musashidan.

musashidan

01-31-2009, 10:16 PM

Hey CGicore,i would highly recommend Paul Neale's skinning DvD.It is pretty much the bible insofar as sknning a mesh in Max.

i understand you may not want to spend money on a specialist DvD just for an assignment but skinning is indeed a very tough nut to crack.especially with non cartoony realistic characters.

i'm afraid there's no easy route here.but Pen's instruction will certainly ease the curve significantly.

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