Two rigs?

[loked]

I'm not too sure if this is what you're talking about exactly, but it sounds like you build a skeleton and weight that skeleton. Then you have a similar skeleton that is almost a replicate of that skeleton. You then orient constrain all the respective joints from the skinning skeleton to the controlling skeleton. I've never heard of this being used exactly in this manner, but the principle is used often in various situations. An example would be with an IK/FK arm in earlier versions of Maya.

I dont really know of any tutorials that would show exactly what you asking for, but there are some that show the basic principle. Go to http://www.learning-maya.com

later:wavey:
loked

[treatment]

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, I've found tutorials on how to use 3 meshes, one for binding and skinning, one for blend shapes, and a high res one. Maybe thats what they were talking about.

It'd be pretty nice though :p if you could do something like rigid bind a skeleton to a skeleton then you could edit one and bind and weight the other... maybe. 2 skeletons, 3 meshes, getting a little bit crazy.

[zsz98781]

Originally posted by treatment
Maybe I'm reading too much into it, I've found tutorials on how to use 3 meshes, one for binding and skinning, one for blend shapes, and a high res one. Maybe thats what they were talking about.

It'd be pretty nice though :p if you could do something like rigid bind a skeleton to a skeleton then you could edit one and bind and weight the other... maybe. 2 skeletons, 3 meshes, getting a little bit crazy.
it is called by chinese that "assistant bones".the joint of assistant bones can control corresponding joint, be duplicated from this,

[treatment]

Originally posted by zsz98781
it is called by chinese that "assistant bones".the joint of assistant bones can control corresponding joint, be duplicated from this,

So it does exist!! Could you elaboate on that?

[danielpk]

Hi,

this is just my opinion on a more advanced pipeline which I am currently using (without the skinning part).
The general (simplified) workflow to create a character (or creature, or actor, or how you like to call it) would be something like the following (don't be afraid it's easier than it looks like):

- After the design is finished, create your high resolution 3D model.

- Based on the anatomy of your hi res model, create your skeleton.

- Orient the joints correctly (e.g. using jsOrientJointUI.mel from Jason’s website (http://jonhandhisdog.com)).

- Create a low resolution version of your character and split it in pieces that can be parented to your skeleton. You don’t want to skin your low res model for speed reasons.

- Optional: At this point preferably before starting a project, you might want to arrange a nice directory structure. Take a look at Jason’s great website for more information.

- Now you should have three different files: the skeleton, the hi res model, and the low res model.

- To create an animation rig, import the skeleton into a new scene, rig it completely (not including skinning), import the low res model and parent it’s pieces to the joints. DO NOT CHANGE THE SKELETON in any way. Not even renaming joints.

- Optional: Do the whole rigging process with scripts.

- You could also create the skinning now. To do this, import the skeleton (do not rig it!) into a new scene and import the hi res model. Now you can do all sorts of things to perfect the skinning. This is your skinning rig. And here too: DO NOT CHANGE THE SKELETON in any way.

- Optional: Only set up the influence objects (muscles) manually and do the whole skinning process with scripts.

- Animate a shot with the (referenced or imported) animation rig.

- To move the animation from the animation rig to the skinning rig, export the animation of the joints (not the controls or ik handles) and import it to the skinned joints. This step is not so easy without any custom scripts. The best method I know of is shown in the first DVD of Jason Schleifer (Maya Techniques | Integrating a Creature Animation Rig Within a Production Pipeline (http://store.aliaswavefront.com/dr/v2/ec_MAIN.Entry10?V1=385100&PN=1&SP=10023&xid=41107&DSP=&CUR=840&PGRP=0&CACHE_ID=0)).


This workflow (or pipeline) will allow you to have different rigs for different shots, re-rig your skeleton, and many more things without ever having to touch your skinning. Or the other way round: You can change the skinning and simply apply all your animations to the newly skinned version. But what is really cool, is that you are able to script most of the repetitive steps and e.g. apply the rigging or skinning script to other characters or change a certain aspect of the rig within the script and update all rigs with one mouse click.
I highly recommend both of Jason’s DVDs and his website (http://jonhandhisdog.com) to people, who want to get a little more into that stuff.


Greetings,

Daniel

[loked]

Hey,

Thats definitely the approach that I take too and I would also definitely recommend Jason's DVD as well as his website:thumbsup:

later:wavey:
loked

[jschleifer]

Heya!
yep, that's the exact approach I'd recommend as well.. and my website (http://jonhandhisdog.com) , too! heh :) unfortunately, the website is down right now.. the server's bombed & it looks like it won't be up again for another few hours.


arrgh!

but give it a go in a few hours..

-jason

[ajsfuxor]

Thanks DanielPK...i know i could have used that breakdown a couple o months ago before i started doing my short. You made everything sound so simple...and you know what, it really is!

thanks!

[danielpk]

Thanks for the kind comments loked, Jason, and ajsfuxor. As you may have noticed, I'm a big fan of Jason's DVDs:thumbsup:, and to get a response from him is very encouraging.

Btw I've got some scripts on my site (http://dpk.stargrav.com/) that should help with some repetitive tasks while rigging a character.

Useful for interactive rigging:

- DPK_parentMeshToJoint
- DPK_rigGroup
- DPK_rigCreateConstObj
- DPK_mirrorSDK
- DPK_reorderAttrs


Useful when scripting rigs:

- DPK_controls
- DPK_getCurveCode
- DPK_rigPositionCtrl
- DPK_rigGroup
- DPK_rigCreateConstObj
- DPK_rigShortName


Maybe you'll find some of these useful.

Daniel

[jschleifer]

coool!
nice dog animation, daniel!

(btw.. the package has been handed off.. it is in circulation. :)

[ajsfuxor]

Whoa baby...thanks danielPK. Bloody awesome combisculpt script. Works fantastic!

Also, a very cool idea for the animationUI script. Am yet to give it a full workout, but looks good so far.

Would be curious to see how close this combi-sculpt script is to how gollum's blends were made. Any comments Jason?

Keep up the great work danielPK

[danielpk]

Jason: :beer: Thanks in both ways!


ajsfuxor:

Hey! Thanks a lot! Good to hear it works. Thanks.
I have to mention, though, that the idea for the anim UI is not originally mine. I've only tried to create a nice UI, incoorporating the features and ideas I saw at the 3D Festival in Bay's presentation. As you may have guessed already, it's mainly intended for facial animation with many attributes ;) .

Daniel

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