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bsteagal
11-07-2010, 02:09 AM
Hello everyone

I'm hoping that someone around here knows of a way to do this, or at least point me in the right direction. I'm wanting to control the fingers of a character in mb for the purpose of doing live digital puppeteering. I'd like to setup something like keyboard key #1 for closed fist, #2 for open hand, etc.

Is triggering the way to go on this? or can something be built in with character face? (I seem to remember somewhere that you can do this) It is eluding me however... so if anyone can point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it

thanks!

Bryan
bsteagal
11-09-2010, 02:28 AM
Ok.. after some testing, I figured it out..(in case anyone is interested)

Relations constraint, keyboard device as sender, fingers as receivers. Connect key to scale and offset node, to number to vector node (to z), to 3d damping node, to each finger node of the character. Not really elegant, but works for now...:)

However, when I tested this constraint using character or actor input to drive the main skeleton, thinking that I would be able to control the fingers with the keyboard.. guess what, nothing happened.:cry:

hmmm.. what could be causing this... hmm, let's try this, uncharacterize skeleton, remove nodes from left/right hand, re-characterize... AHA! this now works.:thumbsup: I can now run the mesh using another character or an actor, and still have access to the hands... Now to configure different hand poses, perhaps hand extended, hand closed, point index finger ...

I also have constraints built to move the eyes with either the joystick or mouse.. which work nicely....*sigh* as long as the character is facing the screen and the head is not moving too much from side to side... hmmm... what I would need, is something that would follow the orientation of the head, but when I move the mouse or joystick from side/side up/down... any ideas?

enough ramble, back to work...
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