A rig for discussion

#1

Recently I have been watching Jeff Lew’s tutorial DVD on character animation and one thing that I noticed is how fast he is able to put into a character into a pose. He doesn’t fiddle with heading/pitch/bank rotations or local/global coordinates, he just drags the bones into the pose he wants them, and that’s it! He was showing this within Animation:Master and I was wondering how a similar idea could be done within messiah. The attached rig is the first result of my findings, maybe you can comment on that.

The usage is rather simple, you only animate with the armatures (the blue dots):
LMB and dragging the dot manipulates where the bone points at
RMB and dragging the dot manipulates the bank rotation of the bone (except for the shoulder and forearm bones).
MMB resets the bone to its setup position (for this functionality you have to copy the attached script to your local ‘messiah/modules/scripts’ folder).

Just let me know what you think.

#2

Holly mother of crap. I LOVE IT! I have always loved the way Animation Master’s bones work and after lengthy discussions with Lyle. . . we got “Animate Immediate”. Totally not what I was thinking/wanting. This kicks ass.

Would you be able to blend it into an FK/IK switch?

I love you. . . that is so so cool. . . I wish you could just make the bones do that without the blue dots. . .

wow.

p.s. Could you have the blue dots re-set themselves in their default positions after you let go of them?

And. . . is it hard to set up? Could you maybe walk us through how to apply this to our rigs?

p.p.s. I have goose bumps. That is what I have ALWAYS loved about Animation Master. You grab the bone. . . and it moves. You rotate around. . . grab it. . . move it. None of this hpb crap.

#3

Ok one thing I don’t like is the auto aim feature you have put in there… I think when you were watching Jeff’s videos he was using the A:M keyboard shortcut to focus in on what he was working on which is very cool. . . but when your doing a walk cycle or something. . . its easier on the brain when the character stays in place on the screen. Tapping “a” on the keyboard is quick enough that an “auto” seems a little overkill.

Still drooling though.

#4

Brilliant! This is actually similar to an idea I have been throwing around in my head.
I will create an example later as my workstation is currently chewing away at maya/mentalray render.

anyway, some interaction ideas:

Shoulder control:

The foundation of this control is a single locator with another locator parented to it but offset on X axis.

A standard arm IK is setup parented to the master locator with the IK goal being the offset locator on the X axis.

To control the arm, the user would grab an armature or handle that is centered on the offset locator but affects the rotations of the master null, allowing the user to easily “rotate” the arm from the shoulder.

By moving the offset locator along the X axis of the master null, the hand can be placed where needed. By rotating the handle on bank, the elbow would be adjusted. However by putting an Xmax constraint to the offset locator, you dont have to worry about stretching your arms too far which results in IK SNAP.

An additional offset locator is placed off the “wrist” locator and works exactly the same way but affects the overall hand rotation with the bank affecting the forearm twist.

anyway once i get some free time ill make a demo.

One idea your setup gave me is to use the mmb button for poses. but instead of resetting to bind, i would prefer to make a new pose for the higherarchy. For example, if you use it on the wrist controller, it would create a pose for the arm group. if you do it for the upper spine it would create a spine pose, pelvis would create a pose for everything. etc.

food for thought ?

#5

Oh my leftist radical God that’s cool. It’s a little unusual at first but It’s super quick and very useful. It feels a lot less stiff than the usual rotational type of thing. And so easy to set up as well. Very good work.

#6

I think for this rig to really work in a “real world” production
worthy rig. . . you’d have to fiddle with a few things.

I think the most important thing is that the blue dots can’t be the
actual things you animate. . . it needs to be the bones themselves.
The blue dots should be the way of positioning the bone like the gizmo
does now.

If you could feed a keyframe to the bone as to where it is currently
and then re-set the armature to its default position on the bone after
you let go of it. . . I think that would solve a lot of issues.

Right now if I pull a lot of the blue dots away from the body. . . I
can’t tell what blue dot goes with what bone. And when I look at the
motion curves of the blue dots. . . they just don’t make much sense.
Lots of moving. . . no rotating. So tweaking motion curves is not
really possible in the “old” think.

#7

OH when I try and middle click on the armature it tells me that C:\Docume~1\Christ~1\Locals~1\Temp\Messiah’does not exist on this system.

#8

Looks like it would make it a bit harder to get an IK/FK option from my quick test. I think you’d need to fade out the controls effect with a keyfader then slap in the IK, or the other way around. Hmmm. Only very rough tests so far.

#9

Thanks for the feed back!

Wegg: The “Auto Aim” issue that you mentioned seems to be an oddity of messiah. Sometimes when loading a scene the auto centering is on, even though the icons say otherwise. Just tap the ‘a’ button twice and all should be normal.
Did you copy the script to your local script folder ? The MMB functionality relies on the ‘ResetObject.msa’ script.

I am aware that the editing of the motion curves might be a problem. Currently you need four curves (X,Y,Z and bank) of the control/target to define a motion. This is like the “X,Y,Z, roll” mode in Animation:Master which has the advantage that it avoids gimbal lock, but leaves you with function curves that still can interpreted (other than the curves of quaternions, which are a total mess). I agree that the blue dot should stay in relatively the same position to the root of the bone, I will fix that next. Of course the computed motion can also be baked out directly to the bone.

stooch: Interesting idea that you have. I will have a closer look at this.

Ulven: Thanks a lot! Actually your rigging thread inspired me to try and post myself this rig. I haven’t yet figured out the best way to integrate IK/FK switching, but it is on my list.

#10

Holy moley!!! I had forgotten how much I loved that in AM and for you to have done this in messiah, Woooo!! What a great week for messiah users between the rigs, Wegg’s DOF topic, etc.

#11

I did copy it to the local folder. I don’t quite get whats going on. I do think its important that you just enable it after you let go of it anyway. . . but. . . I’d like to see it work with the mmb before that too.

#12

Hehe, actually I’ve been using your simplerigger in lightwave for quite some time, In terms of gettting a decent lw rig in seconds there’s nothing I like more. Back to your messiah rig: I think it’s definately still possible to do IK/FK blending but you’ll have to test it a bit futher than I did with my quick tests. Keyfader is the way I think, but WHEN it should happen in relation to the other expressionos is what you’ll have too find out.

#13

Hi Suricate,
great stuff!
I agree with Wegg - that auto-aim is blowing my mind. Couldn’t turn it off - the msa was installed, the double-tapped aa… no go.
Feels like the machine is taking over. Moved to camera view and it was more pleasant on me.

Interesting approach - I’ve never worked with AM. Things I think I’d miss this way are muiltiple selection editing (I like working on spine / tail etc. that way.) and the overview of keys.
Of course - this kind of editing sure is intiuitive…

I could well warm up to it. And more - shift-clicking switches to layered spline control, bending the curve along the arm… (okay, let me dream)

#14

jesus christ lol it took me 2 second to turn off the auto tracking, tap the auto tracking armature on and off on the top right. that did it for me.

#15

Ah… there! Yeah that does it. Cool, thanks.
(I was clicking the ‘a’ button like a depraved lab rat.)

#16

ha ha! So was I! Sometimes I foget programs have interface buttons. . .

#17

I am so glad I wasn’t the only person doing that!

#18

How’s it going on the IK/FK blend? Or the rest of whatever’s on your list? I’ve been busy with some illustrations but now I’ve shown your rig to my good friend and colleague and we both think you’re really on to something here. I think we’re leaning towards trying to make an entire rig like this now.

#19

I finally got somewhere with the IK/FK blending. It’s a little dirty but it’s a start. Have a look.

http://www.usefulslug.com/messiahrig/ButchRig0004.mpj

#20

Looks like it works! Very cool.