elastigirl

#61

The rules are:

basic rig that stretches

secondary rig - with curve control

third rig - squash/flatening and inflation.

Combining them, thats hard. With twist ontop.

eek

p.s jo, i sent you a PM.

#62

Hello.

I’m busy working on an elastigirl type rig for Animation Master. I just noticed this thread, over here.

Anyway, here’s a simple(?) attempt at an arm, done in AMv10.5q. This doesn’t have any mesh distortion yet. What I mean is, the arm does not get skinny as it grows taut. It’s just a rough thing that I did, this afternoon.

http://www.cgtalk.com/showpost.php?p=1982666&postcount=13

Zipped file at bottom.

Sincerely,

Carl Raillard

#63

bendbows.

Pixar could not really could not release any of our tools, because they are entirely proprietary. It is all studio specific.

machsumo

#64

Is there a way to achieve this effect in Blender? If so, how?:slight_smile:

  • Ian
#65

yes. with hooks, or some sort of complex stuff of constraint scaling…
you know it’s already complex to set a ik solver in there. Would be interesting to do a chalendge over at elysiun

#66

I figured out a really cool method for achieving this effect in Blender! :slight_smile: I will post some videos soon. :wink:

  • Ian
#67

hello guys… in don´t read all post…
but i will show my rig test…
i will try to finish the model and the rig in next week ok

coments and questions is welcome

click in the image to get the video demo… 1.7 mb

Thanks guys and cya!!

#68

Nice rig, D3. :smiley: But could you make an a quicktime format version of your rig test? I couldn’t get the window media file to play.

  • Ian
#69

Good and interesting rig my friend. But I think you’ll need to simplify the stretchy controllers a bit. Because animating it looks difficult that way. But I think you’re working on it. Keep it up. :thumbsup:

#70

coolwizj - i will try to provide a .mov format… ok!! but try to get a convert on the net… ok

Tughan - i´m studing inumerous solutions for this… an i´m trying to simplify this controlers hehe

but on this rig i´m have 3 diferents types of control…

1 - human arm ik/fh
2 freeforma deformations for army…
3 spline controler

and i´m have a slider to control the transition…

i´m don´t see dificult to control… and i´m searchg the best solution for this… hehe

#71

CoolWizJ: Please! post a video or tutorial or something! If I could see something like this in blender I would be ultimately astounded.
THanks :bounce:

#72

Actually I think that main challange is making rig easy for the animator. Like Eek said a few posts before. So, it’ll will be also fun to animate. :slight_smile:

#73

CoreyJAvitar
i´m can try to make a video… because my inglesh is poor ok… i´m don´t know if the blender have tecnical suport to make some this but you can try…

i´m will try to do somethinks in the next week ok…

Tughan
that is the point. man ehehe i´m trying to do the best control and manipulators for this character… i´m not a scripter. i´m start to learm maxscript yesterday hehe but i´m will try to automatizate the show/hiden ik controlers. and another thinks, any coments and suggestion to make this rig better is very very welcome!!

thanks all

#74

I’ll try to make a tutorial (written or video) as soon as I can. :bounce: I’m still working out all the glitches and stuff like that. :smiley:

#75

Right i should reply firstly as im finally getting a website up (not the blog i have), cheers for the help jo. And to say interesting rig D-3.

The problem with stretchy rig especially ones that are reliant on curves to deform them is usage to the animator. With any rig, form and function are a double edged sword and must compliment functionality to the rig and to the animator. Generally rigs have three parts, the underlying part which drives muscles, deformation, bones etc. Then the top layer of rig whcih drives combination parts eg, foot roll driving three controls. And thirdly gui and control to the animator, which has to be simple, fun and relivant the each of the other layers in both position eg. knee control you put it on the knee and functionality.You want to give both automated and manual control- and thats pretty hard to do.

The problem with curve/stretchy setup is that the gui - the control to the animator bridges the gap into the rig you dont want to touch, essentially there the same, your driving the rig and the gui. And this is why so many studios, pixar, R&h find thes rig very hard to pipe for. Heck i spent a month just thinking about it and working the three areas - stretch, curve and squash.

The idea of a two tier structure for this rig, may be difficult for an animator, relying on a curve to match. With Pixar two setups, 1 fk/ik, 1 stretchy. So they would animate fk, hit a button the stretch would match and they could control that, all they need to do was match the fk back and hit the button. So it was a kind of stretch match process.

Essentially you want to animate fk/ik, get you character ready, bring in stretch in slowly blend and continue, then blend back. And essentially the the rigs to float off each other. This combined with the essential three layers, and fk/ik structure over the top is very very hard. Not just interms of rig, but also control for the animator. Thats why i wanted as few controls and used bezier tangents to control the curve, - you driving the curves structure not the node/points on it. Also it seamlessly blends to and from a fk/ik rig. Problems then occur as your driving skinning info of a spline which each point doesnt have rotational values and a whole load a problems happen. Also do you want to stretch at the elbow, the wrist, is bendy a fact of going round corners, by the wind - so it not a simple open and shut case.

And aslo stretch should be for specific reasons, does the character have special powers and can stretch, or are they just bendy. Generally your use it as little as often as you want only to exaggerate movement, or have a specific purpose.

The key is it should be developed in a way thats either seamless to the animator, or for specific shots, otherwise it’ll become ovebearing. Also you have loads of issues such as pinning, but i’ll discuss this a little more next week.

If i can work up a example this weekend, ill post it next week.

eek

#76

That link is a load of old cobblers! I tried http://www.poltran.com/pl.php4 to translate it and it seems a bit dodgy.

Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong Mr. JAVA

#77

whoa!
i did not even realize this conversation was going on until now, i kinda thought nobody really cared.

its amazing, some of you guys really got some stuff right.
ultimately it really is about the over-all control structure you present to the animator.
there were some comments about a “blend to each target thing” and that the rig was hard to control and animate.

well, dificulty in control is a relative thing. how many things do you want the rig to do? how much time and money do you have to make it easy and “fool-proof”?
for the most part, elastigirl and normal fk/ik helen is one rig in these effects shots. this is because many of the effects shots had to show her actually existing in all of these states in a continuos sequence of frames. it would suck to tell the director that he had to rethink the edits in an action sequence because she was just a bunch of one-offs that could not transistion to and from eachother. the helen boat is really the only exception where we had a one-off model. some of the animators found her controll structure tollerable at best, and some actually had fun with her, others just didn’t take a hankerin to her at all. but what had to be done had to be done… by the way, there is one degree of freedom in this rig that has not been mentioned yet in this thread, (i oppologize if it has been mentioned and i missed it.) …and that is sliding/path motion.

here is the basic breakdown:
a special curve deformer was written. the curves that make it up were posed by “anchors” with an in-house version of constraints by the same deformers that pose the fk/ik body. (these speacial curve deformers are not spline ik). these curve deformers then pose a two dimensional flat “ginger bread boy” or flat shadow of helen’s sillouette.
this geometry then feeds a proprietary surface deformer that drives a topologically identical version of helen that is always invisible.

the “constrainted” anchors, curves and gingerbread-boy are represented by animatable guides and provide a spline based fk’ik analouge that is “piggy-backed” to the real helen. you could then “blend” various parts of her body to and from this piggy-backed analouge without really noticing any difference between the curve and rigid fk/ik unless you deformed the curve control guides away from the fk’ik rig. the “gingerbread-boy” stage of the deformation tree provided the sliding or path animation degree of freedom when it was needed. the in-house constraints, being “anchored” to various points in the fk’ik body could be animated with guides away from and independently of the fkik body.

when you wanted to return to normal fk’ik operation you simply re-apply the original anchor constraints to the anchors points themselves with an automatically gnereated compensation transform, and then animate the transform values to zero. this in combination with “blending” various body parts back to the original fk/ik source helen geometry provided controllable “to and from” stretchy effect, and seemless transistion between controll structures.

the Helen topology that was used for these effects shots was only one point density. it was higher res than the helen without these controls that was used more often, but no variability of resolution. she had limits to how far she could stretch and still hold up.

well, there you go. these concepts of coarse are applicable no matter what software you use. having the ability to write your own deformers is very important however. that, carefull planning, and the freedom to go through several iterations before you hit the “magic” formula are key to hitting the balance between useability and “just get it done”.
i may or may not have hit that perfect balance very well, but in the end, she was at least a useable model and got the job done.
-mt

#78

Wow… Now that is a brain twister and a half… :scream: My head hurts.:scream: I’m going to sleep.

#79

Thanks for that! A good insight to the wonders and woes of Elastigirl.
I’m primarily an animator so I’m praying someone creates a tutorial that I can follow and convert into Maya terms if it’s not already done. Why would I do this? Well I’d just love to do a Reed Richards animation. (Don’t we just torture ourselves with our ideas sometimes?)

The Incredibles DVD came out yesterday in Australia. I’m pumped, all of tomorrow is dedicated to “research”… in other words, watching every single thing on the DVD at least once.

#80

Thx for the info Therrell:

this geometry then feeds a proprietary surface deformer that drives a topologically identical version of helen that is always invisible.

This was the bit i was stuck on how to do. Pretty much everything else had been worked out, from papers,magazines, dvd. I’ll look into this. Also ill probably use tracking based ik/fk. So you only need to use one chain.

more to come…

eek