Flour Sack Rig How To

#1

I need to animate a flour sack and I am having problems creating a rig that will give me full control over it. I am getting frustrated because it will deform incorrectly when I rest the bones if I try to create a human type skeletel rig in the flour sack. The only moderate success I had was with 4 bones created as a spine and just rotating them with ikboost. Here is my try but it is simply terrible and I need some help.

I read about using a lattice or multiple lattices but I am not sure how to implement it.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=c034a4ed21b8c90bb94117dade8fc295e04e75f6e8ebb871

#2

bump… bring up my post

#3

Not sure if I follow exactly. Do you mean the mesh got deformed immediately when resting or didn’t deform well once you started animating the bones? If the first, then the only thing that might do that is if you’ve changed the scale of the bones rather than the length.

LW doesn’t have lattices and I doubt it would help much for overall motion. I think you’d still want to animate using a skeletal rig.

#4

Usually, if you Turn OFF bone deformations (and IK, etc), Then rest the bones, then turn Deformations back on, your mesh shouldnt be deforming all weird. that basically resnaps the mesh to the new bone positions after the bones are reset by resting them.

baring that, for more finer control you can weight map your flour sack and tie each weight map to a particular bone…

  • Will.
#5

No Will, no!

Turning off deformations has absolutely no effect on the outcome of the bone resting. None what so ever! Whether you rest bones with deformations turned on or off, the outcome will be the same. Resting will bind the bones to the non-deformed mesh either way. The only reason you would want to turn deformations off then, it just to see what you are binding to (ie. the non-deformed mesh).

Turning off IK and any motion modifiers however is usually correct as that is what resting is all about - Binding the mesh to the bones at a specific position. And you’d want this position to be set and stored with keyframes alone, so you can get back to it later. If the bones are offset from their position by IK or otherwise, naturally the rest pose won’t be the right one.

#6

Ah dont mind me, I’m completely out of it lately. work, stress, life. no
bannana splits… poo.

  • Will.
#7

Hehe… we’re all still learning. Always. But it’s not like it’s dead wrong to turn deformations off. It’s just not my workflow or preference.

The recommendation to turn off deformations before resting has been a mission of mine to discredit or explain ever since lw5 or something, when people were recommended to do all kinds of nonsense before resting. It IS valid if you want/need to see what the mesh looks like, but not valid if you think it makes a difference to the rest position/bind. Personally I never felt the need to turn deformations off even then, as bones are deactivated by default on creation. And when tweaking you receive much better feedback if you keep deformations on, as the mesh will tend to snap when reresting, as you said. This in contrast to what happens when deformations are off, then the resting sortof happens behind a veil, and when you turn deformations back on again, you might not be sure if LW rested or not.

Just my take on it.

#8

Might this help?

#9

Thanks a lot for the replies. I attempted a few rigs and the assignment is due today, so I will still have to make quite a few revisions.

I was able to get it to deform a bit more naturally, but I am still having a problem with floatiness in my character when it walks or jumps, I just can’t quite figure out how to do a pose to pose setup with the IK Booster. Is there a way I can get more control on where my bones go? How do I turn off the interpolation?

#10

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