From Taron-Bone posing setup video

#7

Cool stuff. The muscle bone spanning the chest to the chin certainly does a nice job of holding the volume of the esophagus during head rotations. :slight_smile:

#8

Bone setup clip (22Mb quicktime)

#9

Thanks Taron very instructive!
I will my own exercise with it and then probably have questions to you!
Thanks
Andreseloy

#10

excellent Taron, I’m getting really excited about using Messiah now…:bounce:

#11

Anyone have any ideas why? The when I move the bone in the head forward the rig gets jacked. I wonder If i need to either place the bones better or something. I attached the Mpj.

#12

The problem lies with Skeleton_Bone_6, the bone support from the forehead along the
top of the head. Delete it and add another bone and problem fixed…but I really don’t have
the foggiest why! Also added a bone to each shoulder bone to stabilize the body. Works
really well, very efficient. Neat model by the way.

Gene

#13

Thank you for your help. Can you attach the MPJ so everyone has it corrected. The model was made for Yuri’s night 2005. Taron’s my taught/teaches me everyrthing I know about modeling.:buttrock:

#14

Here you go.

Gene

#15

Excellent job, works well! I like the model, too, very cute! Good job, Crossbones! Good job, Gene! Sorry if I’m not much of a support right now, I’m bouncing around here to see what’s happening and make note of all the little issues that pop up.

THANX for taking care of things here! :thumbsup:

#16

Here’s a wacky little test I had to make. Now that we can save objects with their UVmap (caugh, caugh), it’s possible to do really cool stuff together with ZBrush.

This is an approach that comes originally from the world of morphs and now works absolutely fantastic with displacement only.

What this is:
A somewhat simple arm geometry (132 polygons)
A bone setup that moves it somewhat nicely (5 bones, 2 of them are muscles)

Then you generate two displacement maps.
The first one is based on the original geometry.
The second one is based on the exported deformed object out of messiah after you’ve brought it into pose with your bone setup!

Then you make a simple expression that reads the rotation of your elbow, which you have used for the posing! “math” it into the proper range (how retarded to say something like that, but I had to giggle.) with something like a division to get the values to come out from 0 - 1.0 and feed them into the opacity of your second displacement map.
I find it best to put to proper displacement values into the texture map’s “remap” and then see if I need to amplify or reduce it with the actual bump value of the material, which acts like a multiplier.
Anyway, I took the liberty in this little example to also use that expression output as a modifier for the glossiness level of the surface…kind of cool, I thought.

ALRIGHT, here it is…just a gimmik and a quick one at that, but still…oh, and I was putting the grid shader on top to look at what’s happening and to show the actual geometry underneath.

ARMold (500kb DivX)
(I assume “tilde” is working again, otherwise the link wouldn’t work! If it works, send a big shout to the Administration Team of CGtalk, they reacted swiftly and great! :applause: )

#17

Wow, that is fantastic! I have got to pick up ZBrush if only for things such as this.
The process/workflow seems so well suited to muscle and skin interaction I can’t express how excited I am about this! :lightbulb

#18

Taron do you have time to walk us through how you did that in like a video? I think it would go along way for those people who don’t realize how to connect the animation system to the renderer. You should think about placing anything you do here on CGtalk on the PMG tutorial section that way people that don’t come to CGtalk will see it.

Very nice, its like butch v200. Curious, will there be a solution to see this kind of stuff including your grid shader in the viewport so we have some sort representation.

#19

Hey, this is fantastic! :thumbsup:

#20

coolio, I had kinda thought about doing a similar thing but I doubt that I could even find the time to work it out.

Would there be a way of doing a similar thing with the entire body?..of course there would but I guess I’m asking whether it is possible to have say just 2 displacement maps for the whole body but just dial in the ones that are needed eg: when the arm bends it uses the relevent displacements for that area only, when the leg bends it dials in the displacements for just the leg area…etc.

The long winded way would be to create & save off a map for each region but the easiest way would be to create displacements for the whole body in ZBrush in one go for continuity.

…maybe use weights, alphas, bone influence?..I’ve only scratched the surface of messiah so I’m not sure how this might be achieved if at all.

#21

I hope that at some point in the not so distant future we will have the documentation or tutorials will give direct answers to questions like this. Its really messiah’s biggest strength which is under played as many existing users can’t figure out how to do this as easily. My best suggestion is look at Chris Reid’s posts. He has this leg that when flexed triggers a displacement map. To localize the area you could easily use a metaeffector and just turn its values from 0 - 1 if you look on the messiah site i think they show Taron’s “mask” using a localized displacement via a meta effector.

#22

That would certainly be a tutorial and not documentation, because it’s really just a way to use the tool, not the just the way it works. However, if you check out my little animation called “people”, it shows just exactly that, only used on a face. You could always do that, that’s not really the point of this clip. Yes you can use meta-effectors and alpha and anything that would give you a gradient at any local place to control the amount of displacement that any map or any shader for that matter contributes.

However, the point of this clip is much rather, that you can make your setup in messiah first and then export the post you’d like to paint a specific displacement on. It’s really a whole new ballpark for creating destinct deformations. You have to keep a keen mind on that, though, watch for what you’re doing, because the displacement really just displaces along the normals of the surface, so your animation setup should work well enough to support possible rotations and contractions/expansions, so that the displacement really just brings out the form and doesn’t look like it just blends.
My little arm there was just a sloppy quick little test and if you look at the big vein, then you can see that it just blends up for instance. I should have rotated the polygons a little to suggest a more complicated motion…but…it’s a brilliant way of doing this and with little effort you can get the most expensive looking deformations going! :smiley:

I think that’s one for my Gnomon DVDs, if I want to cover things of that magnitude in tutorials. It well beyond the scope of what you need to know in order to accell into messiah! I hope you understand. :shrug:

#23

taron, you are absolutely correct with your statements, it would be considered a tutorial. Most 3D/2D software, you purchase the training materials separately or read the docs. I.e if you want to learn photoshop, you can either purchase adobe’s training or someone elses.

Those quick tutorials you are making (once they are finished) for the messiah site on the basics of the render and how to get started experimenting with displacements,shaders, particles will be a great selling point to show people how easy it is to use messiah’s render.

#24

aah…sorry, I didn’t realise that you were showing off new tools as such I just assumed that it was an extension of your morphing head video. I understand that the process I asked about is quite involved, I just wondered how easy/difficult it would be & you answered that just fine…thanks.

Gnomon DVD would be great, it’s soooo much easier watching someone work than just following a load of instructions. Do you have any idea of when these will be available?

#25

Greta tutorial but on to the renderer tutorials.

#26

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