intermediate bones question

#1

I’ve just modelled a character which I plan to use to practice my animation skills. I’m going to rig him using the tsm (can’t say enough good things about it btw), however the character I have modelled has a fairly large belly :).

This presents a problem however when he bends over, as his belly folds in on itself as he bends down, and I was hoping someone might have suggestions about how I might use intermediate bones to solve the problem.

I’ve posted a 340 Kb quicktime of the problem. I haven’t really tackled it yet (I’ve been trying to think of a solution without much success) and I’m sure there is a simple solution, but it hasn’t hit me yet.

http://members.optusnet.com.au/~shaunfree/samples/bonequestion.mov

I would really appreciate any suggestions.

Cheers

Shaun

#2

A couple of things come into play here. And I’m sure others will have even more sugegstions but here are mine:

1: No one that fat is going to bend the way you have him bending anyway. Think about your character and how his/her anatomy suggests they ought to move. Fat people with bellies like that can’t bend over and touch their toes like a skinny guy- they move their feet apart and bend at the hips. Why? Well, because a belly like that CAN’T fold in on itself in real life either.

So first thing off the bat, don’t expect this character to ever fold himself over like a slip of paper- he’ll bend, but not 180 degrees.

2: The solutions I’ve used on my current characters for similar situations involved not just intermed. bones, but smart skinning as well. Smartskinning is very simple to do, don’t let it scare you- it’s pretty powerful.

In your case since he’s cartoonish, and you probably do want him to break a few physiological laws, smartskinning can help a lot.

3: For intermed. bones it looks like you already have each spline ring assigned to its own bone, anything intermed. at this point is going to (IMO) just add complexity and not be real handy (unless you’re looking to add jiggle bones to theb elly front and sides). I’d add control bones in this case and link the geometry bones to the control bones if you already haven’t.

#3

I’m not here to counter-suggest as Dearmad correctly points out the problem but Shaun - just watch the sliding feet when your character bends. If you sort that now it’ll save frustration later.

#4

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