LW char animation demo thread

#21

Rigging is a artform all its own!
Very cool stuff!!

#22

Actually Rigging isnt that hard. Its about creating a digital “puppet” that can be easily posed and doesnt break between poses. Thats not that hard to do really. Its not about expressions and controlling fingers with sliders and lots of cool tricky doodads and whatnots. IF you keep things simple rather then complicated youll get around to animating faster and have a more stable setup. Heres and example:
Lots of people like to control the hands with sliders and expressions thinking its a cool way to do it. The problem is that to get the proper amount of control it ends up becoming complicated and unwieldy. You need a slider to control the hand globally, then you need a slider for each finger. But to use sliders you have to set up master channels that control each finger and sliders to control each master channel. Now you have a sliders that can open and close the hand and sliders to tweak each finger. The problem is still that sometimes you need individual control over each finger bone. You dont have that level of control and now it can become even more complicated. The solution for me has been to use selection sets. What are selection sets? Say you select all the bones in every finger in the hands, you go into the scene editor and create a favorite set called All fingers. You can now select all the fingers in that set at any time. If you rotate the pitch for one bone ALL the bones rotate additively. You can create selection sets for each finger too. The great thing is you can still animate each digit of each finger because there are no expressions used. This gives far greater control then using sliders and there is practically no setup time. I can be off and animating quite quickly this way. There is also a free plugin that allows you to have your selection sets up in a floating window.

#23

Totaly agree with you Larry, although I’m not that good …
Instead of selection set, I work with shematic view and multy select finger bones with middle mouse buttons.

#24

Originally posted by Facial Deluxe
Totaly agree with you Larry, although I’m not that good …
Instead of selection set, I work with shematic view and multy select finger bones with middle mouse buttons.

Facial! Use selection sets. Much faster and easier. Plus use Lernies SelectionSetMC plugin. Your sets are there in a little window calling your name waiting for you to click on them. :slight_smile:

#25

You should upgrade to the latest lcore.dll maybe? It probably the lscript system that you have is older.

#26

Larry another way to do fingers is “Simple Orient Constraints”
Choosing the heading constrains the heading for all child bones with it activated.Or pitch or banking.
Just a thought.

#27

Originally posted by Facial Deluxe
[B]Doesn’t work for me
“Line 4 (script type master differs from architecture)”

What does it mean ?
Running 7.5 [/B]

That usually means you are running it from the wrong LScript requester. For example, trying to run a Motion Script as an Image Filter Script.

Make sure you are using the Master Plugins LScript requester - it’s an awesome script.
I really like the brother to SelectFavorites: SelectFavoritesbyItem.
With this script you can use a CustomObject! - pick that object and the fingers get selected, or whatever.
It can clutter things up sometimes, but I rather have the CustomObject than a bunch of windows.

#28

Oooops Sorry, I’m an ass, should read you more carrefully Cman!
Thanx a bunch my friend:thumbsup:

#29

This is one of the reasons keytrak kicks butt. IT lets you have keyable sets with objects and bones in them… Pose sets if you will…

Mike

#30

Here’s a simple old test made when I first tried using mocap in Lightwave last year. Just a bit of fun mostly.

http://members.aol.com/mothra321/Clops_Mocap.avi

No texturing and it still requires some obvious tweaking (feet sliding, poking through the floor etc.)

Here’s the character with some preliminary textures and fur.

#31

Nice work Chewey! And Mike, you’re a freaking genius! You guys are both an inspiration. :thumbsup:

Steve

#32

Mike, I have a question if you don’t mind. How do you use the stand in model in layout? Do you have it in the same object as the high res? Is it parented to the bones the same as the high res model so when you move the stand in model the high res model is affected the same way?

I’m curious has to how you do that because i’m working on a project right now that using stand in models would have helped tremendously.

thanks,
Todd

#33

What I do for seamless characters is create a standin by creating a lower rez version by freezing it with a low or no subpatch level.
I then chop it up so that I have a torso, head, forearms, upperarms etc etc all in their own layers.
I bring that into layout and parent each piece to the corresponding bone. I also make a selection set out of all the pieces. I make that standin version invisible. When I need to check deformations I use the subpatch version. When I need to animate and get some speed I turn off all deformations (theres a button to do that), make the subpatch version invisible, make my standin version visible and start animating. It goes very quickly. Again when I need to check deformations I make the standin invisible, the subpatch version visible and turn deformations back on. I actually used lscript commander to create two buttons that do that for me.

#34

This isn’t on topic exactly, but everytime I click on the link with movie files I get a page that says page not available, etc. I think all my browser settings are correct. Any suggestions for accessing these pages?

#35

my workflow is similar to larrys… here is the specifics:

-I model + rig hirez
-I do a merge fixed on my hirez model to reduce points until the
shape is still recognizable but way way lighter. This keeps weightmaps intact

-At this point there are 2 options, if the character is really gooey like my demon guy I…
-Clone my directory structure so that I have 2 objects folders, one with the hirez, one with the reduced
-when its time to animate I point my content folders to the low rez ones
-when its time to really check deformations and crashing, and render I point it to the hirez one and reload the scene

-Option B, non gooey character, like my robotech soldier
-Save off a seperate object representing every bone, bicep,
lowerarm, hand…
-Load them all into layout along with my rigged hirez guy
-Parent them to the appropriate bone
-Hide my actual mesh (so it renders but istn drawn in layout)
-Deactivate all my low rez stuff (so its visible in layout but will never render)
-This method has the advantage of not haiving to much around swapping stuff to animate/render

Mike

#36

Originally posted by SplineGod
What I do for seamless characters is create a standin by creating a lower rez version by freezing it with a low or no subpatch level.
I then chop it up so that I have a torso, head, forearms, upperarms etc etc all in their own layers.
I bring that into layout and parent each piece to the corresponding bone. I also make a selection set out of all the pieces. I make that standin version invisible. When I need to check deformations I use the subpatch version. When I need to animate and get some speed I turn off all deformations (theres a button to do that), make the subpatch version invisible, make my standin version visible and start animating. It goes very quickly. Again when I need to check deformations I make the standin invisible, the subpatch version visible and turn deformations back on. I actually used lscript commander to create two buttons that do that for me.

Is this something you teach in your course

#37

I sure do, thats a big part of rigging. :slight_smile:

#38

Hey Mike the old decimate crunches polys and keeps the maps. that is what I use. I also have the tootsie roll character as well.
Although I never tried the parent segment to bone method before. I’m sure this really speeds things up.
Thanks for all the cool tips so far.

Check out my new demo reel.
It’s all lightwave. with plenty of character animation.

http://korysdiner.homestead.com/files/BIG_PIC/KHI_2k2_sm.avi

#39

Thanks for opening this thread, MIke
Truly a scholar and a gentlemen.

I post some of my LW-only stuff too.

“How do you make animatable Gif”
AE a seq of files or captures of printscreens using “snapshot”

Great Tip Splinegod.

**TIP: Don’t really concentrate on making a eliquent Low res
Just decimate or QEMLOSS it to death. Make it ube rlight and get all of your Key poses and Timing down.

Then Replace with Hi res and check deformations
Go back to Low res (Hell, make object invisible and deformation off) and animate the skeleton. Using expression so foot won’t slide the floor helps keep your mind away from “is my foot going through the ground”.

Work the aniamtion like clay (or modeling course some ppl model detail at the beginning)
Rough…then detaio it out.

#40

export the avi out of premiere or whatever as a animated gif at 10fps.

Then load it into imageready and change the colors to 32 and lossy compression to 20 or 25. That gets the file size down pretty well for me.

Mike.