Rigging Questions for Joe Cosman -- or anyone

[MarkInTx]

OK, I’ve gone through Joe’s 2 Rigging CDs, and a couple of questions came up… I was wondering if anyone could help me with these?

1. You have a skeleton called: Man. You have a bone called Man_RightArm, which is selected. When you use the + key to add a child bone to that one, it’s default name is: Man_Bone_1. OK… this is a nit… but am I the only one who thinks the default name should be: Man_RightArm_1? Or something like that? (Yeah, I know, it’s a small thing… but I was surprised by the default…)

2. Joe creates the leg bone by first creating a bone the length of the whole thigh. He sets its heading and everything exactly the way he wants it, and then grabs it and makes it half size. He then adds a child to the bone. OK, I get that. By doing it this way, he makes sure the child is set the right way, too. BUT… when he does the arm, he starts to do the same thing, and when he has the long bone, he hits the “Split Bone” button, which makes the one bone 2. So… my question: Is this just two different ways of doing the same thing? Or is there a reason why he did it one way on the leg, and another on the arm?

3. Joe sets the bones on half the model, and then mirrors it. Very cool stuff. And then in the last section, he shows how you can clean everything up… even going so far as to turn off the channels that aren’t used for each given bone (i.e. turn of bank, heading and pitch…) I loved that! But… I wondered… would it be better to clean these up first before you mirrored them so you didn’t have to do all of those clean-up steps for the mirrored bones as well? Or am I really just being too damn lazy here?

And, finally…

4. Joe First shows how the IK of the leg can be set by using the “Calculate IK” feature in animate. But then, he shows how that can be done, instead, by using variables and expressions. So… is one way better than the other? He changed all of his IK to expressions in the Tut, and I wondered why? It seemed less trouble to use the “Calculate IK”. Is there a performance reason why it’s better to use Expressions?

Thanks all for bearing with the newbie!

[isobarxx]

1. You have a skeleton called: Man. You have a bone called Man_RightArm, which is selected. When you use the + key to add a child bone to that one, it’s default name is: Man_Bone_1. OK… this is a nit… but am I the only one who thinks the default name should be: Man_RightArm_1? Or something like that? (Yeah, I know, it’s a small thing… but I was surprised by the default…)

Well it’s your rig so it’s totally up to you, but in general it’s easier to know what your expressions are doing if you include the object type in its name. That way you know Man_RightArm is different than Man_RightArm_Control (or whatever). It is extra typing, but it helps when you come back in a week and have to figure out what the heck is going on, especially with expressions.

2. Joe creates the leg bone by first creating a bone the length of the whole thigh. He sets its heading and everything exactly the way he wants it, and then grabs it and makes it half size. He then adds a child to the bone. OK, I get that. By doing it this way, he makes sure the child is set the right way, too. BUT… when he does the arm, he starts to do the same thing, and when he has the long bone, he hits the “Split Bone” button, which makes the one bone 2. So… my question: Is this just two different ways of doing the same thing? Or is there a reason why he did it one way on the leg, and another on the arm?

You are correct. Same difference.

3. Joe sets the bones on half the model, and then mirrors it. Very cool stuff. And then in the last section, he shows how you can clean everything up… even going so far as to turn off the channels that aren’t used for each given bone (i.e. turn of bank, heading and pitch…) I loved that! But… I wondered… would it be better to clean these up first before you mirrored them so you didn’t have to do all of those clean-up steps for the mirrored bones as well? Or am I really just being too damn lazy here?

Good point. That would be a lot easier. Laziness is the bastard father of invention, right? =)

4. Joe First shows how the IK of the leg can be set by using the “Calculate IK” feature in animate. But then, he shows how that can be done, instead, by using variables and expressions. So… is one way better than the other? He changed all of his IK to expressions in the Tut, and I wondered why? It seemed less trouble to use the “Calculate IK”. Is there a performance reason why it’s better to use Expressions?

Using expressions gives you finer control over what happens first, and it keeps everything organized in one place. It also lets you do fun things like make a slider to turn the IK on/off.

[MarkInTx]

Good point. That would be a lot easier. Laziness is the bastard father of invention, right? =)

Thanks for the reply!

Hmmm… my wife has a different saying about “laziness”… can’t remember it exactly… but I seem to remember that the word Bastard is definitely in there!

[WoodyLWG]

Using IK2D expression is easier for me, plus, it’s nice to have everything in one tidy stack.

Joe’s tutorials are great - I’ve learned alot from them.

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