Most efficient way to use bendy limbs in built in character rig

[kanicki]

That didn’t work.

Mac only here, and everything else I can dig up talks about xnormals (pc)

Looking at Crazy Bump now, and it seems to have these 3 options for input:

Are you saying you created a displacement map in c4d, then used it as the input (using height map input option?) to crazy bump to generate normal tan map that you then exported from CB?

(Having vague recollections of reading something somewhere about people saying they couldn’t get normal and displacement maps to work together unless baked into single file, thought I don’t recall details)

[everfresh]

exactly, you just generate a normal map from a picture. so load in your heightmap and export it as normal… results will probably a little bit different compared to the map baked directly in c4d, but just try it out, maybe it’ll do.

regarding the tangent map baking: let me try something, gonna get back to you if i can get something usable.

[kanicki]

I’m not seeing any kind of options for normal output on CB… just a single save command with no way to specify tangent… and what I’m looking at looks like object or world map (multicolored), not tan (blue).

Regarding sculpt mode method, I can do multiple subdivide of object, and bake tan map from that onto low poly object, but there’s no ability to choose a SEPARATE object as the high poly object.

EDIT: Came across this in another forum:

But keep in mind this will not work for a full 3D object like a body.

In this case you need the workaround to bake a displacement map (from a high polygon object to low polygone object, please see the reference manual how it works) and use this baked displacement file in the displacement channel (Mode: RGB-Object) of a material and bake then the normal tangent space.

The normal tangent baking function need a displacement or a bump.

[everfresh]

here’s a normal tangent map made from a height map in crazy bump… https://gyazo.com/db448276c145ed5b9639e711396b5b2c

[kanicki]

OK, did I miss an option somewhere to select tangent vs other types, or is that just what you get when you input disp map?

[everfresh]

also baking tangent normals from a sculpt works for me… https://gyazo.com/157b802ae76a8bcdcacfb99d1126a185

[kanicki]

OK, never used sculpt (other than just to bake map), so not exactly sure how that works, but guessing it fits the desc of object being modified, so displacements can be mapped onto unmodified base object.

In my case, I have 2 separate objects One is base smooth mesh. The other is 4x sub of that base mesh which is then deformed after sub applied, so I can’t just get from one to the other by applying sub, and sculpt tag method doesn’t seem to allow choosing a separate object as the bake target… only subdivided version of itself.

Will take another look at BM. Did you select tan option somewhere that I missed? Which type of displacementmap did you feed it from c4d? Object, tangent, world, intensity, etc)? If it’s just spitting out normal map that matches the type of displacement map that was input, then…

If I understand correctly, burning a tangent displacement map from c4d won’t work for me for the same reason… because the high and low poly are two separate objects, and attempting to bake from the high poly yields zero tangential displacement since it is… itself.

[everfresh]

ok, so you’re NOT baking from a sculpt, your just baking from a high res mesh. just for shits an giggles: have you tried applying your object space normal map to the high res mesh and THEN baking out a tangent map from that?

regarding cray bump: i just fed it a heightmap (baked from c4d as “intensity centered”): https://gyazo.com/ae1bf26bed009ca84da3b7fb2e315ee0

[kanicki]

I tried a couple versions of that.

Will take another stab via CB in a moment.

[kanicki]

Ruh roh.

I’ve been working on this for quite a while, and I’m just not seeing how to generate tangent maps in this case. I keep trying increasingly complex kludges where one map is used to create another, but so far none have worked.

Makes sense to me that this would be a simple thing to do, so maybe I’m asking the wrong questions or looking for the wrong info. Here’s the basic project with high and low poly version of same face.

HILO face only.c4d (12.2 MB)

[Tyrus86]

Works perfectly fine here.

[kanicki]

I had looked through bake normals tag as well, but had missed the normals source field because it is not revealed until after the normals checkbox is ticked… which I didn’t bother doing because I saw no source field, so assumed it worked similar to sculpt tag method which assumes target and source are same (though altered) object.

Thx.

EDIT: All good now. Oddly, sweetspot for mapsize seems to have gone down to 2k which is a nice bonus. Most importantly, though, mapping now follows deformations. May have extra bonus too if doing tangent map allows brow to be mirrored with single map when I redo hair / brow maps.

Back to rigging / weighting…

[kanicki]

Normal / displacement maps all fixed (and reduced in size). Really taking my time per vertex on the weighting, though, as it’s making quite a big difference… especially in some of the more outlandish deformations for which your rig may come in handy.

Been wondering: If you’re doing basic swing motion for the arm, for instance, where it just pivots at the shoulder and nothing else… do you just disable the IK for that kind of thing? I had been disabling IK, and just animating the shoulder rotation directly, but not sure if that’s the best way.

Kind of drives me nuts in general the way moving the wrist doesn’t leave the hand in a natural position for where the wrist is. Not sure what the fix is… maybe IK chain from wrist to clavicle, and fk chan from wrist to fingertips so that when the wrist is moved, hand just follows natural positioning? Ever done anything like that?

[everfresh]

that‘s a kind of automation you don‘t want. what if you have a situation where you DON‘T want the wrist to align that way? you could implement a function though where you could dial that behavior in with a slider, so you could deactivate it in case you want to do something else with the wrist, but you would have to change the hierarchy then. you’d have to put the hand controller in a null, make a par constraint for the null and only enable rotation. target would be the last forearm joint, so that parent null of the hand controller would now always be oriented like the forearm, but you could still move the hand controller freely if needed… then you could make some xpresso to toggle that constraint on and off.

if you‘re animating in fk though the hand acts that way by default anyways. but for ik that‘s a rather strange wish of behavior. i certainly wouldn‘t animate like that.

in general, for arm swings fk is better suited, you can also get nice arm swings with ik, but it’s a bit more work to get them smooth.

[kanicki]

Lots to unpack. Still re-reading your response. Not trying to reinvent the IK wheel or anything… just trying to get minimalist arm swing for that stupid “floss” dance where the arm just swings like a pendulum with no other arm movement.

I have near total ignorance of FK, so hopefully not just asking nonsense: Are you just disabling the IK then, or referring to something more specific built into the rig that specifically EN-ables FK? (Been busy with weights, etc so not much chance to dig into controllers yet).

Are you still just using the same controllers in FK scenario (as opposed to, for instance, animating shoulder joint rotation)

Also trying to wrap my head around the lack of controller hierarchy in some chains. For instance, if you wanted the head to follow the neck, would you change the hierarchy to make head controller child of neck controller, or did I miss some other option that enables this?

[everfresh]

why not just take some time to explore the controls and THEN ask? there’s a slider to switch from IK to FK on the hand controller and there’s a slider to make the head follow the chest on the head controller.

[kanicki]

Ahh… ok. Transferring character over from a completely scratch built rig that had no such controls, so everything was dictated by the hierarchy. I’ve never seen such slider before. Didn’t know that was a thing. Will dig into controllers once weights fully dialed.

[kanicki]

I’ve spent some time now getting to know the controllers, and am happy with most of the rigging and painting, but I’ve been having a few issues with the hands, so trying to dial them in when I noticed this:

Seems to me the orientation of the joints is off. Not sure why. I don’t recall doing anything beyond moving them slightly to fit the character.

Is this by design in some way I’m missing, or do I need to go back through and reorient them?

If so, the press and hold 7 key to move a joint without affecting children doesn’t seem to work with rotations. Is there some other trick to doing this?

[everfresh]

elbow is rotated correctly, wrist is slightly off as it seems, and thumb base is completely oriented the wrong way. you must have rotated it (which you totally can and have to most of the times when adjusting handles to fit your fingers). even if you affect children it’s not that big of a deal. just rotate the hand, after that rotate the finger handle ( there‘s one for all the fingers at once) in the opposite direction. then rotate the thumb base and the the other ones on the thumb. takes 1 minute max.

also from your screenshots it seems like you put the thumb joints slightly outside the thumb, or very much on the surface. it‘s better if you put them really inside of the mesh. usually you put joints right in the center of the mesh, for fingers your general thinking is correct though to put them slightly more towards the top, but you‘ve overdone it a little.

[kanicki]

Sorry. Should’ve mentioned the screenshots were taken mid-fix, so the thumb is off due to attempting to reorient joints higher in the chain.

Fixing now, but now binding is warping… so going back up this thread to read what you said about resetting bind…

Otherwise, everything looks good.