Rigging: Smooth Movement of mesh; a little help?

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In a character creation process, rigging is always the worst demon. While getting characters to move is easy enough, doing it so the mesh follows properly is is a dreadfully taxing issue that seems to have no true solution.

I know I'm probably a greenhorn to rigging in most respects, but the kind of character's I'm creating are vastly different in proportion to a norml human, particularly the legs, which are perhaps a fourth what they should be as far as length and proportion.

Therefore, rigging pants is terrible to endure. Not only do they have to follow bones of inadequate size, but they have to blend correctly, which seems impossible.

Here is a picture of the current situation. I have tried all sorts of combinations of envelope strength, falloff, vertex assignment. I just can't seem to get it properly smooth.



If anyone has any tips of any sort, please put them forward. THNX =)
 
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Lots of problems with collasing and there's probably some bad assignments in there from the look too. Don't worry, the hips are one of the major areas where people have difficulty rigging especially when the model itself isn't in normal human proportions.

My suggestion is to draw a couple of pictures of the character with the leg bent and then try and meet that kind of deformation by going over it multiple times. Keying it out that way makes a lot of difference just like a concept sheet with modelling makes a big difference.

Try it out a few times that way and if you need some help just contact me on msn : [email protected]. I'll try to help as much as I can.
 
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"Keying it out"? "Going over it multiple times?" Sorry, but what do you mean? Just "keep at it"? It almost sounds like you're talking about using morphs which makes little to no sense at all in rigging.
 
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It looks like you need to adjust the envelopes. If that doesn't work you'll need to go in and adjust the weights on the vertices.
 
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It'll also help to give us a wire frame shot of the model, because some of the problems might be arising from the way you built it, and we might be able to help you correct them before you put anyore hours into rigging.
 
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I'm using Physique, not skin. You can't do vertex wieghts with physique. God, I'm trying everything I can think of and nothing works. I assign vertices to the thigh and then to the pelvis and the pant-leg deforms so that the leg is stocking out. I change envelope strength and either I take away all strength from the pelvis and have the pants move at the very top, or I have at least ONE spot where thevertices collapse over each other.

Its a nightmare, you really have no idea.


EDIT:

Okay, you wanted wireframes, you got 'em (mostly).



 
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I use physique and skin, not morph. I hate morph..so much.

By 'keying it out' I mean set some keyframes to test the movement going back and forth and make some concept drawing and try and match it up. while the movement is going on, just look where the deforming is wrong and try and mess around with rigging the verticies as rigged or smooth ( red and green verts ) and see what happens. I know that if your using biped you may want to switch over to making your own bones and rigging with them to make things easier with deformation on low poly type models.

Best Way For Good Deformation :
Perhaps the model should be reorganized to be smoother as well and given more vertices. The model has a lot to do with good deformation, this will increase polycount but overall it'll make the rigging and animation process a hell of a lot easier. It does look pretty high poly so I think your assignment might be trickier.

If you still need help just PM me and send me the max file over msn and I can try to see what I can do with it or you can just keep trying. You may have to rerig it over and over again to get it right and perhaps even change the model before things work out
 
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Well things are getting slightly better. I decided to use optimize and then reapply the physique. Too many verts kept getting in the way. I'm experimenting with skin as opposed to physique. It seems to be working a bit better, but I don't know how to select what vertices belong to what bone link. Anyone know?
 
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J-Dude said:
Well things are getting slightly better. I decided to use optimize and then reapply the physique. Too many verts kept getting in the way. I'm experimenting with skin as opposed to physique. It seems to be working a bit better, but I don't know how to select what vertices belong to what bone link. Anyone know?
In the Physique modifier you should come across a button that says "Selecy by link". Click that button and then click on the link on your model and it should show the verticies that are releted to that particular link :) hope this helps.
 
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If you're using physique then like Mr. Phonso said just click select by link and you will what verts/assignments are given to that bone. For Skin just click envelope then on one of the bones it will highlight the vertexes that the envelope takes over and depending if you have it selected will show the weight of what it's pulling.

From the wireframe I see a lot of waste of polys and stuff but I'm going to take into count that this is definitely not for any sort of game and say that the assignment would be difficult as youd have to pick and choose which verts are attached to what, the flow is slightly off too so that'll help bad deforming. Remember to assign according to muscle groups, thats a biggy too for good deformation.
 
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Mr. Phonso said:
In the Physique modifier you should come across a button that says "Selecy by link". Click that button and then click on the link on your model and it should show the verticies that are releted to that particular link :) hope this helps.
Sorry dude, I know all about physique (except for bulge and tendons editor). I was talking about the skin modifier, which yields closer to my desires results, but also is difficult to select vertices like in physique and add them to a link. Thank you tho =)
 

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