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Yes Pjotter and anyone who post help in the forum. The number of folks who ever view and learn from your help it is really hard to gauge but I can say one thing its always more than just the person your helping. So --yes indeed --thanks for your long explanation -----it was informative.
rich
Like I said, I'm really bogged down right now and don't have the time to mess with weight painting.
Wow... you did type out a response didn't you! Fantastic. Just so I don't lose this info, I've copy/pasted it to my desktop.
Thank you. Very kind of you to help so much.
Roy,
It's not the mesh. The mesh is beautiful. But I need weight painting to get the results I need - I don't know what else to say about it. Maybe I stink is all it is... but to get this guy walking, emoting, seeing the coin and getting surprised and stopping to pick it up, look at it, put the coin in his pocket and walk off again... I need those joints working the way I want them to work.
Again, I've never even attached a skeleton before - so it this model setup process, I'm dumbfoundedly noobersome. As an animator, I feel deep inside, what I need it to do. Is it your skeleton I downloaded? Whichever I have - It's nice... but not for me. Love that model, though!
Hey Guys,
I just uploaded the 2nd part of the Carrara Walkcycle creation video to youtube. I had to break the video in half as it went over 15 minutes so it ends abruptly, I will upload the 2nd half of this clip soon. It takes way longer to upload the video then it took to make it.
Anyways stay tuned as there are 2 more videos that cover the creation of the walk cycle. So , check out the video.
Dartanbeck, thanks for the comments on the mesh.
http://youtu.be/FitzvGgLmHQ Tutorial 2 part 1
http://youtu.be/ri7P8UeDcDI Tutorial 2 part 2
http://youtu.be/HhqsIv6d-T0 Last tutorial
I don't know which one you downloaded - I've posted one and Mike posted several. I couldn't work with Mike's - the IK was weird and even after removing that there were other issues. That needed weight-painting because the left foot was way up by the knee, so the right foot took over the left. I was watching his video, but that got stuck at six minutes, so all I saw was him removing the IK.
Still, he managed to get a decent walk going, so must have gotten it right.
I'm on the track of finding out why the orientation goes wonky - found out that when I change the rotation order when setting constraints, this doesn't change the default rotation order under the motion tab. Busy going through the whole skeleton now, fixing that and it has all gone pear-shaped, so may have to remake the skeleton a third time if I can't get manual orientation to work.
I'm using angles instead of quaternion and that does seem to be better - time will tell.
One of the biggest drawbacks with using Carrara rigging is that you don't get to see the mesh while rigging - it does help a bit to have it in wireframe view, so that you can get to see the joints better for precise placement.
Another thing I found in the past, before I gave up entirely on rigging in Carrara is that if you find influences in weird places, such as the hip affecting the head, no amount of painting and subtracting will fix it - it just gets worse and worse.
Something that has become glaringly obvious - a few years ago, if you asked a question in the forum regarding rigging, you'd get a lot of very informative replies - not any more. Seems the old-fashioned hand animators have vanished from here:)
Roygee, I don't know why the video stopped at 6 minutes.... maybe try again. I am in the process of uploading more videos on creating the walk cycle.
As far as placing the bones I find it pretty nice in Carrara.. Try this.
1.Go to Front view or view with Character facing you .
2.Select the bone Tool and start drawing the rig.
3.The bones should be in front of the character and you should clearly see both the bones and mesh.
4.Try using the Shift key and dragging while the bone is where you want it to scale the bone joint up or down.
5. Once the skeleton is done in the Front view go to the Top View and move skeleton in to place.
6 To help in selecting the bones either use the Right Click when you are hovering over the bones to bring up the selection list or
have another View window open and have it to display in box or wireshading.
I don't know if this will solve your issues but hopefully it helps.
Also, instead of weightpainting you could just try adding and deleting bones in the Bones tab of the Vertex rooms Animation tab.
Hi Mike :)
I think you misunderstand - I have no issues placing bones - I do this in two views, either top or side and front view - front for the placing and top or side for adjusting into the centre of the mesh. When I say you can't see the mesh, I mean the detail of the mesh - as seem in the VM - this makes placing the pivot point precisely on, say, a knuckle joint a bit of a bother when seen in shaded view.
Two things I will concede about Carrara rigging - after Blender and Anim8or, it is the simplest application for making a rig and it is very good at calculating weights - provided the mesh is good and the bones are correctly placed.
It is what happens afterwards - setting constraints and rotation order, weight-painting when required, the dotted line bones that get in the way, orientation going pear-shaped, IK not being firm enough in pinning, no real-time playback, but mostly bones selection changing while trying to move them that made me abandon any hopes of character animation in Carrara:)
Still, I'm determined to see this one through - who knows, maybe we'll get sufficient folk interested in home-made animation to get Daz to take some interest in resolving these issues:)
A couple of tips that may help,after seeing a part of your video. When you adjust the length or placement of bones, disengage "lock child bones" - this will prevent the child bones from being pulled out of place. Secondly, rather use target helper objects than the default box that is generated when you make an IK chain. They are more precise, have less "play" and can be coloured to distinguish them.
Second part?!!!
Sheeesh I gotta buy some time.
I did a search at Daz3d, can't find any actual Time - you know... Hours, Days... better yet, like... a couple weeks!
Bah... never mind. Hard enough to pay the utilities - I'll never be able to buy something like...
Time. Drats!
Can't wait to see those vids, though.
Thanks for all of this everyone.
I find it very easy to create a skeleton bone rig in Carrara. Mine turned out great - well... except according to Roy, 'cause I certainly need weight mapping. But after reviewing the stuff Pj noted down, I know what I did wrong - I know I can fix it now. This is so cool.
I made mine so that I think I should be able to animate him without difficulty.
I've also found that selecting Carrara bones is quite simple if you know exactly where they are, by simply clicking on them. For Gen 4 Daz figures, I right-click all the time. This is different.
I'll try it without any weight painting aside from the part I really want to iron out when I lower the arms. See how that goes.
I have a dropbox account already. I'll just have to dig around and find the link to this one so I can browse the folder for stuff - as well as upload some anims when I finish some.
Also, Geeze Mike. You truly have a talent for working with Carrara terrains and plants and such. I just noticed that I've never bought your latest Island Resort product - which I really want as Rosie's Secret hideout.
This place you've got in the dropbox is so cool! Just sayin'
Edit:
What I was trying to say in the last part is: Hey mmoir... Make some more really cool Carrara products.
With all of the new Carrara users out there, the store needs more Carrara goodies. It ain't just all about Poser and DS and Bryce anymore. We want/need Carrara to take over and rule the roost in the content using world! Everything else is just pretend!
Here are all of the 4 videos links
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkX5hL5OwpE&feature=youtu.be First Part of Video
http://youtu.be/FitzvGgLmHQ Tutorial 2 part 1
http://youtu.be/ri7P8UeDcDI Tutorial 2 part 2
http://youtu.be/HhqsIv6d-T0 Last tutorial
Roygee, I understand what you mean about the placing of the bones issue now and thanks for the tips on the "bone children" locking issue.
Dartanbeck, I was toying with the idea of creating an actually character in Carrara that is ready to be animated as an item for the Daz store. It is just a thought right now.
Mike - I managed to watch all your videos without any freezing - very enlightening. I see why you are such a good modeler - such attention to detail :)
I like your approach to the walk cycle - flies in the face of conventional wisdom which says the whole cycle must be made "in place" - marking time - and only then move it forward. , which I feel is the cause of all the floating and foot slippage one sees in other animations.
In fact, before I gave up on it, I was experimenting with a similar approach, but using THO's to nail the feet to the ground and moving the hips forward to above the front foot - this gave a feel of weight transference. This involved much switching on and off of THO influence. At the time NLA looping was broken, so I never perfected this technique.
With this new-found enthusiasm, I'll give it another go:)
Couple of questions, if I may. You are not using IK, so how do you get the knee to bend and the thigh to lift when you lift the foot? Secondly, I see you are using axis constraint on the knees - I wanted to do this, but couldn't find a method to select the right axis. If you look in the manual, the selection boxes shown in the manual are not present in the UI. Apparently this was an oversight a few versions back that was never fixed.
@Dartenbeck - no problem selecting a bone - the problem is keeping it selected. When the tool overlays other bones the selection switches to the underlying bone when trying to move it, so you have to get into all kinds of views to get it into a position where it is not overlaying another bone. With my 19" monitor, that is a real challenge.
Same sort of situation in the VM - using the same tool for selection and translation leads to all kinds of grief.
It sounds silly, but it makes a huge difference. Now, if we could apply the same function that the Gen4's have, and hide the bones altogether - then it may be easier. These problems your having here are also apparent with Genesis.
Mike,
Do it man! Do it!
Not sure what you mean in your first point. In Assembly > Edit mode I can see my mesh and the bones and edit whatever I want.
Read my explanation on page 3. Although Wendy doesn't agree, I am right. Or it went wrong because Carrara assigned vertices to the hip while attaching mesh to skeleton. Or you have used the subtract option when weight painting. Give it a try, select head in WP and use subtract a lot. Then select hip in WP.
Never use subtract; it makes everything worse. Only in the hip area itself it is usable.
Let me know if I am right or wrong, so we can move on.
lol, ok then, I will just agree then and continue doing what I am doing when rigging stuff in Carrara to use in iClone because it works. %-P
for me ;-P
and
nah I cannot do animations but that is why I buy aniblocks and stuff.
am going to be busy doing other stuff so prob not adding any more to this project but learnt quite a lot from it.
just remember
there is more than one way to skin a cat
(or bone one)
nothing is right or wrong in my eyes, just alternative approaches.
Mike --- your videos are awesome . Thanks so much for taking the time to go through this. And what is best of all I think many many people will benefit from stuff like this. You really are pushing character animation out there for more folks and this is what so many think of when they think of 3d.
Now admittedly ---you have great skills in modeling and making a character is no short order but I think if you continue some more of these type videos and maybe some on the modeling of characters ------you will have not only taught and trained many but most importantly ---Inspired them !!!
Not to mention helping build the nucleus of an animating crew for the community movie project. Smiles.
Thanks --Thanks --Thanks
Rich
Roygee
I have some answers for you .
For the knee bending issue . I think all you have to do is put an IK Terminator on the Hip bone above the foot you are working on.
So...
1.Select the left hip bone if you are working on the left foot.
2. go to Properties Tray/Modifiers tab and add IK Terminator .
You should be able to move the foot and bend the knee..
I don't know what you mean by "select the right axis" I just rotate using the yellow ring or co-planar with the camera.
For when moving a bone you select another bone try this(I had this issue too.)
1. Usually when I am selecting the root bone I would end up moving the bone above it .
2. So, select the bone above the root bone
3. Go to Properties Tray/Effects tab and uncheck "Display wireframe when attached"
or a simpler way.
1. Just select the bone you accidentally select all the time.
2. In the General Tab uncheck the "Visible" option
You can still see the bone but you cant select it so if you want to rotate that bone in the future you have to check "visible" again.
Mike
Thanks for the comments and you're welcome.
Mike - yes, I know how to set up and use IK - what I was getting at is that in your video, you removed IK and I never saw an IK chain after that, but when you lifted the foot, the leg behaved as if it had IK - just wondering how that was done.
About the axis constraint - it defaults to parallel to the ground plane and they left out the boxes to select which axis to constrain to, so was wondering how you got it perpendicular to the ground. Finally figured it out - set X = -180, Y = 90, Z = -180. Set the actual constraints under the yellow circle. This doesn't seem to be a very good constraint to use in character animation any case, as the rotation axis is always in the Z-plane.
Good tip regarding making pesky bones unselectable - bit of a nuisance, but will help greatly - thank you:)
@ Pjotter - what I meant was that in the assembly view, you don't get to see the actual mesh - edges, verts and polys - as you do in the VM. Modelers cut in extra edge loops in joints to aid with good deformation and bone pivot points should be correctly placed to take advantage of the extra loops. It would be useful to be able to see these extra loops.
BTW - I solved the problem of manually re-setting the orientation. Disengaged "use constraints" and it worked!
I hope you don't mind me answering this. Weird as it sounds, whatever you do, you cannot remove IK once it is there. You can remove everything visible, including the blue lines. But there is still IK. But now you have to select the last bone from the IK chain.
I think this is a nice feature, but it is hidden because it is not mentioned anywhere in the (outdated) manual. Thanks Daz.
This makes a very strong point for moving the rigging from the ass room to the VM - imagine how much easier it would be if you could see the mesh and the bones while weight-painting:)
In Anim8or, for instance, while you are weight-painting, you see all bones and the mesh - each bone has a different colour and the mesh it influences takes on the same colour, with falloff areas being shades of the two, so you can see at a glance the entire weight-map, as well as unmapped or wrongly mapped verts and not only the influence of the bone you are working on.
Thanks for the explanation regarding the invisible IK - very interesting. BTW, you can get rid of all IK influences under the animation tab, "Set IK and constraints"
Roygee,
For the Axis constraint , I had set up an IK Chain on this guy and then removed them and all the leftover modifiers etc. I think the axis is set up perpendicular to the ground because the IK chain tool set it up this way not me.
On the issue of seeing the mesh while placing the bones you could try going to the "Interactive Render Settings" window (up arrow in a circle in top right of GUI) and select the "Outline Polys" .. It will be maybe a little better than using the wireframe view you mention.
Good to know about the disabling the constraints and reorienting the joints.
P.S. I tend to give step by step descriptions not nessecarily for the poster but for anyone who may be reading the post so they can follow along.
Pjotter,
I don't know about this, at first I thought you were right but now I am not so sure.... I can create a skeleton with no IK at all and it will react very much like it has IK on it . Try creating a quick humanoid skeleton and use "ball constraints" for all the arms and leg bones. Use the "none" constraint for all the rest of the bones ..
Now if you grab the heel bone and move up , the knee will bend . If you select the Toe and move it the whole leg will move . The only difference is you wont move the spine or past the shoulder which sometimes you want. Is it possible this is what you are seeing and thinking this is part of an IK system.
I don't mind if you answer any questions at all, your or others answers could be better than mine.
Mike
Hey Guys,
I have added a couple of NLA clips for you to play with , for the 2nd NLA clip I edited the first clip and moved his feet closer together when looking at him in the front view. This looks a little more natural.
To use these NLA clips just download the character , delete the 4 IK Targets as I didn't use them when I created the NLA clips . You don't have to worry about removing the IK modifiers etc . just delete the IK Targets. Load the clips into the Browser/Clip tab then drag into the Properties Tray/Clips tab then drag onto the NLA Track of the Animation Group of the character.
https://www.box.com/s/8bzt17wtpfogtq2n7ztn NLA clip for walk cycle
https://www.box.com/s/79268elvul9xb9us4091 NLA clip , updated (feet closer together when looking at him from front view.)
https://www.box.com/s/luybw7czjejh7puiw8vx The model of the Man character
Carrara works different. "Give my "manual" on page 3 a try. Works perfect. At first I didn't understand why Carrara had two options of adjusting bone influence. In short, do the rough version with WP and fine tune it, using the bones tab. This one works the opposite. With WP you select a bone and adjust. On the bones tab, you select for instance a polygon and adjust. Here you can see the mesh and the bones. Maybe not in color, but I don't miss that.
No you can't. Yes you remove it all, but the IK will still be there. Just grab the foot.
Mmoir, this is interesting. You are right. It seems as soon as you add constraint joints to a sequence of bones, everything is IK, without the blue line. But if there is a joint with "none", the IK does only work to that "none" joint. But if you than add an IK chain to it, the whole sequence is IK chained again.
Good call on using "outline polys", Mike - much better than wireframe:)
I've come across a really weird effect. Because I had a problem getting the eyes weight-painted, I separated them from the main model and parented to the head. Each eye has a THO with a "point at" modifier and these THO's are parented to a controlling THO - this setup works really well for synching eye movement - until I parented the control THO to the head - now it controls the whole upper body from the abdomen!
It acts as if there is IK connected from the control THO through the head to the abdomen - I must emphasize that I have never attached any IK to this rig.
Can anyone explain this behavior and possibly give a method of getting the eyes and THO's to follow the head when the neck is rotated and not the other way round?
Roygee,
I don't know but you could try and Bone the eyes , see the image which shows you the skeleton etc.
Hey Guys ,
Here is my latest Walkcycle animation test. This time I used IK Targets on the feet because when I rotate the hips the only way the feet would stick to the ground was with the IK Targets.. I guess I could rotate the hips before placing the feet....
Anyways, I think this is getting closer.
Mike
http://youtu.be/sjiK9QRr944 Latest walkcycle animation
Very nice. If you just add a bit of motion to the forearms... you'll have a great motion for this cartoon!
More realistic stuff would do better with all of the hip rotations and z translations, etc., which would, in turn, requires a pile of rotations to the abs and chest, neck and head to stay aligned.
But for the cartoon look that he has... I wouldn't go through that stuff... just the forearms! Really nice!
Hi Mike - yes, the eye rig is OK and understandable - I was just trying out something that I read about years ago here to synch the eye movements with one controller and came across this very weird behavior.
As a matter of interest, how were you able to get the eyes weighted without affecting other parts of the head? Only thing I can think of is that you would need to hide parts of the head mesh to get to the eyes?
Amazing how discussion of things like walk cycles makes one more observant of how real people move. Through closely observing actual people, I have come to the conclusion that all this talk of shoulder and hip rotations is a bunch of baloney. Only catwalk models and movie ganster-rapster-pimp people walk the way folks here have been describing. Also, most people walk with the toes of the forward-moving foot barely clearing the ground - no high-steppin' thigh-liftin' action. Also, only soldiers on parade walk with a pronounced leading foot heel-toe movement - ordinary people have a barely perceptible, almost flat-footed, leading foot landing.
So, are we looking for a "real" walk , or a cartoon character exaggerated hip-and-shoulder swinging, knee-bounce walk?
Roygee
Just a thought .....
Could you have just the "Point At" modifier on each eye and have it point to just a regular cube . You can see if this makes any difference.
Mike