Rigging answers needed please!

[Tez]

Im having a go at rigging and have added some bones and set a IK chain from base of a arm to the wrist.

Iv set the constraints for rotation but have some problems.

When setting up the constaints I found I could not use Fk on the joints to set the limits, I had to use the constraint sliders.

Now what I thought was a feature turns out to be some kind of limitation, that being when I move the constraint slider to see where I want to set the limit, I can move the camera slightly and it sets the slider to 0, allowing me to copy the values for its limits first, then paste the vales - /+ to the lower and upper limit constraint sliders, I asume thats the fastest way to set constaints?

Now! when I go to move any limb above the Ik chain, i.e the wrist using FK movments, the position or rotation sets back to zero, just springs back?

It would seem that once Ik chains are in place I can no longer have FK control?

Second problem is I can seem to get the maniulator to change between local and world axis?

Finnal question is, can I have a bone movment effect a morph target, like bending the arm moving making muscles bulge?

Thanks to anyone that can help.

[-ash-]

Haven't done any rigging in Carrara, so I can't help - sorry.

Hopefully someone else has the knowledge you need.

[sadot]

At this time Carrara can only do one of those things...
In the Essemble room you can change from "Universe" to "Local" just selecting one of this manipulators (see attached images)

[jawra]

Hello

1. You can use FK and IK only if you didn't set IK-Target for IK chain.

2. You can use FK for setting constraints limits but make sure (1.) and disabled rotations in constraint are set to 0.

3. I've seen somewhere in internet example of rigging for muscle bending in carrara - just find it.

And small tip for rigging work-flow :
1-set up bones
2-orient joints
3-set up constraints
4-set up IK
5-attach skeleton .

Can you post your .car file ?

[Tez]

Thanks to everyone posted. Iv been making loads of rigs ditching each one as they fail.
That order of workflow mite get mebetter results. It would be realy nice to have my first ever fully rigged character. Iv not used Carrara for much but realy would like to achive this. To have some kind of morph control from joint movment would be very, very helpfull.

Il post my .car files when I make another one. Again thanks to everyone who posted iv gained somthink from all posts.

[pem]

Hey Tez,

It's a long time since you posted but I thought I'd just pipe up with a few tips.

I've been working on a figure rig in Carrara and discovered a few things:

- a reverse foot rig for the feet is possible, just follow the usual instructions for setting up a reverse foot. I got my instructions from a book, 3D Character setup and looking online.

- mixed IK and FK on an arm rig is possible but there is no blending. IK can be toggled on and off in the modifiers box and you can even stack IK targets, switching from one to the other (first one in the list has priority if both are active) but the switching is always an all or none affair.

- With IK off you can use FK on a chain but keep in mind that the moment in the timeline where you turn IK back on, the chain will jump to the position calculated by the IK. The way around this is to create keyframes for all the bone positions and rotations in the chain and not just the IK target position and rotation at the beginning and end time after setting the start and end positions with IK.

- Although the IK solution figures out position and rotation of the objects in the chain, it does not propogate rotation up the chain: for example, if you have a chain of 3 bones and each can rotate 90 degrees, rotating the IK target 270 degrees will NOT rotate each bone 90 degrees. The end bone will simply stop rotating at 90 and the next bone higher up will not rotate. You can probably get around this using something like Cognito but havent' tried it yet.

- As you have discovered, once you add constraints to a chain, all the rotations are done via constraint values and not actual bone/object rotation values. Worse yet, constraint values are not adjustable via the graph editor.

I am working on an arm rig where I duplicate all the arm bones using target helper objects (THOs) and set all the bones to track the rotations of THOs. This way I can use the graph editor with the rotations of the target helper objects. The trick is to not move them and to not use constraints on the THOs. Something like Driven could be useful but there isn't a version for C6. Cognito can be used, but it requires setting up a duplicate rig controlled by Cognito and then setting all the bones to track the duplicate rig. I've proved it can be done but haven't done it on a proper character rig yet. I figure cognito could be useful for controlling the arm.

As you can see, better rigging tools or at least some basic scripting/linking tools where you can get one object to control another are necessary for better character animation in Carrara. At least, either constraint values have to be editable in the graph editor or a chain with constraints on it uses an object's rotation for position of the objects in the chain and constraints are only used for checking when an object goes out of bounds.

[Tez]

Pem, thankyou so much for your time to write all of this. When I try rigging again, I will re- read all of this again and hopfully get further.

I remember rigging in XSI and Max and it was so much easyer in some cases. Its a shame that FKs cant be turned off without re-setting the positions, bit of a pain. I normaly create key frames right at the beginning of original position when making the rig.

Ik Fk blending is realy needed, or at least FK turned off without having a diverse effect. Messiah studio is bliss compared to Carrar, Daz3d needs to sort a few things out to make it fully equipt.

Thanks again.

[Noviski]

There's an old link, but can help a lot for a basic rigged model. The rotational limits of human joints:

http://www.3dark.com/archives/human_joints_limits.html

I hope it could help you.

[Jammaroo]

Just recently started a thread over at Daz about advancing Carrara's rigging.
Here is what I started the post with...
http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=92526

I have been seeing all kinds of rigging solutions on the internet done in programs like maya for instance and came up with some ideas of how such things could be implemented in the next version of Carrara.
What I would like to see is...
1.A morph deformer , when attached to a figure it provides an on screen manipulator that tracks and applies a selected morph target through movement.Also the ability to link morph deformers to IK chains can be beneficial and would allow for joint controlled morphs.

2.A squash and stretch deformer , much like the magnet deformer but uses a pincushioning effect rather than pulling.The manipulator would be similar to the magnet deformer with a zone , base and
effector.Ability to Link with IK chains as well.Differs from the existing squash and stretch modifier.

3.Bend and twist deformer , like the squash and stretch except for bending and twisting and can link to IK chains also.Differs from the existing bend and twist modifier.

4.Muscle object deformer , attached between IK points to simulate the flexing of muscles beneath a skinned model for softbody dynamics.Although the proposed morph deformer could essentially do the same thing the muscle object deformer could produce more realistic effects when it comes to simulations.
These new deformers can expand on for more customized rigging done in Carrara to those found in other software.They would allow for more on screen involvement and make animating and posing more efficient when
setup.

They have been submitted as feature request and I need more community
input for Daz to see first hand.Your voice is welcome.

[Tez]

I do think these things should be added to make Carrara a more compete animation soloution. Unfortunatly, I have just too many others issue with Carrara that makes any animation additions worthless to me, here are a few.

Memory errors resulting in crashes and non responsive software.
Under quality micro displacments and bump detail.
Poor SSS quality and features.
Problems with dynamics for hair.
Slow render times.
Unrealiable and slow material previews.
No IK/FK blending.
No direct soloution for FK movment with IK chains in place.
Less than good enougth manual or video training provided by Daz3d.
Overall render quality needs to be better to be my finnal render output.
More file type export like MDD and saving rigs for other industry appliciations.

[Duke_of_vampires]

Slow render times.

you are kidding, aren't you?

[Tez]

Originally Posted by Duke_of_vampires

you are kidding, aren't you?

Im certainly not kidding. On a scene with high quality textures applied with medium lighting and HDR it takes 10x longer than Modo to render a single frame. Takes too long to calculate the lighting.