[C5] Rigging and Skinning : bones and setup

[LoneGunman]

As I said in one of my posts, very nice tutorial.

I have a little problem.

My joint objects are HUGE, cannot see anything, look at the mess at the hand area !!! (see attachment)

Is there any way to reduce their size (looks like on your examples that they are relatively small).

Thanks for the help !

[mon_stdnt]

O_Oofthedeath" class="inlineimg" /> Sorry, but it is funny. I thought you knew, since you do great render.

Anyway, basically the fisrt bone you put starts big, but you could reduce the size with the size tool, and very bone that follows the fisrt bone one will stay the same size.

For you situation,
1:you could star all over . Just lets hope you didn't do any constraints.

2: If you did do contraints, you could still resize each individual bone, but you could still do it with out constraints.
Good luck

[LoneGunman]

Hey, don't be hard on the old man here

I seriosly did not know, so far, I used C5 only as my renderer, and I did only one animation, that's it, lots of things to discover and screw up, hehe.

Thanks for the help

[mon_stdnt]

don't sweat it

[LoneGunman]

Are the end joints (top of the finger, for example) suppose to be Locked, or have BallJoint constraints ?

[Thomas]

Effect tab and then, you can change the size display

[mon_stdnt]

not sure also, but I always leave it as it is.

[cckens]

LG,
if you lock the fingertips, the bones won't move at all. Set them as locked. This will insure that you don't have a default constraint applied when you set up the IK. I believe that you can then use the IK helper to move the whole of the model even if the end bones are locked... am I close Thomas?
Ken

Edit: Just did a check. If you lock the end bone you can still use the helper to move and you don't have the annoying default ball joint attached to it that will roll the end bone... (boy, was that a pain to figure out...)
-K

[Thomas]

it can be a good way, yes ;)

[LoneGunman]

Any chance of giving me right direction on how to do eyes, when I attach body and eyes together, at the same time, I cannot rotate them.

However if I do body first, and then eye in the second "pass" I can rotate eye but pivot point constantly shifts somewhere else, strange...

[mon_stdnt]

Never tried it, but what if you do seperate bones for the eyes.Unless that is what you ment when you said "second".

[cckens]

Link the eyes to the parent head in the assemble room and set them up with a "point at" modifier to a helper object. Contraints on the object should be set to ball joint. then when you move the helper, the eyes will follow. I usually use 2 invisible helpers (one for each eye) and a parent, so that I can move each eye indiviually. It's only really good for a lizard with independant eyes, but I at least have the focal points right. If you move the one helper setup too close, you get the figure crosseyed. I'll try to post a demo later...
Ken

[cckens]

LG,
Here is a method for attaching movable eyes. It's pretty simplistic, but it does function quite well in most situations.
Luck to you!
Ken

[LoneGunman]

Thank you so much, your help is appreciated

[bwtr]

Good one. Thanks also.

[Schmitah]

Great tutorial, very informative! One thing though, I did this with a relatively low poly character and it works fine but every time I rotate or move one of the hands or rotate and move the camera in the scene with this selected there is a very iritating pause as my cpu spikes at 100 percent. Is this to much computing for carrara to do and if so that is disconcerting for a newbie to this program from 3ds max.

[Thomas]

Schmitah: yes, Carrara need some improvments one real time "animation" like moving the bones and having the deformations on realtime...

[Schmitah]

Ah I see what my problem was, I just switched the interactive renderer to OpenGL and all was gravey I hope this helps someone with similar problems

[mon_stdnt]

I tried following the tutorial, but I can never get the bones to duplicate with symmmetry.

When I do it it duplicates what in the same side with a little rotation. I'm I doing something wrong or I'm I missing something?

[Thomas]

In your capture, you didn't unchecked the use constraint option for your symmetry (check again the tutorial