Some Success!

Felasco · Sep 5, 2016

Some Success!

Ok, I rigged a character, created a very basic animation, and exported to a movie. A start. I'm happy now! Yes, it can happen.

This video is what worked for me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uymlc8OUggA

Are bones another word for rigging? As example, if I export a character from MakeHuman with bones, is that a built-in rig? Does rig = bones = skeleton?

Correction: I can rig and animate naked characters. As soon as I put clothes on them, the whole thing falls apart. I tried grouping the clothes with mesh, but doesn't seem to help.

Shift Studio · Sep 6, 2016

In my mind this is how they relate. A 'skeleton' is a bunch of 'bones' arranged in a hierarchy. A 'rig' is a 'skeleton' bound to a mesh.

Hope this helps, and I hope that is pretty much accurate.
--shift studio.

Shift Studio · Sep 6, 2016

Felasco said:
As soon as I put clothes on them, the whole thing falls apart. I tried grouping the clothes with mesh, but doesn't seem to help.

You'll need to merge the body, clothes, hair, etc. meshes into a single mesh before binding the skeleton to it.
--shift studio.

Felasco · Sep 7, 2016

In my mind this is how they relate. A 'skeleton' is a bunch of 'bones' arranged in a hierarchy. A 'rig' is a 'skeleton' bound to a mesh.

Ok, that makes sense, I get it now.

Shift Studio said:
You'll need to merge the body, clothes, hair, etc. meshes into a single mesh before binding the skeleton to it.
--shift studio.

I'm having more luck today, and now have a waving character with clothes etc standing in front of a photo in the background. I did that by grouping the character mesh with the asset meshes.

Is that what you mean by merging? Or is that something else?

Next Question: Is there a way to make the clothes temporarily vanish or become transparent so I can see the skeleton and joints while animating?

What I'm doing now is mousing around in a random manner until I find a joint. That sorta works, but I'm guessing there must be a better way.

And serious thanks Shift. Your ongoing assistance has played a big part in getting me over the hump and in to 3D. I still have a ton to learn, but now that I can actually create something I think it's going to go a lot easier from here out.

Swizl · Sep 7, 2016

Drag the bones down below the mesh in the object browser. Then they should be visible in the 3D viewport. Be aware that stacking order is important in C3d. This is especially true in Creators and Modifiers.

Felasco · Sep 7, 2016

Swizl said:
Drag the bones down below the mesh in the object browser. Then they should be visible in the 3D viewport. Be aware that stacking order is important in C3d. This is especially true in Creators and Modifiers.

Aha! That does it nicely, appreciate it.

podperson · Sep 7, 2016

The way I'd put it is:

A skeleton is a hierarchy of (generally non-rendering) "bones". On it's own it's pretty useless.

A "rig" is a skeleton + instrumentation (e.g. widgets for pointing the legs, knees, head, rotating the waist, etc. etc.), constraints (IK, rotation ranges, etc.), and so forth. It may or may not be attached to a mesh ("skinned").

A rig can be used for different meshes.

C3D doesn't provide much in the way of tools for rigging. The pose tag and using splines as IK anchors and or constraint targets is pretty much it. In professional programs you can build a complete user interface around a rig.

Shift Studio · Sep 7, 2016

Felasco said:
Ok, that makes sense, I get it now.

Looks like my description of 'rig' isn't quite accurate. Please see Podperson's definitions.

Felasco said:
Is that what you mean by merging? Or is that something else?

By merging, I mean making all the meshes become a single mesh (with multiple materials). In C3Dv6.x you'll need to look up the 'import children' command - its a bit unintuitive at first. In C3Dv7(beta), you'll need to use the 'merge' command - its very easy to use.

BUT... I need to correct what I said before ... you don't necessarily have to merge a the body, clothes, hair, etc. meshes into a single mesh before binding the skeleton to it, rather, you could (should?) bind a single skeleton to each of the individual meshes - it depends on your needs I suppose.

Felasco said:
And serious thanks Shift. Your ongoing assistance has played a big part in getting me over the hump and in to 3D. I still have a ton to learn, but now that I can actually create something I think it's going to go a lot easier from here out.

You're welcome - I'm afraid as far as animating goes I won't be of any more help. I only create still images for my projects, and my knowledge of the animating intricacies are lacking severely. I will of course help on modelling questions

--shift studio.

Felasco · Sep 7, 2016

podperson said:
A rig can be used for different meshes.

This is interesting. Does this means for instance that I could copy and paste a rig from one character to another, or something like that?

C3D doesn't provide much in the way of tools for rigging.

Thank God, I have too much to learn already.

So far I seem to be skipping the process of rigging just by importing a MakeHuman character with bones. Thanks to whoever here taught me that. I did however carefully watch and follow the video on rigging a character, so I know the basics of doing it manually.

Which raises yet another question.

Say I have imported a MakeHuman character with bones, which seem to function as a rig. Can I manually add more bones and joints to this existing rig?

Tried that yesterday, didn't seem to work, but that means little given my newbiedom.

Felasco · Sep 7, 2016

Shift Studio said:
By merging, I mean making all the meshes become a single mesh (with multiple materials). In C3Dv6.x you'll need to look up the 'import children' command - its a bit unintuitive at first.

Ah, I see, ok, I'll research that today.

You're welcome - I'm afraid as far as animating goes I won't be of any more help. I only create still images for my projects, and my knowledge of the animating intricacies are lacking severely. I will of course help on modelling questions

Ok, I hear ya. If you have samples of your work you'd like to share, I'd be interested to see them.

For myself, I've decided I need to divide and conquer, and not try to learn everything about everything. So I'm going to focus on character creation and animation, and then just slap a photo behind'em.

Felasco · Sep 7, 2016

Shift Studio said:
By merging, I mean making all the meshes become a single mesh (with multiple materials). In C3Dv6.x you'll need to look up the 'import children' command - its a bit unintuitive at first.

I got this, not so bad.

This seems quite helpful. If I move the parent object, the child follows faithfully along. But the child object can still be moved independently. Thus, I'm guessing you could move a piece of clothing (child) around on the body, and it would stay where you put it as you moved the entire character (parent).

uncle808us · Sep 7, 2016

Swizl said:
Drag the bones down below the mesh in the object browser. Then they should be visible in the 3D viewport. Be aware that stacking order is important in C3d. This is especially true in Creators and Modifiers.

I for one would like more information about stacking. ( What goes where and why.) Should subdivision always be on the bottom of the stack if so why? The documentation should contain some info as to where to stack the modifier.

uncle808us · Sep 7, 2016

A "rig" is a skeleton + instrumentation (e.g. widgets for pointing the legs, knees, head, rotating the waist, etc. etc.), constraints (IK, rotation ranges, etc.), and so forth. It may or may not be attached to a mesh ("skinned").

By skinned do you mean bound(bind)?
Also is there uses for an un skinned (bound-bind) skeleton?

podperson · Sep 8, 2016

uncle808us said:
By skinned do you mean bound(bind)?
Also is there uses for an un skinned (bound-bind) skeleton?

Right — mesh is bound to skeleton, skeleton has been skinned.

You probably wouldn't want to use a skeleton on its own, but a skeleton captures animation, so you can take a skeleton and retarget it to different meshes.

("retarget" often means changing joint offsets as well as binding — typically character animation only involves rotations of joints (aside from the root), so you can move joints around to match a mesh with different proportions, and the animation will (mostly) still work)

uncle808us · Sep 8, 2016

podperson said:
Right — mesh is bound to skeleton, skeleton has been skinned.

You probably wouldn't want to use a skeleton on its own, but a skeleton captures animation, so you can take a skeleton and retarget it to different meshes.

("retarget" often means changing joint offsets as well as binding — typically character animation only involves rotations of joints (aside from the root), so you can move joints around to match a mesh with different proportions, and the animation will (mostly) still work)

Thank you Pod.