Rigging Rigid Objects (a simple door)

I now know in Cheetah it's called "Vertex Weight" and can invoke the tool, and know what the settings mean, but can't seem to get it to work....
...playing with the settings of the weight brush, I'm getting somewhere, but it doesn't seem to respect selections, so maybe Cheetah can't do rigid structures?
Refer back to the file I uploaded - you need only one joint on each door. Maybe you need a second skeleton tag for the second door and the weighting will be simpler (it should be 100% as nothing is being bent - you are basically using the rigging in place of regular translation animation).

(I'm a little concerned with what looks like poly overlap in the doors...there's 6 polys in each door.....maybe it's too close for the system?)View attachment 33653
I noticed that too when I looked at your file. It may be the scale of your object - which is really very large. Add in a default cube and you will see how large your objects are. When I scaled them down to test I noticed the artifacting in the viewport disappeared. Also if you turn on double sided lighting it will stop the viewport artifacting. But I am not certain what is causing that if it is just the viewport or something with the mesh so maybe someone else more knowledgeable than I can take a look.
 
Oh, you can do two skeletons? Intersting. I'll experiment with that.
I'm waiting for my unreal people to get back to me to test importing my rigged versions (the one I've achieved in Cheetah, and one I did in Daz) work there.
 
Actually no I'm not sure if you can use two skeleton tags. But I had the wrong setup in the previous post. You do not add the skeeton tag to the server box. You would add a joint and one skeleton to EACH OF THE DOORS. Again, the only reason you are doing it this way is because you said there were problems with DAZ using normal node / transform keyframed animations. But for some reason rigging works there instead. You should also test to see if regular transform animation with current FBX exporter from v7 will work in Unreal. I will upload another FBX v7 test file for you - this time with transform animation.
 
just simple animation but exported with v7 as FBX. Does that work in Unreal?
 

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  • BoxOpenDoor-Transform-Keyframes-v7.zip
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I guess there was a misunderstanding as I don't know what "normal node / transform keyframed animations" are :)
I had 3 seperate objects cuz I thought that's how it needed to be done.
 
Vertex weight painting is the pest in this case using a single mesh - it´s practically not possible to subtract/add one object from the other.
What works in this case and it runs well in Unity as FBX (so I guess it will in Unreal as well) is to have 2 meshes, 2 joints one skeleton tag:
Note that Binding method: Distance works best in this case as no vertex weight painting needed.
And guess what; it runs even in DS but doors are off Y+0,5.
SimpleDoorRigCheetah3d.gif
SimpleDoorRigFBX2Unity.gif


Cheers
Frank
 
I think that weird tearing on the polygons may have to do with OpenGL and the scale you are working in (as Pegot suggested). Sometimes I work in 1:10 scale since it can help avoid that and it's easy to just move a decimal place over in the calculations. Adjusting the Clip Near / Far in the camera settings can help also.
 

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  • Clip Near Bad.png
    Clip Near Bad.png
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  • Clip Near Fixed.png
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What works in this case and it runs well in Unity as FBX (so I guess it will in Unreal as well) is to have 2 meshes, 2 joints one skeleton tag:

Hmm.. I'll give that a try...Unreal likes importing multi mesh fbx's as seperate things, unless you click to import as solid mesh...which I don't know if it'll mess up the skeleton...

Swizl: Thanks. yeah, I was lazy with the math, keeping it in inches rather than converting it to numbers that would work well (and easy) in a unit based system.
 
Hmm.. I'll give that a try...Unreal likes importing multi mesh fbx's as seperate things, unless you click to import as solid mesh...which I don't know if it'll mess up the skeleton...

Swizl: Thanks. yeah, I was lazy with the math, keeping it in inches rather than converting it to numbers that would work well (and easy) in a unit based system.

I do the same thing a lot of times! Sometimes it's just easier to work in full scale. That's how I figured out I needed to adjust the clipping distance. I do some basic Archviz sometimes for work and it helps to just type everything in at full size. The only problem working in 1:10 scale is that some accuracy is lost in the float number, but I rarely ever need anything that is down to 1/16" or 1/32" accuracy when modeling that large.
 
What works in this case and it runs well in Unity as FBX (so I guess it will in Unreal as well) is to have 2 meshes, 2 joints one skeleton tag:

Gave it a try, just as you did..but nope..
Screenshot 2018-11-17 19.47.09.png


Unreal ignored the Rack mesh entirely.
Screenshot 2018-11-17 19.34.31.png


Daz got weird, too, but that's more of a scaling thing.
Screenshot 2018-11-17 19.45.14.png


I guess I'll go with my solid mesh version....move on to how to set up open and closing movements that go with the fbx for unreal.
 
Can you please try this FBX-animation which runs in Unity? Thanks.
(Damn - I thought I try UE myself but OpenGL is no longer supported and no Metal compatible graphic card installed)

Cheers
Frank
 

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  • SimpleDoorRig.fbx.zip
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And now I've found I got extra polygons in here somehow, with duplicate doors....which might be what the poly collision look I was seeing is about..

1542661416754.png



EDIT: Except, trying to erase the highlighted doors...which don't open and close with the joint....erases the whole door...and the open and closing part doesn't seem selectable....

I've attached the file if anyone wants to examine..
 

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  • serverrack2.zip
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RAM won´t help with Metal in my case.

No, I meant I needed to update the ram in my imac in my signature.

so of: "my iMac is one year older than yours and that changes everything - unfortunately." unfortunate for you? For me? why?
According to the docs, my computer will support metal..
 
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