New Mancandy prerelease for testing

slikdigit

Hi folks, just prior to the release of 2.43 I've got a new pre-release of Mancandy for testing with the blender rc builds. I'm sure he's got a lot of bugs, so I'm hoping that with your help we can squash them and get a new Mancandy out for the 2.43 life cycle. Head to freefactory and post your problems either in this thread or over there.
PS the plan is to update Mancandy once per blender release.
PSS Mods, Goofster sanctioned this thread

Virgilio

Thanks a lot, Bassam!

Downloading it now... I always learn a lot from what you achieve with mancandy. =D

Cheers

Lasphere

cool man, very good rig!

BlackBoe

Mancandy is great. Thanks for the stuff.

FuzzMaster

Thanks much, Mancandy is a terrific rig.

Mike_S

Great !

Downloading it now.

Mike

thoro

Great rig, Bassam! I like the idea to keep him up to date with every Blender version.

I just downloaded it and will let you know if I find a bug.

Cheers

Thorsten

Mike_S

If I try to resize the rig, either by resizing it in Object mode or by by resizing the "Body" bone in POSE mode, the arms go all "kaflooey"

Mike

JiriH

This is awesome rig, Bassam!

In some ways it is like a magic to me (for example how did you do the swith in viewport between IK and FK?).

Do not want you to post this rig for Highend rig competition? This one would definitely get the first price? More info here: http://www.highend3d.com/news/Highen...eaway-228.html

Thank you once more for sharing this perfect work.

Virgilio

Quote:

Originally Posted by JiriH

Do not want you to post this rig for Highend rig competition? This one would definitely get the first price? More info here: http://www.highend3d.com/news/Highen...eaway-228.html

Unfortunately that site only considers as 'High End' apps, 3DSMax, Maya and XSI, thus won't accept rigs for other software, like Blender or Cinema4D, for example.

kattkieru

I second that the IK / FK switcher is freaking brilliant. Bassam, when are you going to put out a Blender rigging DVD? ^o^/

This rig is so much deeper than the last version... could take me weeks to pull apart.

JiriH

Yeees, please, Bassam, write a book or make DVD concerning rigging in Blender. Pleeeeaaaaaseee :-)

Mike_S

Quote:

Originally Posted by JiriH

Thow did you do the swith in viewport between IK and FK?).

IK/FK viewport is an IPO driven key. Fairly easy to setup as the IK/FK has a keyable attribute, ie. a "built in" IPO cuve (select a bone that has a constraint on it, go to the IPO editor, switch the IPO display type to constraint, there's an INF channel available. Select that channel, press N for the transform properties, press Add Driver, fill in the name of the object to use as the "control".

Now I'd also like to turn on/off stretching in the viewport. That's a bit more complex. The Stretch parameter is not keyable directly, but is accessible via Python. A pydriver driven key would probably need to be setup.

Mike

slikdigit

hey guys, just a heads up that I've fixed some of these problems and there's a new download available.
I have no idea how to key / switch stretch, so I'll respectfully bow out of this request

I did have an interesting conversation with one of the disney riggers at siggraph. His philosophy was that rigs shouldn't restrict animators- all the stretch, "wrong" angles and inverted joints should be allowable (but not chronic problems) and that animators should be able to choose their own style. For example, in Meet the Robinsons, some of the more "normally" animated characters and some of the more extreme ones have the exact same rig, with the animation direction, rather than the rigger, driving the difference.

JiriH

Thank you Bassam for your advice. You have got really special friends. I have to add that I have read an acticel of famous rigger and he also told that best rig is when you maya give it just to an animator and he need not any special lecture how to use rig.

Will there be a mentioned book or even DVD? :-))))))

fatfinger

Thanks for a great rig, Bassam. I hope you don't mind that I pimped him for my avatar.

I did have one issue with the new rig, though.I tried setting up a walk cycle, which went fine up until the NLA editor. The action strip wouldn't show up in the NLA editor, yet I could still edit the strip from the properties tab.?? I tried the original mancandy rig in 2.43 and the action strip showed up fine. Me not know...

Thanks again for the great work and your generosity.

Fatfinger

slikdigit

fatfinger- that's indeed weird. If you're patient for a bit, I'm going to do some cleanup on the file, make sure there are no extra objects, put the render settings back to something sane, etc. and upload a new version before long. Perhaps you can try appending your action into that file and see if making the strip works.
Oh, I'll also post in this thread to announce it.
As for a DVD, well, we'll see. I'm having trouble setting up video screen capture even! Mancandy will have a little demo video, more for animators to see the possibilities of the controls.

Mike_S

Quote:

Originally Posted by fatfinger

The action strip wouldn't show up in the NLA editor, yet I could still edit the strip from the properties tab.??

Check that :

- you've haven't "collapsed" the NLA strip "header" section (there is an "arrow" icon that alternates between pointing right (collapsed) and down (expanded). When collapses all strips are hidden

- turned off the layer that the armature is on (layer 12). When you turn off the visibile layer for an armature the NLA strips "disapear". (Maybe this is a "feature", but I find it quite annoying) ... the workaround to hide armatures and still see the NLA strips is to use the Armature Layers (select the armature and then use SH-M to select an Armature Layer that is empty).

- Press HOME with the mouse in the NLA window... maybe you just have the strips out of view

I also discovered a quirk / bug / feature with the OffsBone "walking" feature : If your "walk" action is not the first NLA strip, the walk mechanism doesn't work properly, i.e. if their is a "hand wave" action strip as the first strip that starts at the same time as the "walk" strip, the offsBone mechanism doesn't work (the feet slide / the character "walks in place" instead of walking forward. The solution seems to be either to make the "walk strip" the first NLA strip or move the other action strip(s) to a slightly later starting position (even 0.1 of a frame makes it work).

Mike

Mike

fatfinger

Thanks guys, I'll give those things that Mike_S mentioned, a try and report back the results. It could well be a Blender "feature" i've overlooked.

cheers

slikdigit

hey, folks, did another update, check the same place
hopefully this is the last one, but I did a lot of cleanup; there's a chance I broke something, so test if you want it fixed!
btw the last layer has all the "helper" bones, and the 3rd from the right has all the "geometry/deformer" bones. Only deformer bones have "deform" checked now. Oh, and mancandy has 10 less bones.