Whoa, only 3 minutes into the video demonstration, and I was nearly sold just when I saw the mirror functions.
May I offer critiques?:
-The jiggle system is great, but at the tips of the muscle objects, (head and tail) It would be nice if they were âpinnedâ to the armature automatically, or just have a vertex group for âsoft body goalâ, automatically in place on muscle creation (even if we have to paint it manually) Or maybe this can be achieved with a built in muscle object that already has itâs tips pinned.
-Also, I saw at 40 minutes into the video, the snap function was behaving odd for the head of the muscle armature. I think the origin needs to be set at the head of the armature, that way head and tail can snap where the user expects them to snap.
The following are feature requests, that could be challenging:
-A mirror function that mirrors the muscle objects and the sticky-bind/skin-slider vertex groups.
-For the mirror function to also mirror the parent child relationship for each side (thatâs a big request, I know) If R_Bicep is child to R_Arm. Then then mirror all would create a L_Bicep child to L_Arm.
The ultimate feature would be automatic vertex groups for sticky-bind and skin-slider, like a âGenerate vertex groupsâ button (name it âmuscle weight heatâ ).
This could be done with Dynamic Paint, temporarily setting the muscle object as a âBrushâ, and the skin mesh as a âCanvasâ.
The âBrushâ would be set to âProximityâ generating skin slider vertex groups automatically on the mesh. Then the resulting Canvas would be âbakedâ into the skin-slider Vertex groups somehow. The dynamic paint data can be discarded after the vertex groups have been baked on. All of this happening automatically once the user presses the âmuscle weight heatâ button.
Thank you so much for your hard work so far. This looks promising
Youâve never bought anything? Youâve only ever had things shared with you? Is it caring to refuse to pay people for their hard work?
Very well said. Iâm planning to release a very neat new addon to the Blender Market very soon, and if the Blender Market wasnât available, I would simply compile the addon to binary modules, implement some kind of registration system, and sell it from my own website. Instead, Iâm choosing to take a financial risk and license it under the GPL.
With the things people share on this forum about having to ever pay for anything, sometimes I have to second-guess why Iâm taking that riskâŚ
A muscle system is a great idea, thanks for taking the time to develop these tools, coloremblem!
I refuse to pay for software i do not refuse to give money to devs. Do you trust indie devs to keep up with the development of blender? if there is an update that kills the addon what are you going to do⌠He isnt driven to work on it like someone who gives it away for free. what if there is a drop in sales? There goes his motivation. If the addon is planned to be put on the store before they ever make it the chances they are doing it for greed and not to help us are way higher.
I am a very open person i share most of my stuff because its the right thing to do. Its what i believe in and im sticking to it.
Keep in mind making an addon is no harder than artists making things in blender so for the creator of 1 addon to stop thousands of artists who would use his tool if it were free is a dick move in my book.
Im not trying to be mean or offend anyone its just how i see things.
If you losers want to debate monetizing of tools and content, do it somewhere else. NOW
This thread is for a Muscle simulator addon, if you donât like it, donât comment.
This should be a discussion about the addon, its features, critiques, bugs, etc. Have this old argument else where.
Sorry, I just hate when topics get derailed.
Iâve been working to achieve a muscle solution for YEARS, just last year I came up with something close to what this addon does, but it required too much set-up time, and had some limitations that I couldnât workaround.
So imagine my excitement when I see how this addon is takes out a small portion of the tedious work. I come here to contribute and instead Iâm met with this garbage about whether people should be compensated for their work. Maybe in a perfect world where food and utilities didnât cost money, believe me I donât have much money either, and I would like it to be free. BUT I fully respect and support anyone who wants to sell their work. But we shouldnât be talking about this! Thatâs whatâs pissing me off. Iâve waited years to see a solution as I worked to find one myself, this soapbox has no place here.
Whether the addon is worth the advertised price i see as a valid discussion, other mods may disagree, weâre not all the same. Iâm sure the addon author is more than capable of justifying any price for it. Iâd rather see discussion than removal of posts.
Do we always need to go down this road, Jeez! :mad:
Maybe BA should make a Shout-Out chat room, so your ladies can go fight each other without bothering the rest,
now,
I want to compliment @@coloremblem for making this add-on, but, I still think it need lots of work,
coming from me that may sounds odd (I released stuff on Blender Market while it was a big need of improvement) but that aside, I think personally this add-on is still a far from being perfect.
coloremblem, the progress youâv made is astonishing but your presentation (as mentioned before) does not do good credit to the product,
So the first person to complain about the chat was calling names and now your being sexist and calling names⌠This is no way to get the moderators on your side. You are only derailing this thread even more by complaining⌠You even double posted
so if anyone else starts calling names or trying to insult people having a conversation im just not going to reply because it is starting to get a little cluttered in here with your some what off topic posts
If you are referring to âGirls, Girls, stop nagging,â this is a common saying down here (UK) when people complain, sorry if you got it the wrong way, itâs just a saying, there was no sexist point meant by my statement, my apologies.
As for âget a little cluttered in here with your some what off topic postsâ
Oke one of my posts (the last one) was off topic I agree, but the first one wasnât:
Can we stick to discussing the muscle add-on please? I came to see updates and instead Iâve got the last page filled with what I would consider off-topic comments.
FWIW, I strongly disagree Richard Marklew here. Iâve had quite a few posts split from the initial thread I posted them in because they were discussing a tangential (though related) subject to the one the thread was created to talk about. In some cases, they were split into a new thread and in others moved to the end of another one more suited.
In this case, details about the muscle simulator add-on are being buried under a pile of discussion about whether we should be paying money at all for add-ons in general - something that has another thread dedicated to it already. Is it acceptable that any thread discussing a new add-on at the Blender Marketplace is allowed to be swamped by trolls wishing to see the marketplaceâs downfall?
independent of the previous topics i reduced the price first to 14,95$ and i am on a positive way to cut the new demo version together hope for more suggestions for improving the add on
I want to appologize if my comment seemed as criticizing the commercialization of the addon. I just hope to see something good produced with it, and wish the author best luck with getting it further and making some money to actually cover the time spent with the work done on it.
The key to making this a success is to automate as much of the process as possible for artists. I had developed a muscle system similar to this, but in practice mine was too impractical because of the long set up time to create 1 muscle, and create a mirror of that muscle on the other side.
Painting the influence manually (via weight paint) for each individual muscle is the most time consuming part. Especially since that influence isnât mirrored.
I think âmuscle typeâ presets would be more than enough, the only difference between male and female muscles is size, and thatâs not even absolute. (Iâm a rather skinny male) And this being CG animation, characters are frequently too stylize for any difference to really matter. So I think the size should just be adjusted on a per case basis.
To control âmuscle typeâ All we really need is functionality like this:
The ultimate goal would be this quality of rigs to be made quickly without so much tedious work.
He already has âluckâ with this already. Iâll soon be a customer too once usability increases making the process as painless as possible.
An automatic generation of weights via Dynamic paint or some other method would allow this to be really easy for users. That, plus improvements to the mirror functions (ability to mirror everything, including parent/child relationships) would make this a competing system.
He wonât need luck. It would sell itself at that point. :lol
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