@3Dmaven : I’m running Kubuntu 18.04 and I haven’t experienced anything similar to that. I tried hiding the properties and performance doesn’t change here, so I have no clue about what might be going on there. The only thing that I do know that slows down animation playback is the usage of the “Region Overlap” option in the user preferences, but anyway, that is not BlenRig specific… I really don’t know what to tell you…
@brainpain the only way in which you can use shapekeys over a mesh that is being deformed with mesh deform is to bind the modifier with the “dynamic” option enabled. The only drawback about this is that it will slow down animation playback a lot, but you can try it out. To tell you the truth, in 99% of the characters I’ve rigged, I never had to use the dynamic option. Have you tried using Corrective Smooth instead? Like painting its influence with a vertex group? That can correct lots of things.
Oh and about the volume preservation thing, yes, you can use two armature modifiers, just assign the one without volume preservation to the head and the other one to the hands. You do that with two different vertex groups that you paint.
Thanks for the very quick answer, i tried corrective smooth but it only makes the unwanted deformation a little better. As you can see in the image, when i bend the leg the rim of the boot gets bent out of shape, i cant figure out why. If i mess with the fix bones, constraints or weightpainting, the leg gets affected as well.
In those cases, where you have two meshes close together that are deforming with mdef but you need a different behavior, you just duplicate the mdef cage and assign one cage to one of the objects and another cage to the other one. That way you can edit shapekeys in one cage and not affect the other mesh.
I would suggest to first finish tweaking the mdef cage for the whole body (checking if all the vertices are inside the cage and also doing as much weight painting fixes as you can), and then go duplicating the mdef just for the boots.
Anyway, In that particular picture I see that the mesh deform cage is way too far from the model of the character. Therefore, it is probable that the thigh area of the mdef cage is deforming the boot too much. I would try to adjust the cage a bit tighter to the body, and maybe even adding a loop cut at the height of the border of the boot and make it enclose the boot a bit more. Maybe that way the deformation will work as expected, with just one mdef cage.
Rememeber that the further away the mdef cage vertices are from the model, the smoother the deformation will be. On the other hand, the closer you make the vertices to the model, the more rigid deformation you’ll get. In this case you want a more rigid deformation.
Hi, is it possible to add fat physics to the Blenrig, for example for a character with a beer belly. Like a mesh deform cage for the belly with a cloth simulation on it, or if there is a better way?
Btw while googling for tutorials on this i found some videos of a very handsome dancing dwarf : )
Well, BlenRig comes with a lattice called “LATTICE_BODY” that you can use for that. See that the mdef cage has this lattice modifier. By detault the group that controls the influence of the lattice is set to affect the chest mostly, but you can edit it so that it affects the belly.
You can go into edit mode and lower it so that it matches the belly of your character. When you do that, the lattice will go kind of crazy because you have to reset the hook modifiers in it. You can do that by resetting them manually in the lattice, or by selecting the lattice and pressing this button that blenrig creates:
So, that would allow you to manually animate the belly. If you want an automated way, I’ve seen people on Youtube that add physics to lattices. You could also add physics to the mdef cage. The bad thing about all these simulations is that blender’s cache system is really buggy lately, so I can’t assure you that you’ll be able to get a consistent result.
Another thing I can think of is using the Jiggle Armature addon:
That would allow you to do a more controlled simulation, just by using one bone with the jiggling motion.
@jpbouza I am trying to set up corrective shapes on the face, specifically the jaw when the mouth opens. I don’t know how to set this up because none of the face deformation bones seem to be able to drive the shapes. The mouth_ctrl and maxi controllers also can’t drive shape keys. Is there a main bone hidden somewhere that rotates that I can use as a driver?
I guess this question also applies to corrective shapes on the eyelids, but I haven’t tried yet because the jaw shape key stumped me so I haven’t moved on.
Hello @jpbouza I am having serious issues with the wrist of the rig each time I weight paint the NoMdef group, the deformation bone group and move the hand control the happens, the wrist rips off. I need help please. It has slowed down my project.
Hi Wilman, sorry do the delay. I really don’t know what’s going on there, but I can see that those are the areas affected by the lattice modifier of the cage. Why don’t you erase the modifier and see what happens?
Hi @BoldSam, I really don’t know, are you sure you are setting up the modifiers correctly, as in the Vincent rig for example?
Armature goes on top with the no_mdef modifier in the vertex group field. Then Mesh deform goes below with the no_mdef group in the vertex group field BUT, with the invert option enabled at the side of the vertex group.
thank you for your reply
it work now after remove that latice modifier. so could be latice modifier being removed in the future of addons update? or is it only me with this problem? can you explain
.