So… I’ve been self-teaching by watching tutorials and reading forum posts for a while, but I’ve hit a point where I actually need to ask for help. I’ve been lurking here for a while but I only just now signed up so I could post.
I am working on a character model and rig that is meant to be adaptable to multiple characters, for a fandom filmmaking community. (semi-anthropomorphized mlp ponies… sorry about that) I will be needing to represent different body types. When I say “body types”, I just mean normal human levels of variation between individuals in terms of proportions.
I have a body mesh that I’m fairly happy with, which is a combination of a head from another fandom modeller, some body topology from Bastioni Lab, and hand-sculpted legs. I’ve set up the different body types with shape keys
For rigging I’ll be starting with rigify, but then doing a lot of modding and adding from there. I’d prefer to not have to redo the rig for each body type. In an ideal world I’d be able to release to the public a rig that a content creator can tweak themselves without having to re-rig it. But if two body types have slightly different proportions, then the rigging is off kilter and joints are in the wrong place.
Unless I’m missing something, the solution to this problem would be to dynamically resize the rest positions and/or sizes of just a few of the rig’s bones (by which I mean the bones as you see them in edit mode) while setting shape keys for the mesh.
However, a couple of days of searching have not seen me find any way to do this. Does anyone have any suggestions? I have some programming background, so I’m comfortable learning some python if I have to.
Sorry for being so long-winded; I am just try to precisely explain my question. If I haven’t been clear, I’ll post a quick visual example.
If you are using Rigify, I would use the pitchipoy rig. It has quite a few extra stretch and resizing controls over the original version. The newest version of Blender (2.78) also has some updates that would be useful for your project. IK/FK snapping and quadruped leg rig types (Three bone vs two bone biped). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asIgadpB43U
To create new characters with the same rig I would set up an action constraint to change the scales and locations of the rig controls to resize the characters. A did something similar in this video where I used the scaling of the tweak bones to create new phenotypes.
Instead of applying the armature modifier I would instead use action constraints to change the phenotypes. This would allow you to use the same rig and change the proportions without shapekeys.
You mentioned that you created shapekeys to create the new proportions. Instead of this, use the action constraint method, then create new shapekeys to fine tune the mesh for areas that can’t be fixed by resizing alone.
Despite the past couple of months being a marathon Blender self-education, apparently action constraints crept under my radar, because I’m actually not very familiar with them. I thought they were just for applying animation actions. Apparently I’ve misunderstood. I’ll check out those videos and do some googling before asking for more help, but if you happen to know off-hand of something covering this sort of use-case I’d love it if you could throw me a link.
90% of solving a problem in complex areas like Blender (and C++, and game modding, and Arduino stuff…) is know what terms to even look for, so you’re not just asking Google “How do I make the thing do stuff?”
Oooooh, I see. I’ve watched those two you linked to, and I think I see. I already have shape keys for the bodies I plan to use, which I derived partly from bodies I generated with Manuel Bastioni Labs. Not being able to use those will mean I’ll have to replicate a lot of work, but I suppose I can still use those shapes as templates for doing things this way.
Personally, I do not like the All-in-One characters rigs. They are very hard to build and create many problems that you would not need to deal with if a rig was created for each character. If you want to look at a morphing rig that was well built and well thought out, take a look at the CGCookie Flex Rig. http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/61707
It was created by Nathan Vegdahl who is also the author of the Rigify Addon.
There are a number of ways to save time when creating multiple characters from a single mesh. Using the Rigify rig is one. Based on your image and video, I would think the Pitchipoy Facial rig would work since the pony’s face is very human-like. This would make the facial rig bone driven instead of shapekey driven.
So, it does look like the best course of action might be to re-rig each character, which is fine. However, they will all have a lot in common, including custom tail physics rigging, shapekey driver bones, and other things. I can show examples, but the short version is that there are a number of bones that have to be visible (as guides with custom shapes) but not selectable. Since I can’t copy bones that I can’t select, this means that porting just those bones to a new rig involves making them all selectable, copying them to the new rig, re-integrating them all, and then going through and finding all of the ones that are meant to be un-selectable and setting them so.