Ah ok, strapping a whole pre-existing project onto the rig and retaining all the proper deformations would be a challenge I think (for me at least, as I’m not so well versed in Blender’s tools for transferring things yet). So that’s in the hands of the users for now.
I contemplated selling the rig by itself at one point for use with other models, but thought that would probably be futile since you’d have to redo all the weighting, corrective shapes and such. It would open it up to more use cases if I could come up with a workflow though, so it’s not off my radar.
I already have a working prototype in my master file.
I seem to recall trying something with shrinkwrap, but there’s still a nagging in the back of my mind that says I don’t have a solution for skin slide yet. I did see someone using a cloth sim that sort of worked, so maybe there’s some potential there.
That’s probably a useful byproduct of me having to optimise it enough to work on my antique hardware.
Essentially what I did was snapping my topo onto your topo using wrap3 to get the meshes aligned, then I transfered the groups and shape keys using Mauricio’s mesh data transfer. So I have my topology in the same shape as your mesh and having all the vert groups and shape keys transferred via local space.
Only thing I’m missing (I think) is to attach the drivers to the shape keys, could do that manually I guess unless there’s something naming based on github somewhere.
Yes pleeease!!
Wouldn’t that be super slow? I guess baking them in as shape keys would be a huge mess, keeping it live might be slow, but then again, they just did some work on the cloth self collision code speeding it up quite a bit. Live one’s would depend on velocity, so it’d be mixed results when used in anim. Never ever seen a muscle system work properly though, and I’ve seen quite a few in production. I’d go with deformers, but I’m not a rigger, just my 2 cents .
I envy you, I really do. I miss my 10mhz AT with whooping 1mb of ram, no video card cause they basically didn’t exist back then, 20mb hard drive I couldn’t fill and the crystal clear sound of my pc speaker. I like old PCs.
Oh in that case it sounds like you’re most of the way there then! Hooking up the drivers shouldn’t be especially difficult, just tedious…
I haven’t even touched cloth yet, but a simple deform effect of some sort would suffice. I got excited when I saw a Texture input in the Warp modifier, but that just scales a texture that’s locked to the surface instead of dragging one around on it if I remember correctly. Might be able to nut something out with displacement maps come to think of it…
On the other hand, by the time I get around to it everything nodes will probably have come to fruition and there will be a plethora of ways to do it.
So Chris, I’m ready to purchase the full rigged version, but I want to make sure I’m getting this right: The rigged version has both male and female versions, or do I have to manipulate one to get the other? Sorry if I’m dumb and if I’ve asked this before.
The rigged version only has the half-way-in-between gender. To get the male and female you’ll also need just one of the base meshes in my previous post, and then apply that as a shape key via the assembly instructions.
Not sure I did the best job of explaining that… I’ll have another go if you’re still confused.
Wonder what a ‘half-way-in-between gender’ looks like? Better don’t use my imagination.
I think it would be great if you would show this mesh on github, so it’s clear what we get with the base version. (The meshes I see there look pretty male to me. Well…a little detail missing. But apart of that…)
Sorry if the meshes there are what’s included in the base version.
Personally I’d rather wait for a ‘complete version’. I think you’re planning to release one as well, right?
I have a feeling most people aren’t seeing it there though, Gumroad doesn’t make it very obvious that there’s more than one image to scroll through. Maybe I should move it under the header? I might have to revise the naming of these things as well, I think that’s partly where the confusion is stemming from.
I am planning on that, but there are some caveats… it’s a massive amount of work, so there will be a looong wait, and consequently it will be at the higher end of the price spectrum (maybe even the highest… how high does the spectrum go? ) There’s also the possibility I could go stir crazy in the meantime and won’t be able to finish it, so it’s best to temper expectations.
Hence why I’m releasing parts of it as I go along, so people can start making use of what’s ready already.
I see. I would have thought that you could simply add the male and female mesh as shape keys for a ‘complete’ version. Or let’s say a ‘complete base version’. (Obviously a really complete version including the face rig will be more exciting. But I fully understand that this takes much more time.)
I loved the way you changed the male into the female mesh in video a few month ago. Smooth, creative…simply elegant.
I fully understand that the price will be higher if male and female meshes are included. That’s fine.
It seems to me, though, that the mesh in the base version is not really helpful without remodelling it. Unless you go for a transgender character, that is.
But hey, that might be just me. Other people might see it differently.
Having said all that - I really love and am deeply impressed by your work, Chris!!
I figured some folks might want to use the base version as a neutral starting point for their own male/female/creature sculpts or paint-overs, and since I was going to make the male/female meshes separately available anyway, splitting everything out seemed like a good way to keep the options open and the prices down. I could indeed make a version with genders already added for an extra $15, and a version with the face rig already added, and a version with genders and face rig, and so on… but I’d end up with too many versions to maintain.
The “complete” version - as in the hypothetically fully rigged, fully textured bells and whistles version - would need to be immediately accessible without the assembly though (as well as having the DIY upgrade path). I haven’t dismissed the possibility of an intermediate version, but I’ll have to see whether the assembly process is involved enough to warrant it at that point.
This is really fun to use Tried to modify the proportions like this, but it’d be really cool to have a doc (similar to the one for the controls) )with some best practices in this regard, I’m pretty sure I’m doing things wrong.
Also, when I disable the limit constraint on the foot control it seems like the legs with the modified proportions are still not straightening all the way (didn’t see any limits, figured it’s easier to ask) -
@rombout Those things used to give me nightmares (ironically)…
@theawesomegm It’s averaged from numerous people (me being one of them, but you’d never spot me in the mix).
@dan2 Modifying the proportions is not quite so straightforward - there are a few bones involved, and I’ve already forgotten which ones or what I did to them to get it working properly. I’d be inclined to wait until it’s part of the feature set before documenting it, since then it will just be a matter of describing the controls rather than the procedure for rigging them.
Considering the foot already appears to have departed from its control before you disabled Limit Location though, I’d say the more likely reason for the leg not extending is to do with the Damper bone, so you might want to fiddle with the settings for that.
[EDIT] Ok I’m working on finger scaling at the moment and part of it just came back to me… the Damper bone’s Limit Scale constraint has a Maximum Y value that’s driven by a control bone positioned at the head of the Thigh bone and parented to the Pelvis, and the Thigh and Thigh Upper bones are copying the scale of that control bone (and there may be more to it than that…).
You can probably see now why it’s so hard to remember this stuff, even after I’ve just done it.
