ManCandy rig fixed !

Bassam has fixed and updated the ManCandy rig for Blender 2.41.

CVS version

Read all about it here :
Project Orange ManCandy Blog

and here:
‘Goldy’ is really ManCandy :slight_smile:


Mike

Really awesome character rig. I was amazed when I saw all the options to change the positions of the character. Althought there is something bothering me for a long time now. It seams that when you assign each vertice to an armature by hand, the movements of an armature go a lot faster then when I assign vertices automaticly. I have a low-poly game character with by hand assign vertice groups and one where I did everything automaticly. But I see a significant speed by the hand assigned one. The another character it just slow, when I move an bone, you can see that it’s caculating where to move all the vertices or something.

I’m using a 1.7 ghz pc with 512 mb ram.
For example, the ManCandy rig is really slow when it comes to moving bones or whatever. While the ludwig character shows a significant speed increase. But why is that?

This problem has been around since the first blender release that had the automaticly assign vertices to armature option. Afther that, automaticly assigning vertices makes armatures quite slow. I hope someone could fix this, or at least find a good solution.:confused:

This problem you describe is due to the fact that the auto-assigning of vertices to bones post-2.4 is done by envelopes. IMO, when vertices are being controlled by bones with envelopes, a lookup function has to be called every time to determine whether a vertex is affected by a bone. This creates performance bottle-necks, especially when many vertices are used. Vertex groups, on the other hand, are quicker, as all the vertices that are affected by a bone can be found by simply by looking up what vertices have been assigned to that group.

Aligorith

Aah I didn’t know that. But what if you have a scene with a few character, then it’s quite anoying. Especially when you thought that blender could run on a 300mhz pc with 128 mb ram, while when you have a better one it still shows the slowdown. But anyways, with 3ds Max on this machine it’s even worser. That Rabbit example that came with Max is slow as hell as well here, and doesn’t contain that much faces to be displayed either.

Aren’t envelopes vs vertices an option in the Armature modifier ?

And what is the difference between using an Armature modifier or using the ‘old’ style of ‘parenting’ (to armature, bone).

Mike

Mancandy is just heavier than ludwig. In fact, Ludwig uses Envelopes (theoretically slower) while mancandy uses vertex groups (theoretically faster)
Mancandy can be massively slowed down if you have subsurf on- turn it off in the viewport via the modifier buttons- you only really need it for facial animaiton (and not all the time then)
you can also speed up mancandy via locking the shapes in the mesh… hmm, I should really update the page on orange with some tips. Mancandy is realtime for me with subsurf off (pentium M laptop @ 1.5 gigahertz …) but might still chug on slower computers.

Was that a joke? :wink: Or did you mean that M has a more dense mesh / more complicated rig?

In fact, Ludwig uses Envelopes (theoretically slower) while mancandy uses vertex groups (theoretically faster)

What is the difference or relation if any between the VertGroups/Envelopes buttons under the Modifier/Armature and the Vertex Groups / Envelopes under the Deform Options on the Armature Panel? The ‘tooltips’ says “not for modifiers” for the Deform Options. Does an Armature “Modifyer” over-ride the Deform Options ?

Mancandy can be massively slowed down if you have subsurf on- turn it off in the viewport via the modifier buttons- you only really need it for facial animaiton (and not all the time then)

Thanks ! Great tip ! I’m doing an animation now with both “M” and “L” in the same scene and they BOTH had Subsurf on, and it was crawling on the playback. Turning it off, is making it play close to realtime with a soundtrack going !

you can also speed up mancandy via locking the shapes in the mesh

How do you do that?

Also, bit off topic, will moving the shapes sliders mess things up? Or can the rig be animated by both the armature-face controls and the sliders?

I also notice that the facial animation shapes seem to have “driven IPO’s” connected to the facial armature-control-bones. I thought that was part of the problem with the ‘controller2’ rig? Or does having driven/non-driven armatures have nothing to do with why that rig stopped working?

Mike

Hey slikdigit,

The way you rigged the fingers is really neat. Now, me goes and applies that to my own rigs…

Aligorith

Is anyone here using the ManCandy rig with a Windows CVS build? … and you are seeing the armature layers working correctly per Bassam’s Orange Blog entry ?

I just downloaded the BF Windows CVS from here

(referenced from this thread)

and either

  1. There aren’t armature layers in the build

or

2( Are the

(sixteen buttons under ‘Display Options’ in the Armature tab and the sixteen buttons under the Armature Bones tab)

the “armature layers” ?

If so, all the bones are on the (Armature Tab) / “Layer 1″ button, and therefore either

a) the rig / armature layers are not working in the Windows CVS
or
b) armature layers are not working with files created in the Linux CVS vs the Windows CVS
or
c) the specific CVS that Bassam used is the same version that everyone here that is seeing armature layers is using
or
d) ??? :confused: :confused: :confused:

Mike

If you have tha armature in pose mode already, look at the edit buttons:
under Armature tab there are 16 buttons for the armature (eek! I’ve got a typo; I’m off by one in some of my layers in the article, I’ll correct it). Pressing each of these buttons hides/unhides a layer, both in the 3d view, the action window and the nla.
pressing “m” while in pose mode gives you the option on changing the selected bone/s’ armature layer, as does clicking in the armature bones tab in the edit botton.
I’ll cross post this to the blog, and fix my typo :slight_smile:

as for locking the shapes, you’ll see in the shape tab a pin shape that locks the mesh to the current shape ( a good choice is the basis shape) none of the shape animation works, but it speeds up the mesh a tiny bit because the driven shapes don’t have to get calculated… on mancandy it might be slight but it was big on emo and proog…
keying with the sliders might mess up the driven keys- it’ll add extra keys into the driven channel on a shape that has drivers. You won’t see the effect directly in the animation, but you might start getting undesireable effects when you animate the control objects. to return to normal slider animation for a driven channel, remove the driver on that channel (you can do this in the IPO window)
These are great questions btw; it helps jog our memory as to what needs documentation in the new features.
ps: if you find a shape isn’t driven in the ipo window ( the little colored rectangle won’t have a dot) you can animate it normally.
pss: be careful of shape-shape interactions if you do!

i tried to get the latest OS X CV but did not find one with which i could open the candyman file. but blender always tells me it cannot open the file.

any help?

claas

What is the error message?

What is the file size :

It should be 2,181 K

You don’t “need” a CVS version, both the [I]“Old”[/I] and new
files will run in 2.41, the “old” one just hides the bones that you shouldn’t / need not animate.

If you want to take advantage of the armature layers, you also don’t need the very latest CVS, any build that has “layer” buttonsl under the Armature panel should work. I tried a Windows build that was created on Mar 24 and it worked

Mike

It’s working now :smiley:

The problem was that when I opened the file in 2.41 (official release) and saved it all of the layer information and ‘extra bone controller dooddads’ were apparently lost, so that when I opened the file in a newer version it looks like the bones all default to ‘layer 1’ (which I guess is the only ‘armature layer’ that exists in 2.41). Something that other Noob’s like me might want to be aware of.

Re-downloading the file solved the problem.

Is there a shortcut key to select ‘armature layers’ (like the 'non-numpad numbers for ‘normal layers’) ?

Mike

it sais “loading /Us failed: unable to open”

i do not see those blue elements you see on the orange website.
i am some how a bit confused which blender version you need to see the
new driven key elements.

>i do not see those blue elements you see on the orange website.

Well, I’m sorta curious how you can see anything in the file, if it fails to open :slight_smile:

What about the file size? What is it?

If you can open other files, then I’d suspect that maybe the download didn’t work.

Did you try to download the file again?

Are you downloading the first or second link on the Orange page.
(You can use the links in my previous post for ‘new’ and ‘old’, they are copied right from the orange blog).

I’m not sure about the OSX versions, but I’d guess it’s the same code, so as I mentioned before, any CVS from about Mar.

Here is one source for OSX CVS builds

And here’s a (built Apr 22)
recent version

Mike

Here is one source for OSX CVS builds
And here’s a (built Apr 22)
recent version

Not to hijack this thread but I can never seem to download anything from that site. I click the link on the page and it just takes me to a blank page - no download happens. :frowning:

EDIT: Using Firefox 1.0.7, OSX.3.9
Maybe I’ve got to turn on a setting in my Firefox prefs or something?

I’ve downloaded without problem, but I’m on 'doze … using Opera, I presume you’re on OSX :smiley: using ??? as a browser (Mac Illiterate :slight_smile: )

Mike

with the recent builds i cannot open the file.
i always get the unable to open error message.

when i use the 2.41 build i can open it but i
only see everything as bones in layer 3 and the
blue polygone elements in layer 20 all together
without any affect on the bones or mesh.

claas

What about the ‘mancandy_old.blend’ file? Does that work for you?
If so, I’d just use that, everything works, just the armature layers is missing, which is no big deal.

You might also want to report the bug with the CVS version to wherever you downloaded it from.

Mike