real problems in makikng an arm work!

Support Animation and Rigging
1

Hi,

When i see tutorials on modelling characters, the arms are always outstretched. I made my character model like this, but when it came to skinning that area, it was impossible for me to animate it properly. The arm was cutting into the body, verts were popping out etc. What is the best method for modelling an arm - outstretched, or down - and can someone point me to a tutorial specifically for the arm areas of characters

Any help would be thankfully recieved

Steve

2

for modelling try arms in a natural pose, 45degrees down, elbows with a 45degree bend, this way all joints are in the haflway position so should deform 50% without nasty results, this reduces your deformation extremes from modelled pose,

FK(no solvers etc, just manual moving of bones) the only problem you will have is assigning verts to bones, where the elbow is try having at least 3 rings of verts, middle ring on the joint axis, first and third evenly spaced, this will make weight painting easier, same sort of idea for the shoulder, unevenly spaced verts cause problems around joints.

IK: It is important with most armatures using ik what angles your bones are on, ie an ik elbow joint may need to have a rest angle of 10, or it doesn’t work as you planned, a trap is straightening out an armature to fit your straight arm model, don’t do this in edit mode!!!, do it in pose mode :slight_smile:
##also check to make sure you have turned off deform on the control bones## solvers etc, sothey don’t mess things up,

just a couple of ideas, others may have better advice.

3

Hi,

Thanks for the reply - it helped alot

One thing i am having great dificulty with is reseting the bones back to their deault position when they were modelled with the mesh.

I am pressing reset r&s, but this doesnt seem to have an affect. Could you tell me please how i reset my posed position to the original stance. I no i can press rest pose - but when i depress this, the pose goes back to the previous state

Thanks

Steve

4

Tab in and out of Edit mode.

%<

5

with the later builds that doesn’t seem to work,
if no luck try
ALT-r
ALT-s
ALT-g
to clear rotation, scale and moving around.

6

Hi,

Thanks - they work fine!

Here is a picture of my shoulder area. i thought it would work fine, but im still getting problems with verts popping and stuff

http://www.arteria-gaming.com/problem.JPG

The rotation is much better than it was yesterday, but i would welcome any help to get it perfect

Thanks

Steve