Hi all.
I’m trying to build an armature for an old model of mine.
I wonder if I could get some suggestions on how to improve what I have so far.
I’d especially like to know if there’s a way to have the hand and foot bones stay attached to the rest of the skeleton when the ik handles are pulled away, ideally while maintaining control over wist and ankle movement.
Any suggestions for improving structure and control at all, particularly of the hands and fingers would be great.
Here’s a .blend http://lennon.csufresno.edu/~rwv01/Frog_armature_1.blend
Thanks any help you can give.
<edit>I just noticed what the forum censor-bot did to the file name in my link.
Not to worry unless an naked armature offends you :)</edit>
On the LEFT side I fixed your basic problem: The IK constraint was applied to the wrong bone. (IK now has a “tip” functionality by default, since usually IK chains would have an otherwise unused bone.) The corrected chain is: Arm_upper.L parent of and connects to Arm_lower.Lparent of and connects to Hand.L Hand.L IK targets Hand Left IK
The lower arm IK targets nothing.
Now you can grab Hand Left IK and move it around to see the result: the hand at no time leaves the wrist! However, you’ll notice another problem: the hand rotates with the wrist. This can be troublesome.
On the RIGHT side I fixed this additional problem. I went into edit mode and aligned the Hand Right IK bone in the exact same place as the Hand.R bone (I could have made it longer or shorter, but it makes no difference so I left it the same size). I then made the same adjustments as I did for the left side. After applying the IK solver to Hand.L, I added a Copy Rotation constraint targeting Hand Right IK. Then I hid the bone. (Press Alt-H to see it again and the constraints I applied to it.)
Er, I think I turned your bones to wireframe view in the Object Buttons (F7) Draw Type panel and forgot to turn them back to shaded.
There’s some stuff I changed. The hands and feet won’t come off now. And I upgraded the hands with the Mancandy rig. There are also a few different controls for the spine and a few other things. I also attached the eye constraints to the skeleton so you didn’t have any floating empties.
By the way, to clean it up, control bones are on bone layer 1, deformation bones are on bone layer 2, mechanical bones are on layer 10, the last one.
OTHER EDIT: Hey, nice work Duoas. I see you had problems with the feet though. Hey, I dunno if you know how these work, but if you look at mine, there are a couple systems so that the hands and feet maintain rotation while staying on.
Thanks Duoas, BlackBoe! It’s MUCH friendlier to work with now.
I was going to create actions to control each finger!
Now I have another question.
I made some blendshapes for the face but then decided I needed to edit the body mesh.
I did this in a new copy. Is there no way I can apply the old blendshapes to the new mesh?
Whoof. Actions for each finger? I saw that in Maya once, it was a bugger to work with. Anyway, the finger rig in my blend file wasn’t my idea. It goes to the Mancandy rig, cause that’s where I first saw it.
Yes, actions for each finger is a bit tedious, but I tend to do it just because I get better control. You’ll need a bend at first knuckle action, curl finger action (bend at second and third knuckles only), and a wag finger action (for lack of a better name --bends only the first knuckle to move fingers closer together or farther apart --i.e. the kind of action you’d need for the Vulcan salute “Live Long and Propser!”) I tend to use IK on the thumb.
It is a pain in the nose because you need to constantly twaddle with the fingers to keep them in place, but hey, its my preference…
If you’ve modified your mesh you’ve pretty much lost all blend shapes. It would take me a little while to make a script that would help… (and I don’t think I can give the time right now… sorry).
However, all may not be lost. You can make use of a few of tolobán’s scripts and if you haven’t jumbled the indices of the vertices in your mesh too badly you might be able to recover. Looky here. Follow his instructions. (Blend shapes used to be called RVKs. That and other changes make my tutorial a little out of date now.)
BTW, since hasn’t been said already, this thread really belongs in one of the support forums, like Basics & Interface, or Animation.
Actually, the mancandy hand rig is easier to set up, but I plan to implement neither actions or that rig. Calvin, the fantastic low-poly modeler, is also an armature genius, and he made a sweet finger system that takes the cake over anything. It uses a bit of python, which makes it harder to set up, but it gets great results.
I made some blendshapes for the face but then decided I needed to edit the body mesh.
I did this in a new copy. Is there no way I can apply the old blendshapes to the new mesh?
If you edit the (original) mesh select the Base ShapeKey, and in Edit mode with all selected W >> Propagate to All Shapes. I suppose it would work after running RVK 1 to RVK 2 script but never tried.
Duoas, Fligh.
I’ll try these proposals and let you know what happens.
Blackboe: I’ll look into Calvin’s finger system.
Thanks again guys!
This has been really helpful.
Oh well, here’s my version.