I started to develop a little tool to automatically generate rigged seamless meshes from armatures. It is currently in alpha stage, but already somewhat useful - especially together with the sculpt tools as shown in this example (I should improve on my artistic skills though…).
There are some restrictions to the armature setup . The mesh resolution and connectivity of branches can be controlled by the user. The link above also points to a short tutorial.
Please let me know what you think and what types of features would be cool for the future.
Hi hellborg, nice name, welcome to BA & thank you very much for sharing your very good script. Great Tutorial too. I think this script is most useful and has much potential.
Please keep us posted on any updates.
To me I see an opportunity to have this script auto generate rigged characters.
If you haven’t already check, (i would suggest this order) http://projects.blender.org/frs/?group_id=16&release_id=225
and have a look at the Make Human original scripts 180b would be a good start, then Make Target 1.1, for ideas where I think you should head.
Then, if you think, as I do, your idea could be useful to this project, head over to http://www.dedalo-3d.com/index.php
and see the new evolution.
From my contact with Manuel, I know that a new MH script is in the pipeline for Blender, and that he intends to include auto rigging, I think your script could be very useful and you would gain much knowledge from participation in this project.
If you could contact him, I am sure your knowledge would be welcomed with open arms.
If your script could be integrated it may help speed things up a bit. The idea of allowing ‘target meshes’ could mean the possibility of rigging anything that is defined a target.
That would be my suggestion, you could still have your script as a standalone script and take it wherever it evolves and it would still be of great use.
I hope you understand my suggestions, as this is where I think the script could most benefit Blender. What you have done so far is great and any direction you take will be much appreciated by the community.
Thanks again. M.A.
Have you thaught of using envalope bone sizes? - would work nice for this kind of task- similar to the script that could turn an armature into metaballs (an example in the BPython docs)
Meta-Androcto: Thanks for the comments! I am familiar with makehuman, and I would be happy to assist, if I can be of any help in that project. However, I think that there are two ways how you could approach modeling of a rigged character: For the makehuman script it should be fairly easy to include character rigging as the mesh geometry itself is not altered by the morphs and thus all the rigging can be made in advance. In contrast, I started to develop Skinny to quickly make various types of rigged meshes, including humanoids, plants, multi-legged insects, fish etc… And I believe, that the new sculpt tools and multires editing can be used to quickly adjust a simple rigged mesh generated by Skinny to take various useful forms. I aggree, however, that it would be cool to add some kind of morph target feature, maybe to morph parts of a Skinny made mesh to resemble meshes of premade bodypart morphs. I will look into this to see how this could be done!
Captain_Ahab:Yes, waving trees should be possible.
Atom: Similar to my answer to Meta-Androcto, yes would be cool, but I think it might not be very straightforward to link together differently shaped mesh fragments. Also, this sounds more like a task for a pre-made rigged mesh than a de-novo creation of a mesh. I started to develop Skinny, because I do not like many of the “creature creators” out there which just puzzle together some pre-made mesh pieces. This usually leads to very similarly looking and often not very life-like Frankensteins. In contrast, the first aim of Skinny is to make it very simple to generate a rigged starting mesh that can then be extended, sculpted and modified to make a unique, interestingly looking piece.
stulliDPB: Good to see that Skinny is easy to use!
ideasman42: Nomen est omen! Cool idea! I did not know about the metaballs example in the blender docs (not included in the new docs for 2.42). I thought about possible ways to add more control for the skin size and the envelopes seem to be the best way to do it - plus they seem to be easily accessible from Python. Funny enough, I can’t find any reference to the headRadius and tailRadius bone properties in the new docs for 2.42…
I updated the script to version 0.4alpha! Skinny now can (optionally) use the bone envelopes to control the size of the mesh. I also added a little GUI to control some of the most important mesh creation aspects.
hi, great update, keep them coming:yes:
I am glad to see you have thought about clear directions for your script.
However it evolves will be of a great benefit to all.
If you do have the time, contact Manuel at MH, I’m sure they would be happy to accept help from a talented scripter as yourself.
Thanks again M.A.
Another small update on Skinny to version 0.5alpha (available for download: http://www.gravity-music.net/skinny ): The script now supports more options for changing the resolution and allows both increases and decreases along simple bone connections. I also added an additional mode (automatic mode) that allows (almost) free creation of armatures in all three dimensions. The Automatic mode is useful for generation of trees and other irregularly shaped objects. For symmetrical meshes, such as for characters etc, the standard x-y plane restricted mesh generation algorithm produces a much cleaner mesh. Her is a small example for the new automatic mode:
Nice. I like the direction you’re going with this script. Hope you can keep that up.
Just a quick note about your tutorial. It says blender has to be restarted but if, after dropping the script into blender’s folders, you just click “Update menus” on the scripts menu you’ll see Skinny in Wizards.
It’d also be nice to see Skinny included in blender releases, or something like Skinny. Maybe thats just a pipe dream.
Your script is very interesting, I’m baffled as to how you managed to keep the meshes so clean. This is coming along great, I’ll be checking in from time to time to see your progress. Keep up the good work!
I am definitely going to give this a try. I have designed an alien creature I want to finish and animate. This script and sculpt mode just might make it easier to restart than try and finish the old mesh (which hasn’t happened yet).
This is very cool! I can see LOTS of possibilites and potential here…:yes: