Rigging...

Argh! Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

I've had a crack at some rigging, started on a leg and foot setup with IK. Everything is going well and works fine. However, when I rig the other leg (which again works fine) I go back to my first leg and... and all the work is lost!

It's as if I had not even touched it... there are no links / connections whatsoever!

*edit....fixed the crap formatting with tons of "."s (periods)

Yes...and on the topic of rigging I've had my own problems ....

When I create a leg or something, with multiple IK chains...the lower chains down the hiearchy are parented to the higher ones! ARG!...and when I un-parent them...all goes well until I unparent the 2nd chain in the hiearchy from the first...at which point the bones go flying off in the viewport and everything "explodes" :S...I really have no idea what's going on!

Here's the situ:

x------x-------x------x-------x

That would be my bone chain

So let's say I want 2 IK chains in that bone chain...so they would be IK chain 1 and IK chain 2

x---->x----->1----->x----->2
|__________||__________|
.......chain 1........chain 2

BUT...when I...say...move the handle of chain 1 around....it moves like this!:
..................... ____2
.............. ___/
...... ____1
x__/

(ie....when I move the handle for the first IK chain up, the 2nd handle moves too! (sorry for the crappy ASCII graphics hehe)

When it SHOULD move this this:


...... ____1____
x__/................\____2

(ie....I should be able to move the handle of IK chain 1 around without affecting the position of the handle for IK chain 2)

WHY THE HECK DOES THIS HAPPEN???

Oh wonderful....all my formatting was removed when I posted. LOL...so much for my lovely "ascii" graphics....now my problem makes even LESS sense! hahaha

Sorted!

Both mine and Tysons problem. My prob had something to do with the fact that one of my controls was duplicated, but I hadn't created a separate input node for it (so effectively it was an instanced copy which confused the program)

On to Tyson. I had't come across this yet as I was using locators as points to anchor the IKGoals (using them to rotate heel and toes etc) But, now that I've had a look - got confused by your ASCII graphics (stunning though they were) I managed to replicate you prob.

What you need to do is select your IK, go to the Attribute editor. Open up the IK Handle Attributes and there you will see a dropdown box called "Stickiness" (a naff name if you ask me) Well, just turn that on and your IK should now behave in the way you are familiar (the good old Max way )

Spline shapes as controllers... anyone??

OK, I've found how to make shapes, but a rectangle is a nurbs rectangle, with 4 selectable and editable sides

All I want to do is make a footprint, have that at the top of the heirachy so it drives all the IK in the leg

Thanks for solving my probl global!

Btw...it would be nice if you could post an image of the rig you're working on

No problems mate

Well here's what I'm working on at the moment - no real goal in mind, I just imported a mesh I made in Max and used that as a starting block purely for learning purposes.





I'm kinda getting the hang of things, though I've found that the IK doesn't quite work the way I'm used to. Regarding the shapes thing - well that's just a personal preference, I like different shapes and colours to use as control objects and the only workable object I can find is a circle hehe.

On the whole, there are some, and I say that hesitantly, nice things with Maya (the fact that IK/FK is very easily switchable and the IK has many customisable attributes) Adding custom attributes and making connections is pretty easy (though I haven't explored custom / parameter wiring yet)

But there are also many things that I dislike so far (or maybe I just haven't found the Maya equivalent yet) Like the fact that you can't change bone colours (they look so dull! hehe), the renaming of objects is also very limited (it seems all you can do is add a prefix) Small gripes I guess, but it does change the way you work

Dang man...looks like you've made some nice progress! I haven't been able to properly get on it in a couple of days.

Plus...last time I did get on, I was working on a nice little model (from scratch in Maya...my first modelling try-out)....when suddenly Maya crashed and I lost everything!

So I'm exacting my "revenge" on the stupid app by not using it, until it says sorry

Btw...looking at your rig, and seeing how you've skinned it....how do you find Maya's skinning system? I couldn't find any visible envelope controls (like in max, where they appear as bubbles)...only sliders . Do I have to paint all the weights??? That would be such a pain!

Hmm... I haven't seen envelopes, or know of their existence - I'm thinking it's a case of just painting In some ways I don't mind that so much, (I quite enjoy painting), but there is much more room for error doing it that way, and I don't like the way the mirror weights thing works. Though in truth I haven't really given skinning a thorough in depth look as yet.

Btw,... Maya won't ever say sorry for it's misbehaviour. Now Max... well Max knows that it's done wrong and asks for forgiveness in the form of an error report to Discreet.

Yeah...that's one of the wonderful features of Max...it'll ask to save before it crashes...

Then again, isn't that just like in the WWII prison camps...where they'd take away your food rashions, and then when they'd give them back you'd think they were being generous...when, heck, they took them away in the first place!

Ah well I guess any app will crash every once and again...

No more sleeping on the couch, Maya! I forgive you!

I've been playing with Maya rigging for a little while now and just thought I'd pass on tips as I go based on what I've learnt so far (please don't take this as gospel though as I may well be doing things wrong! )

One really nice thing about Maya is the ability to Zero transformations. In Max you have to use a point helper / parent it in the heirachy of the object you want to 'Zero' then be in Parent space to see that your transforms are zeroed (which I find very handy when animating) However in Maya you simply go to Modify > Freeze Tranfsormations and your XYZ co-ordinates are all set to 0,0,0 (without the object moving hehe)

So that's a really nice thing when setting up your control shapes - get them all positioned, zero the transforms and then link 'em up (be sure to do this before any parenting / linking etc as you'll get some unexpected results)

This is also crucial if (when creating control shapes) you alter the scale of the object! For some reason any child object will skew and distort when you rotate the parent (um, or maybe the child hehe) unless the objects have scale values of 1,1,1. Something to do with inheriting and multiplying the scale values in the parent / child relationship. Heh, but most parent / child relationships are pretty skewed!!

Hey Global...yes, the scale thing is also true in 3ds max. If you skew an object's scale in Max, and link something to it...you have to click "reset transform" in the hiearchy panel if you don't want reeealllly skewed side-effects on the child.

Anywho...thanks for posting those tips! I'm really happy about the zeroing-out thing...it's kind of a pain to do it in max

Ah... I found the swivel target thing by the way. You can have the IK pointing to an object using the 'Pole Vector' Constraint.

Heh, sorry to spam but just wanted to see if anyone knows how to solve this little problem I have...

The rig is now done, (well it's as far as I want to take it for the moment anyways) so it is now on to skinning. I've set up an FK/IK switch for the arms. I'm not sure I've gone about it the correct/best way as I'm not following any tuts, just working on it myself. It works very well for the rig anyways - with the relevant control objects becoming visible / invisible when switching. However it seems to have upset the objects skin and I'm getting very weird results.

Here's the IK image (works as expected)


But when switched to FK it appears that some joints loose influence on the mesh.


Maybe it is because I linked up the FK controls to the joints incorrectly. I used a 'parent constraint' mainly - as it didn't break the links between the bones and thus loose the IK structure)

sorry guys been sorting my computer out or i would have shown up earlier, anyway i bought a powerbook instead , just skimmed the entire thread and will try and answer some questions and give some tips.

firstly, maya saving before crashing, yes it happens flawlessly nearly every single time maya crashes, i havn't lost a minutes work for months.... but only on linux! windows versions try to, but rarely succeed, its worth looking for the files just in case, they are marked with the time before the file extention.

rigging, cant answer all the questions here, but I would advise people to generally not to try and duplicate joints with controls from one side to anouther, you have to select exactly the right controls, and use the right duplicate options, then when you scale to the negative value, usually everything goes wrong because the controls are set up for positive values.

work arounds can include exporting the skeleten, importing it (in its entireity, this also ensures yoou get all the controls) mirroring from the top and plugging stuff in like that, still negative values can be pesky but often arn't so much of a problem.

neat way is to make a skeleton first, mirror it, then stick the entire thing in a lreference layer, change the skeleton colour to grey using the layer attributes thing, (yes this can change bone colours, but isn't a true bone colouring option)
then use the snap to option to redraw all the bones over the top of the last, it doesn't take long at all like this. you get all your bones set to zero, no negative values, ik them seperatly, its a little slower but makes life better in the long run i have found.


Global, your rig is fine, but i do notice you are missing something important, between the base of the spine and the legs needs to be anouther bone, or you will never be able to make him rotate his pelvis,

no sexy walks or shaking his arse

the ik/fk blending trouble you have, swapping between this should have no affect on skinning, check the bones are not rotating down the axis of the bones, restrict it. as this will screw up your skins.

as for making nice controls, the best way is to create NURBs curves, using the spline tools, if you are parent contraining the to your rig like you should (dont parent, always keep them in seperate directories) you can change the display overides to make them different colours, theres a nice selection of different nurbs curves already available at highend3d, if i get time i will post the link

Heyup Buddy, not problems about the delay in response... computer problems are suffered by us all - and now you have a new toy!

I should be ok for sexy hip rotations as I do have a pelvic bone, just a single joint at the bottom of the spine which works ok (though I since had a look at other rigs and see that the two bone pelvic thing is pretty common)

As for the arm problems, still not sorted - but getting closer to it! Thanks for the heads up on the rotating bone thing - from what I can tell that is exactly my problem (The IK/FK switch on this rig has 3 states. FK / IK / and all controls off - so you can select and maniplulate the joints directly) With everything off it all behaves as I'd expect, the IK works fine too... but with FK swtiched on (ie, I can now use the control handles) I can see that the tip of the bones are rotating where they shouldn't be.

You said to restrict them... but I'm not really sure how to go about doing that. In Max there are ways to restrict what transforms a child receives from a parent (though even then I'm not sure that would be the right way to approach it)

Maybe it's the way I have linked it all together... all the controls themselves are parented (not constrained) as you would expect (Clav-shoulder-elbow-wrist, with some locators thrown in as helper objects) - but when it came to linking the bones (sorry 'joints', gotta get used to the terminology) to those controls I used a parent constraint (so the elbow joint is constrainted to the elbow control etc)

Thanks in advance

thats exactly what i mean about the controls, if the are in there corret hierachy, to pick walk up and down then connected to the bones through contraints is correct. as for restraining the bones, (who calls em joints anyway) the attributes offer various ways to restrict movement, be careful though once you have bones being restrained before ik they do tend to flip uncontrolably, sometimes only at extreme angles so check this carefully before you skin or animate.

you may find that the joint orientation is incorrect. (ok i will try and remember how to do this without maya)

i think you go to componant edit mode, the in the selection masks thing right click on the ? and go to joint orientation or something, once you have all your bones with Y facing down the bone, X primary rotate angle, Z secondary (doesn't matter much about the second two) then they will act much more consistently than before.

Thanks for the advice bud

I finally managed to sort out my little problem - It was an extra rotation in the bones and it was all down to the skewed way I set up the heirachy. If you see above in one of my previous posts I said I "threw in a few locators as helper objects" - Looks like I threw them in withought thinking

Hehe, methinks this was all down to the way I work in Max... you see, you need point helpers there in order to 'zero out' your controls. Since Maya 'Freezes transformations' there is absolutely no need to do that at all. I got rid of them and rejigged the whole arm setup and now it's all working rather well

I'm now skinning (I miss envelopes ) and also looking at the face setup with some blendshapes... slooooow going though