Fingers Need Re-rigging, I Need Instructions

[Domarius]

With only one effector per finger, I can't get them to bend in every way.

 

For example, this is as close as I could come to wrapping his fingers around the sword hilt.

 

 

It's the same as trying to position the arms with only the hand effector and no effector for the elbow. The finger effectors need another effector each, like how the hand effector also has to come with an elbow effector.

 

Can someone give me a mini-crash-course in Maya rigging - just enough to add the extra joints?

[oDDity]

THe effector on the end is all you get no matter how many bones you put in. That's just how motionbuilder works.

Just bend and key them in maya uing ordinary FK.

 

Anyway, I thought you were switching all characters to the mitten hands I made, so there's no point wasting time on this hand, it's too hgh poly.

I already dd a video on rigging new chacaters using he skeleton from the old ones. IT@s o nthe FTP in the files secton.

[Domarius]

Alright I won't animate this hand for now, till someone models a lower poly one.

Thanks for the heads up about the rigging tute, I will download that.

[Springheel]

nyway, I thought you were switching all characters to the mitten hands I made,

 

We had a big discussion about this somewhere else (forget which thread) and found we can save the same number of polys without having to go mitten hands, so we're planning to keep them as is.

[oDDity]

eh?

In which case you can save even more polies (800 per model) by usng the mitten hands. They look the same in-game with the normal maps anyway, and when are you ever going to need 5 wiggling fingers anyway.

THis is the mitten hand, and it looks fine. I@ve no idea why you would want to waste 800 polygons per model with real hands.

[Domarius]

oDDity, I was behind the mitten hands idea but after you left, they convinced me otherwise.

 

I started out talking about giving everyone mitten hands like the Pagan woman had, but first BlackThief pointed out how bad they look:

 

and then he said he optimised his fully fingered hands down to 300 polys, and his whole guard model is 4570 polys, but I don't know if that final figure is before or after the hand optimisation.

[Domarius]

High poly version for normal mapping

 

Low poly version

[oDDity]

I notice that model is not tripled yet, which doubles the poly count.

I think the mitten hands look fine, even on the original doom models.

300 polys is still 600 per model Vs 180 per model for the mitten hands.

[Domarius]

Ohhh, 180 per MODEL not per hand... Well seeing as you'll spend most time sneaking around and spying on people from a distance, I am now once again thinking that mitten hands won't be such a bad thing, and that 180 for both hands is VERY GOOD.

 

Yeah I've been playing Half Life 2 finally, and I only just noticed part way through the coast drive (where you have to missile the flying ship for the first time) that they used mitten hands, and only just that once, when the british guy pointed at me with his hand.

 

Regarding the legionary model - the quote was on triangle count, not quad count, I checked with BT.

[BlackThief]

question is, how will mitten-hands look when AIs are actually doing something with their hands? I guess an archer will look quite strange with mitten hands, since he won't be able to draw the arrow correctly.

 

 

(btw just in case someone's wondering - the guard is on ice, since I just can't come up with a proper solution for the sleeves without going too highpoly)

[Domarius]

question is, how will mitten-hands look when AIs are actually doing something with their hands? I guess an archer will look quite strange with mitten hands, since he won't be able to draw the arrow correctly.

How so?

[Springheel]

Mitten hands just have the pointer finger free and the other fingers together, right? So the archer would either have to draw the arrow with one finger or with the whole hand. Neither one would look right. Of course, I think that might be a little nitpicky compared to other places we're cutting corners with animation.

 

Since neither type of hand is crucial for gameplay or going to make a huge impact on the game, we should decide based on which option requires the least amount of time/work.

[Domarius]

The performance impact hasn't been measured yet, so we don't really know how huge or little the impact would be.

 

But off-hand (no pun intended) I'd say its less work, even after making the high rez hand, to model a mitten one rather than go over the fingers individually and make them low poly.

 

With the archers, we could give them a hand that has the first 2 fingers joined, but still rigged the same way. Of course, if they ever used a "point at you" gesture, they'd do it with 2 fingers... which wouldn't look so bad (some people do that) but IMO this is getting into the area where its becoming okay to accept something like this if the mitten hand is less work and significantly less polys.