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Citywatch rig


squill

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Since the animations are being tweaked/redone i started experimenting myself with a rig in Maya using ascottk's joint setup. So the joint setup is still the same only the ctrl objects are different.

 

I've removed the FBIK controls and created a control set in Maya. This with an easy to animate rig in mind.

 

http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/Animation...nim_rig_001.rar

 

I've started this for a few reasons:

- In Motion Builder i personally missed a few options in the current rig like a simple "lift Heel" option which is very handy when you are making walk/runcycles, same goes for lifting toes and other custom attributes you can create for the feet. I don't know how to do this in MB but it's easy to setup in Maya.

 

- I've added some shoulder controls, because you want to control the shoulders when a character is kneeling or reaching for something.

 

- The knees in MB gave me al kind of undesired rotations while in Maya i can simply control these with some pole vectors to keep them steady.

 

- Created a character set, basicly the same idea as layers in Motion Builder. you can create poses, (layer)animation clips, and apply it to different characters with the same ctrl set.

 

- I've added some hand ctrl's so you can easily animate the fingers a little

 

- also removes the im/exporting step from MB to maya.

 

I'm sure Mb can do the same things but being used to animating in Maya it gives me better control over the movements.

 

This is just an extra rig i'm testing to see if it's easier to work with and maybe other animators who want to animate in maya. I've done some tests in-game and seems to work ok with the current model.

 

There are some issues like the shoulder pads going thru the shoulders and the sword hasn't got a ctrl object yet.

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The left foot has a tendency to turn to inside & the handles for the feet/legs were hard to find (that might be my setup) but otherwise I like it!

 

I'm comfortable with animating with Maya too. The motion builder files were there for people who are more comfortable animating with . . . well . . . motion builder . . .

 

Oh yeah, the pauldrons always gave me problems so that's normal.

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The left foot has a tendency to turn to inside & the handles for the feet/legs were hard to find (that might be my setup) but otherwise I like it!

 

I'm comfortable with animating with Maya too. The motion builder files were there for people who are more comfortable animating with . . . well . . . motion builder . . .

 

Oh yeah, the pauldrons always gave me problems so that's normal.

 

More of the control options for the feet and hands are found in the channel box. I think i'll create seperated controls for the pauldrons but you still want them to rotate along with the shoulder.

 

I'll also add an extra control for independent rotation of the hips bcause your always counter animating the spine in walk/runcycles.

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More of the control options for the feet and hands are found in the channel box. I think i'll create seperated controls for the pauldrons but you still want them to rotate along with the shoulder.

 

I'll also add an extra control for independent rotation of the hips bcause your always counter animating the spine in walk/runcycles.

I rarely touch the hips since they move the whole mesh. I don't think they can rotate independently.
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squill, can you make these controls for the tweaked rig I post in this thread?

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=7259

So we have one standard and to not make skin job on two rigs istead of only one.

Its still ascottk's rig, but with model tweaked to more closely match the bones.

 

i could do that, there are although some things like the head hasn't got any skin weights and the fingers are now in a folded position bcause of the way the joints are rotated, but that are some small things.

 

Have you replaced the mesh in-game to this model?

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This is a new version which has Nisstagm's model tweaks included. The arms are still FK like the previous version. I can make a FKIK switch later, if it's needed. Although you can do most of the actions with FK.

 

If you select the hand or feet controls and look into the channel box you'll find the options for lifting heel/toes and finger controls.

 

Anim Rig V2.0

download

post-322-1201432737_thumb.jpg

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Forgive my ignorance guys, as I still am learning a lot. When you say "rig" that basically means the model and skeleton, completely skinned and ready to animate, correct?

 

There's one important thing (and a few minor things) that need to be done to the citywatch model, which should (I think) be part of the final rig:

 

1. The model currently does not have its meshes broken up properly to match its armour type. Everything that is made of plate metal (the helmet and pauldrons) should be one mesh, everywhere that an arrow would strike chainmail (basically the tunic and sleeves) should be another, everywhere that's leather (the boots and forearms) should be a third, and the rest should be separate as well. This will allow us to set each mesh to particular armour type, though they'll all point to the same actual image. The plate metal is already set up properly, but the rest are not.

 

2. The tunic mesh has a smoothing value of 180. This is too high and causes some ugly black shadows in places, most noticeably the bottom of the rear tunic. A value of 90 works fine for me. The boots may also be a bit high, causing shadows that make it look like the boot is hovering off the ground.

 

3. Oddity said he was working on a new rig as well (don't know what became of it) and he shrank the boots a bit. I think that's a worthwhile change as well, though not critical.

 

4. If this rig includes the shadowmesh (don't know if that's built into the model), the helmet rim needs to be removed from the head. It casts a shadow onto other heads and looks bad. A default head-shape would be fine.

 

edit: It looks like the model has a sword attached? Is that just for reference or something? A weapon shouldn't be attached to the model by default.

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Forgive my ignorance guys, as I still am learning a lot. When you say "rig" that basically means the model and skeleton, completely skinned and ready to animate, correct?

 

There's one important thing (and a few minor things) that need to be done to the citywatch model, which should (I think) be part of the final rig:

 

1. The model currently does not have its meshes broken up properly to match its armour type. Everything that is made of plate metal (the helmet and pauldrons) should be one mesh, everywhere that an arrow would strike chainmail (basically the tunic and sleeves) should be another, everywhere that's leather (the boots and forearms) should be a third, and the rest should be separate as well. This will allow us to set each mesh to particular armour type, though they'll all point to the same actual image. The plate metal is already set up properly, but the rest are not.

 

2. The tunic mesh has a smoothing value of 180. This is too high and causes some ugly black shadows in places, most noticeably the bottom of the rear tunic. A value of 90 works fine for me. The boots may also be a bit high, causing shadows that make it look like the boot is hovering off the ground.

 

3. Oddity said he was working on a new rig as well (don't know what became of it) and he shrank the boots a bit. I think that's a worthwhile change as well, though not critical.

 

4. If this rig includes the shadowmesh (don't know if that's built into the model), the helmet rim needs to be removed from the head. It casts a shadow onto other heads and looks bad. A default head-shape would be fine.

 

edit: It looks like the model has a sword attached? Is that just for reference or something? A weapon shouldn't be attached to the model by default.

This rig is for the animators so it doesn't apply to the visual mesh. But your observations are duly noted ;)
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I have no idea how to fix this, but from reading the forums..it doesn't feel like we have a very good workflow/pipeline or whatever it's called, for animation.

 

It looks like we're on the right track, creating a 'master' rig, but then perhaps things seem to get a little hazy.

 

I'm a bit concerned about that as it could mean having to cover a lot more of the same work over again in the future. Are these new rigs going to add special bones for attachments, like they did in T3? I was following that in another thread, but I'm not sure I understand exactly what was decided there.

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I have no idea how to fix this, but from reading the forums..it doesn't feel like we have a very good workflow/pipeline or whatever it's called, for animation.

 

It looks like we're on the right track, creating a 'master' rig, but then perhaps things seem to get a little hazy.

 

I'm a bit concerned about that as it could mean having to cover a lot more of the same work over again in the future. Are these new rigs going to add special bones for attachments, like they did in T3? I was following that in another thread, but I'm not sure I understand exactly what was decided there.

There are dummy bones but they need to be attached to the mesh. Quite a few ai already have some of them. Here's a list of the dummy bones:

  • LeftHips_Dummy
  • RightHips_Dummy
  • Spine_Dummy
  • LeftShoulder_Dummy
  • LeftArm_Dummy
  • Head_End
  • RightShoulder_Dummy
  • RightArm_Dummy
  • leftpad/rightpad (can be used if the ai do not have pauldrons)

The weighting on these don't need to be much but they have to be included in the rig so the exporter won't ignore them when exporting. It's a fairly easy thing to do, but time consuming because use have to add these joints to the def file when exporting.

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This rig is for the animators so it doesn't apply to the visual mesh.

 

Is there more than one kind of rig then? It was my understanding that changing the model (by modifying the uvmap, frex) messed *something* up with regards to animations so they had to be re-exported?

 

(I just made very first skeleton and basic animation in Maya. :) Now I'm off to study your skinning tutorial)

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Is there more than one kind of rig then? It was my understanding that changing the model (by modifying the uvmap, frex) messed *something* up with regards to animations so they had to be re-exported?

 

(I just made very first skeleton and basic animation in Maya. :) Now I'm off to study your skinning tutorial)

There's the animation rig, which is this one that has full body ik that makes it easier for animators, and there's the mesh (no full body ik) with textures applied & with the correct skin weighting that's for exporting to md5mesh.
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There's the animation rig, which is this one that has full body ik that makes it easier for animators, and there's the mesh (no full body ik) with textures applied & with the correct skin weighting that's for exporting to md5mesh.

 

@Springheel / Ascottk

The FBIK is the reason i created another "animation rig" without Full Body IK. Mine has only IK applied on the legs but FK for the arms and spline because not everyone(like me :laugh: ) likes to animate with the FBIK system in Maya or MotionBuilder. With IK it's harder to make nice arcs in your animation because your working with translation instead of rotation.

 

Legs in rigs are usually always done with IK but for the arms and spline you'll want FK. Also FBIK forces you to check whether a control has influence on other body parts and if you want to use fk/IK which makes it not easier to animate.

 

- So basicly we have 3 animation rigs (citywatch) right now, 2 for maya (FBIK rig of ascottk and 1 from me) and 1 for Motion Builder -> which you have to import back to Maya.

 

- From what i've learned is that it doesn't matter which rig you use to animate because on all three, the joints in those anim rigs are the same and another model with joints is used to export.

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squill,

i could do that, there are although some things like the head hasn't got any skin weights

Thats strange, I didn't touch head skin weigths, it must be the same like it was in ascottk's rig.

This is a new version which has Nisstagm's model tweaks included. The arms are still FK like the previous version. I can make a FKIK switch later, if it's needed. Although you can do most of the actions with FK.
Thanks for controls. Yes, that switch could be useful too, in some anims when you need linear hand translation, like drawing a sword from sheath.
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This is a pretty sweet rig squill. This is the file citywatch_rig_00.mb right?

 

It still doesn't seem to have FK controls on the arms? I was thinking of adding them.

 

Now we will only have one rig - so I want to make sure it's the most awesome rig possible :D This one superceeds all the previous versions, and there isn't any use for the motionbuilder version now, with the layers plugin. I want to tighten up the rigging though, the bones aren't centered inside the mesh's joints along the arms and fingers, so they don't bend so good at some angles, and the finger slider controls need to be able to bend them fully straight, and even slightly backwards a bit.

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This is a pretty sweet rig squill. This is the file citywatch_rig_00.mb right?

 

yes

 

It still doesn't seem to have FK controls on the arms? I was thinking of adding them.

 

the arms, torso and head are actually all FK except for the feet. But i guess you mean IK controls for the arms. Adding a simple FKIK switch shouldn't be that difficult. If you want to do it go ahead or else i can set them up because i do also need them for the guard when he puts his sword away. Certain combat animations will also benefit from having IK controls.

 

Now we will only have one rig - so I want to make sure it's the most awesome rig possible :D This one superceeds all the previous versions, and there isn't any use for the motionbuilder version now, with the layers plugin. I want to tighten up the rigging though, the bones aren't centered inside the mesh's joints along the arms and fingers, so they don't bend so good at some angles, and the finger slider controls need to be able to bend them fully straight, and even slightly backwards a bit.

 

another updated version would certainly help. For instance I'd like to remove the extra ref joints i made in the first version and add the fk controls directly to the joints. Another idea would be to create the same skeleton but with the right placing and orientation of the joints because the legs and arms don't line up properly etc.

 

I only came upon some issues. The citywatch mesh in the model_src is not the most up to date version. This is also related to the questions you posted about exporting the citywatch mesh and not getting the proper results.

 

Springheel updated and exported the mesh from lightwave because i couldn't export the mesh properly. If somehow his version can be transferred to Maya we would have to same version which can be edited.

 

Although for animation now, you can still use the current rig and add some IK controls for the arms.

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Yeah I meant IK, whoops.

 

I wanted to go ahead and get the rig sorted out before doing anymore animating - so are you saying he has the source file locally? How did it become an .lwo, did he import one of the .mb files into LightWave, and which one? Is there a thread covering the progress on this that I've missed? (I've been looking...)

 

Okay in the mean time, I've just collected some relevent posts about what to do once we've got Spring's original file back.

You can't export lwo as obj from lightwave. The ligtwave obj exporter is archaic and doesn't export UVs (lightwave is the oldest 3d app by a long way, it started back in '89). Use deep exploraiton to convert the lwo to obj (or just direct to mb) and import them in maya. You may have to go to window-preferences-plugins and load the object import plugin (it's either that or the obj export plugin that isn't loaded by default)
I'll tell you why I'm asking. When I was making those adjustments to the citywatch to allow for those alternate skins, I found it relatively easy. With the Lightwave import/exporter, I was able to load the md5mesh directly, convert them to LW objects (the skelton is stripped away), and make any modelling changes I want to the meshes. The weightmaps were preserved, so I then only had to load up the bones from the original, save, and presto, new and improved md5mesh.

 

But if I wanted to use Deep Exploration to convert the new and improved mesh to MB, I've been told that the weightmap will NOT be saved (and how could it, if Maya doesn't allow a weightmap with no skeleton?). Which means, making any changes to the mesh (even something minor like removing the shadow head from the builder guard) would force me to entirely repaint the weightmap. That's not worth it for all but the most major changes.

 

The other option, of course, is to learn how to model in Maya, so I could make the changes to the mesh there. I'm not sure this is likely to happen fast enough to be useful, as it took me a year or so to get to the stage I am with Lightwave, which is just barely enough to do what needs to be done to the AI models.

 

So do you know if he ended up learning Maya or went ahead and made the changes using Lightwave? I hope we can convert it...

...if not, I'll still gladly spend the time required to re-construct whatever is lost after converting over to Maya, since there's a lot of re-working I want to do to it anyway.

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So do you know if he ended up learning Maya or went ahead and made the changes using Lightwave? I hope we can convert it...

...if not, I'll still gladly spend the time required to re-construct whatever is lost after converting over to Maya, since there's a lot of re-working I want to do to it anyway.

 

Springheel first worked on the builder guard using the citywatch skeleton and adding new hands. I think he all did this in Lightwave mentioned here

 

What do you mean with "getting the rig sorted out"? Are you planning to rework the skeleton, add new animation controls(IK)?

 

I can simply add some IK controls to the arms in the current rig for now. The next step and fastest way i see it without breaking things is building the skeleton based on the old skeleton and using the same names for the controls so that you can transfer animations with the current character set.

 

We just have to wait till Springheel's back and see what files are there for the mesh.

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Yeah by "sorted out" I mean all the things I said I wanted to do. Here's what I want to do;

  • Align all arm and hand joints to be the middle of the mesh that they're controling so that the joints can bend to more extreme positions without looking wierd.
  • Add rotation control for the forearm
  • Add IK for arms
  • Finger curl custom attributes should be able to tuck them right in and also extend them backwards a little, it will help emphasise certain gestures.

Just some basic things I want to get nailed out now before I start cranking out heaps of anims. But yeah I will wait for Spring to get back.

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So do you know if he ended up learning Maya or went ahead and made the changes using Lightwave? I hope we can convert it...

 

I wound up going with Lightwave, since I was able to convert the builder guard to that skeleton without any of the problems we were running into with Maya. It is also much easier for me to modify the weightmaps.

 

...if not, I'll still gladly spend the time required to re-construct whatever is lost after converting over to Maya, since there's a lot of re-working I want to do to it anyway.

 

Not sure exactly what you have in mind. I can see adding IK controls and other modifications to the skeleton, but matching it to the citywatch mesh isn't terribly useful now. Remember, the citywatch skeleton will now be used for the majority (if not all) of our humanoid (male) models. Fine-tuning the skeleton so that it matches the citywatch mesh exactly is fine for the citywatch, but it could just as easily make things look worse for the builder guard or commoner, who use the same skeleton but obviously have different meshes.

 

Any changes to the citywatch skeleton at this point have to be considered with respect to all our humanoid models.

 

As far as the citywatch md5mesh goes, it still has the old mitten hands, so I'll need to do some more work on it anyway. I want to get the St. Lucia characters done first, however.

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Ah in that case, the citwatch mesh should be adjusted to fit the skeleton better, and not the other way around. (And the other stuff I listed, like IK controls, I can add straight away to squills rig)

 

Can you upload the latest source file for the mesh (your lightwave one?) to models_src/citywatch? I don't know how closely the latest version matches the skeleton but the source file definetly needs to be up there (if it isn't already - I couldn't find it is all).

 

If you want to work on the St Lucia characters then I'm eager to take your citywatch mesh and do the grunt work to tweak it to be centered around the skeleton bones better, because I want to get that list of things done before I start animating, and I can use lightwave.

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Ah in that case, the citwatch mesh should be adjusted to fit the skeleton better, and not the other way around. (And the other stuff I listed, like IK controls, I can add straight away to squills rig)

 

Yes, that would make sense. I've already been doing that for the other characters.

 

If you want to work on the St Lucia characters then I'm eager to take your citywatch mesh and do the grunt work to tweak it to be centered around the skeleton bones better, because I want to get that list of things done before I start animating, and I can use lightwave.

 

Adding ik and fixing the finger joints sounds great, but I wouldn't worry about centering the mesh at the moment. I still have changes to make to it (it was the first one I fixed and I've learned a lot since then) and have to add the new hands. The mesh and skeleton also need to be resized to use the new animation sets.

 

My suggestion would be tweaking the skeleton in whatever ways you feel are necessary (though not moving anything if possible). Since we only have two animators, it would be far more useful if you could continue working through our long list of animations needed (or fixing the currently broken ones, like you did for throwing). Since I can't animate, I'm happy to continue rigging the characters.

 

The only exception to that, I suppose, is the new hands. The skeleton doesn't match the fingers exactly, and it would be handy (no pun intended) if it did.

 

Maybe I should just go ahead and add them...there's not much work involved since the citywatch is basically already done.

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Maybe I should just go ahead and add them...there's not much work involved since the citywatch is basically already done.

 

done in the sence of mesh changes? Because the only things which needs to be redone after a new skeleton(based on the citywatch skeleton) with the full fingered hand is in place is reskin and export the mesh and skeleton. After that the animation controls can be placed.

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