mattc01223 Posted August 21, 2003 Share Posted August 21, 2003 Hi fellow Houdini users, I'm looking to get started on a character animation project and I have a rough idea of how to capture geometry, set up bones etc ... - but I do have some general questions. I have seen in various places (magazines, on screen ...) that some set ups have a multi-boned spine - is this IK or FK? Are there any general rules to getting a good character set up? How can you get eye lids to follow an eyeball's surface and not intersect? (I also have a lot of trouble with colapsing elbows and knees - characters, not mine - especially at extreme bending of joints - any suggestions?) There must be methods for doing this - can anyone help? I have looked through all the tutorials which have been a great help but I'm looking for something a bit more advanced. Thanks Matt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mcronin Posted August 21, 2003 Share Posted August 21, 2003 Whoah, that's a whole lot of questions there. OK, let's take it slow. Since this is your first one, you're going to have to learn alot along the way. Much of this stuff you are probably going to have wait and ask more specific questions when you come to it. First thing, these complex bone setups. It used to be that they used the FK/IK setups to give animators a choice. They could use FK for certain thing if they wanted or IK. Now with Houdini 6+ you actually have an FK blend handle on an IK bone system so you can switch back and for and blend between FK and IK at will on a single bone chain. Of course if you want or need to, you can still build an FK/IK type set up and ignore the FK blend handle. Another thing that riggers will do, is use a bone system, say a simple IK bone system to drive a much more complex bone system that is actually capturing the geometry. So for like a spine, you could have a very complex spline IK system with a dozen bones that captures the geometry and deforms the model, but the animator never touches that. The animator uses a simpler system of bones and controllers which drive the spline system which in turn deforms the captured geometry. I don't really know what the rules are for good character setup, and it's an area that's really lacking in solid free information. The good rules I've seen are to keep it as simple as possible, make your rigs clear and understandable, provide visual feedback in your rigs, and lock down and hide anything that you don't want being animated or touched. For eyes, I came from a game background which is a bit sloppy, and usually we'd just let things intersect. Remember things don't have to be perfect, they just have to look perfect. If it really bothers you though you can make perfect blends to handle it, or try using the ray or maybe inflate SOP. For joints like the knees and elbows it mainly comes down to the initial capture regions as I recently learned. Make them overlap each other quite a bit. After that you can clean up the weights by painting them, and further try using the Bulge SOP, Ray SOP, or Inflate SOP to prevent the candy wrapper like crushing and folding. In Maya people often use weighted point clusters that are either user controlled or driven by bones to help these joints out and you can do something very similar in Houdini with the SoftTransform SOP. Additionally you could try the Blend SOP, I never tried it myself, but there's no reason I can think of why it wouldn't work. Right now I am working on a character and I intend to make it pretty advanced (advanced for me anyway) it's been a learning experience for me so far. I'll gladly post it here soon, and maybe it'll help you out some. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheUsualAlex Posted August 21, 2003 Share Posted August 21, 2003 Hi, Back in May I started this little project, which to this date, I still haven't touched it since then due to other reasons. Hopefully that after things wrapped up, I'd have time to get back to it. The stuff is 1/2 way done. I just need time for it. But here's a hip file of what I did. Look into the "proto" and "proto_clavical". There is an testing version of what I can hack around in Houdini. Don't bother with the rest of the objects as they're probably pretty useless at this point. Cheers, Alex plim_autorig_test_v4.24.hip.gz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael Posted August 21, 2003 Share Posted August 21, 2003 v4.24!!! you're holding out on me!! just to add a bit to what MCronin said - skinning (or binding or whatever you choose to call it) is really something that takes practice more than skill...every character will be just a little different and will need the right amount of time and care to get right. and yeah, rigs should be simple - at least from the point of view of the animator - and clean...have good clear visual aids and, if possible, run in real time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NatXotic Posted August 28, 2003 Share Posted August 28, 2003 Yep, i just recently rigged and skinned my first character in Houdini, and i will rerig and reskin him again. The results have been ok, but i think i can do better. It takes time and time and time, to get a nice rig. It all depends on the complexity of your character. Rigging and skinning is something not a lot of people wanna be bothered with, that's why everyone rushes through it. But you should take as much time for this field as you took to model your character. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maharzan Posted September 7, 2003 Share Posted September 7, 2003 can i see Nat? i will be working on the this once i finish my exams in next 20 days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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