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Human Rig w/ muscles


kai.scorpio

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you can't. period.

it's bones or muscles - NOT both. (I asked SESI when metacapture was shown for the first time if there would be a unified deformer...currently the answer in no)

there are two workflows for this:

1 - use bones for articulation, then build muscles as children of these bones for defomation

2 - bones for deformation - then transfer the weighting info to muscles

Hi,

I tried a few things too but no results this far, so is there no way to layer deformers in houdini? The way I'd layer deformations in Maya, when all other methods fail, would be through the use of blendshapes - multiple meshes with diferent deformers or groups of deformers, each mesh piped into a blendshape and added to the base. It doesn't seem to work in houdini, I can't get a behavior similar to parallel blenshapes in Maya - basically, both blends should be relative to the base, but independent of each other. Any thoughts?

vm

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er, #1 as described is "layering" to me ...

by #1 you mean... "1 - use bones for articulation, then build muscles as children of these bones for defomation"? I'm not sure I understand...

anyway, the above example is not layering any deformers, it's just one deformer - the muscles.

vm

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If what you mean is to use standard point capture weighting with the Deform SOP and then using Muscle capturing with the Deform Muscle SOP, yes you can. Just have to be careful with the transforms.

That is the way muscles were first used on rigs and is still a valid approach. You are running two Deform operations so you will get a speed hit.

You can layer muscles using Muscle Groups (Metaball Groups). You can have one set of muscles doing the base deformation then layer other muscles on top as well all feeding in to a single Deform Muscle SOP.

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If what you mean is to use standard point capture weighting with the Deform SOP and then using Muscle capturing with the Deform Muscle SOP, yes you can. Just have to be careful with the transforms.

That is the way muscles were first used on rigs and is still a valid approach. You are running two Deform operations so you will get a speed hit.

You can layer muscles using Muscle Groups (Metaball Groups). You can have one set of muscles doing the base deformation then layer other muscles on top as well all feeding in to a single Deform Muscle SOP.

thanks old school,

I haven't worked with muscles yet, just some basic tests. I was asking about layering deformers in general, not necessarily bones and muscles.

the problem seems to be, like with the edit sop, if you add an edit after the capture, it doesn't seem to work, or at least I couldn't find a way - the edit doesn't apply its deformations based on the results of the capture - if in the edit sop I move a vertex right and I use the bones to turn the object around, the edit doesn't turn with it, it keeps deforming in the same direction.

could you give me some hints... you said something about transforms... could you detail on this a bit please?

vm

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the problem seems to be, like with the edit sop, if you add an edit after the capture, it doesn't seem to work, or at least I couldn't find a way - the edit doesn't apply its deformations based on the results of the capture - if in the edit sop I move a vertex right and I use the bones to turn the object around, the edit doesn't turn with it, it keeps deforming in the same direction.

You need to wire the rest geometry into the second input of the Edit SOP. I think I've posted more than a few examples on this already.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Sorry for abandoning this thread without a message, my project got a bit drowned during the end of the school year. I hope I'll have some time to work on it over summer, and I'll post updates as often soon as I can.

I found how to measure the bone rotations from IK, but since I started workin on this again I've been having a strange problem, when I move the IK controller up, the bones and muscles move with it, but the arm deforms downwards. The normals of the mesh are facing out, so has anybody got an idea to what's goin on?

EDIT: another issue that might have something to do with the problem: when i first add the muscledeform node there is a deformation in the mesh even though I haven't moved anything... maybe this is unrelated but I don't know what is causing this either. Thanks for any help, this is my first real character project so I'm new at this.

Edited by kai.scorpio
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  • 6 months later...

OK, here goes another try at this project. I fixed the problem with the deformations going the wrong way by recapturing and painting my muscles, so that seems to have been a random glitch. I think I'm almost finished setting up the muscles, the next step would be to stick this setup into the auto character, so I have a proper rig for it as well.

Just two more issues to be fixed, first of all the deformation in the upper arm and shoulder is very messed up (see screenshots). Any ideas?

Also, the problem with capturecorrect hasn't gone away, adding a capturecorrect node in my mesh node completely removes all muscle deformations.

Kai

post-3079-1232018690_thumb.png

post-3079-1232018892_thumb.png

Base2.hipnc

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Ah, doing the trick with look-at objects in the sidefx tutorial fixed it. I thought that was only for flipping issues... On this issue, does anybody know if it necessary to add a second null object and parent the muscle anchor to it, or can I just add the look-at constraint to the anchor? It seems to be working like this, and that would reduce the amount of nodes I have.

Kai

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  • 2 weeks later...

Next step is to redo the wrist/forearm setup, this is still somewhat broken.

Could somebody help explain how the autorig manages to use only one muscle for the forearm?? I tried to do this, but I end up with my arm getting much thinner when I rotate the forearm...

My setup now is two bones in the forearm (roll and bend), and one muscle anchor at each end and a blend for an anchor in the middle, like the autorig has.

Thanks,

Kai

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