getting into rigging - help highly appreciated

[KrisStaber]

added ability to align FK or the IK arm to different controllers

armalignments.mov

[KrisStaber]

i am having a problem here

when i move the rig it has acceptable performance - not great but acceptable

but then when i put a keyframe on it - it becomes a lot slower

when i put a second keyframe on another frame - it becomes even slower

after the third keyframe on a third frame - the rig becomes unusably slow

its always writes out cooking this and that node in the lower left corner

i am just putting keyframes onto the root controller TX TY TZ

what can that be ?

oldschool mentioned that there is a problem when you put keyframes onto chops because every keyframe increases the load on the chops

is that whats happening in my rig ?

i am just using chops for distance calculation nothing fancy

keyframe_cooking2.mov

Edited August 16, 2008 by KrisStaber

[JoshJ]

yeah it looks like chops is the problem because it's trying to calculate the entire range. Here are three different things you could do to speed it up:

1. the object? chop has a parameter called channel range, change that to "use current frame"

2. use the distance() expression in parameters instead of chops to calculate the distance, that will just calculate for the current frame

3. object merge the point1 inside the nulls in another geometry object, and use a vop sop to calculate the distance: Subtract the position of one point from another, then pipe that into a length vop, which will give you the distance, which you can write to an attribute, then call that attribute value from anywhere else by using the point() expression. It sounds like more steps but this way might actually be quite fast.

i am having a problem here

when i move the rig it has acceptable performance - not great but acceptable

but then when i put a keyframe on it - it becomes a lot slower

when i put a second keyframe on another frame - it becomes even slower

after the third keyframe on a third frame - the rig becomes unusably slow

its always writes out cooking this and that node in the lower left corner

i am just putting keyframes onto the root controller TX TY TZ

what can that be ?

oldschool mentioned that there is a problem when you put keyframes onto chops because every keyframe increases the load on the chops

is that whats happening in my rig ?

i am just using chops for distance calculation nothing fancy

[KrisStaber]

thanks a lot josh

i will give them a try

would be a bummer if chops would not be usable in rigs - they are awesome

do autorigs use chops ?

in the mean time i adapted the rig to another character

same rig different character

lifeguard.mov

lifeguard_dev.mov

Edited August 9, 2008 by KrisStaber

[JoshJ]

oh chops are definitely usable in a rig, as long as you limit their calculation so they don't try to calculate the entire timeline every time you move the rig

if you need that functionality for some secondary animation however, then you can make a switch to turn it off while keyframing the base animation, then turn it on to see the result with the secondary animation.

You can also check the performance monitor, it can give you realtime output of the time it takes each node to process... so these types of situations are easier to troubleshoot; you can see exactly which node is the bottleneck.

thanks a lot josh

i will give them a try

would be a bummer if chops would not be usable in rigs - they are awesome

do autorigs use chops ?

in the mean time i adapted the rig to another character

same rig different character

[KrisStaber]

just reporting that this fixed the issue with the cooking

setting keys does not start a 5 minutes cooking process now

just took me a while to change that

i must have like 40 to 50 distance checks via chops in my rig

oldschool strongly advised me against using chops for something like that

but i cant really get the right distance via the distance expression

keyframing_.mov

Edited August 16, 2008 by KrisStaber

[KrisStaber]

reset buttons

reset bodyparts position

reset.mov

[KrisStaber]

made a quick lil video

adapting the rig:

http://tinyurl.com/adaptmov

quick walkthrough of the rig

http://tinyurl.com/walkthroughmov

Edited August 23, 2008 by KrisStaber

[michael]

great work Kris!

good luck with your presentation!

[KrisStaber]

great work Kris!

good luck with your presentation!

thanks michael

there is a lot to change or make better in that rig

technically and usability wise - its a bit "hacky" at the moment

the functionality is in there but not implemented ideally

but i guess for ~5 weeks without any prior houdini knowledge thats ok

it was more of a "lets see if I can rig in houdini"

I may start from scratch - redo the whole thing and make it really clean and consistant

then i could give it to the community to use

Edited August 24, 2008 by KrisStaber

[sibarrick]

That would be awesome. Hope you get the chance to do that.

[KrisStaber]

I just skimmed through my thread and realized that i didnt write it anywhere

i think houdini is by far the best tool for rigging i have seen so far (xsi, maya, 3dsm)

at least telling from how far i got with it

unfortunately i was not able to see how rigging/animation in houdini works in a production environment

Which is something i would love to do since i think houdini is an amazaing package !

for production I mostly use maya (due to the people and companies I work with)

things that are a pain in other packages are supersimple to implement in houdini

some things could use an update or attention from the developers to make it more streamlined

and even more userfriendly

but every software has that problem i guess

unfortunately it does not look like i will have time to redo the rig anytime soon

or create tutorials (hope that new buzz thing is useful - would have been great to have that when i started)

i am now back in vienna animating for games and commercials

here are the videos and the documentation

adapting the rig: http://krisstaber.at/posted/krigger/krigger_adapt_HD.mov

quick walkthrough of the rig: http://krisstaber.at/posted/krigger/krigge...kthrough_HD.mov

documentation: http://krisstaber.at/posted/krigger/frameset.htm

Edited October 21, 2010 by KrisStaber