Rigging tutorials?

[DaJuice]

Is the Hoodnik video tutorial still around somewhere? If I remember correctly it went pretty in depth about bones, and I seriously need some help figuring out the rigging process in Houdini. I just tried it for the first time today and only succeeded in getting myself very pissed off.

I think I'm not doing it right. Say I have a character, and I draw bones for the left arm. I capture the character's geometry and go on to edit the regions until I'm happy with the deformations. Do I just redo the process for all the other parts of the body or is this just plain wrong? I had a lot of trouble using this "method"; capture region colors not updating interactively, capture regions starting to

deform the geometry. I have the feeling I'm doing this all assbackwards.

[edward]

I think the Hoodnik tutorial was in the Tutorial and User Guide pdf in the Help menu in Houdini 5.5.

How are you editing the capture regions? Are you using the Edit Capture Regions tool? That should allow you to adjust the capture regions and also recapture at the same time so that they don't look like they're deforming the geometry.

You should draw all the bones for your skeleton and then capture the entire bone objects hierarchy all at once. Then you start adjusting weights using a variety of tools. However, if you want to keep things procedural, it's best to capture using the regions method and then stick to using Edit Capture Regions. This will give you the maximum flexibility where you can add geometry detail after you have captured. In Houdini 6, you can also add more bones at any time in the process and append them to your capture with a (animatible) blend factor. This allows you much greater flexibility in controlling your deformations. Extra regions are good for preventing collapsing volume.

Other capturing tools are also available like Edit Capture Weights and Paint Capture Weights. These can be used on both the "regions" or "proximity" capture methods. However, once you use them, you're pretty much committed to the geometry point count in not changing after that point in time. These are good for fine tuning your deformations when you know that you will never add any more points to your geometry.

I probably can't repeat this enough but a key thing to know is the concept of the Capture Frame. The rest position of your skin geometry is captured procedurally at the capture frame, which is 0 by default. This means that you must ensure that the position of your bones stay the same at the capture frame. Houdini will key all your bones at the capture frame when you use the Capture Geometry tool. However, all your skeleton controllers won't know about this so make sure that you also key all the parameters you intend to animate at frame 0 first.

[DaJuice]

You should draw all the bones for your skeleton and then capture the entire bone objects hierarchy all at once.

Ahh, that's exactly what I wanted to know. And yeah, I'm using Edit Capture Regions instead of proximity.

I think the Hoodnik tutorial was in the Tutorial and User Guide pdf in the Help menu in Houdini 5.5.

That would explain why I couldn't find a video tut for it.

Man, I'm out of it.

Thanks edward.

[robert.magee]

The Houdini 5.5 tutorial guide is now available as legacy material in the Houdini community. Go to www.sidefx.com/community for details.

[MatrixNAN]

Need Rigging Videos I know of about 10 for Houdini here they are!!!

Houdini Rigging

Whole List Of Videos From SideFx

and last but not least the 3D Buzz Rigging Videos

3D Buzz Rigging Videos

You will have to navigate to the Houdini Video Section. I can't make a direct link to it. You can sign up to be a member for free.

Cheers,

Nate Nesler

[DaJuice]

Yeah, the Hoodnik tut cleared a lot of things up. I have never really dealt with bones before, I'm used character studio in max, which is quite different.

Thanks for the links MatrixMAN, I have yet to sign up to 3D Buzz.

[KrisStaber]

anyone still got those tutorials somewhere ?

or new ones ?

do you know any tutorials that are useful for rigging in houdini ?

Edited July 19, 2008 by KrisStaber