Re-rigging figures

[Pendraia]

Hi Spearcarrier, if you use DS creating a new material zone is fairly easy. I'm just about to go out and do shopping(Saturday morning here) but when I get back I'll try and locate a tutorial for you.

Rigging the ears should be a case of adding in extra bones. Sounds like you know a bit about rigging though so not sure what you need to know. Maybe a separate thread where you can post images and people can help with what you need to do.

This thread was moved from Some figures I have done.

 

[spearcarrier]

Hi Pendraia. Nice name, btw. And I see you are wise. Beyond your years I hope not, because that's usually sad.

I thank you if you can find information!!! I did try to only add bones at first. It just wouldn't work. Also, when adding rigging Bunnygirl did some strange strange things. Her head would go in explosive directions for example. I'm not experienced enough to know where the conflict was - so being as the model just wouldn't take any extra rigging I started over. I wasn't going to use her buuuuttt... there's this other bunny model that reminds me of her that the owner won't sell the commercial rights to. He sells her. Personal use only. (shot in the heart, staggers, falls in a heap) And then I remembered Bunnygirl. And I happen to really like Bunnygirl. So win-win there.

I got the ears to bend correctly today by chance, so now I'm at the "add morph" stage. It's going to be slow going, though, as I have to work for a living. Crazy, huh. Also. I never can remember how to add MCM morphs. I just thought perhaps Tate would like a copy of the new bunny - either now or later - because she is primarily his work after all. And I ramble too much I know. I can't model or I'd make clothes for her. Thank goodness for the Crossdresser program!!!!!

 

[Pendraia]

Thanks...not so sure about the wise but definitely on the older side. I'm looking forward to retiring in a few years time so fully understand the working for the living business.

First the new surfaces are really easy to create...here's a tutorial from Mike where he adds a new surface for a gemstone.
And a video tutorial from Flagg3D which I located

It sounds like you are going with morphs for the ears which is probably the easiest way to do it. If you get stuck sing out as I do morphs all the time. There is a really good video tutorial from Josh Darling iirc...I'll see if I can did that out for you.

Here's the tutorial from Josh on MCM's

Just in case you're still interested in the additional bones here are some tutorials that you might find useful.
Basic: Adding Bones for Rigging (WIP) [Documentation Center]
Extending the Skeleton with Ghost Bones * [Documentation Center]
[Tutorial] Create Pose Controls To Move Extra Bones

 

[JOdel]

Sounds like a job for JCMs. Not that I know squat about creating JCMs. But I have nasty suspicion that you need more than just bones to do them.

If it's anything like building expression morphs (which it really sounds like) I suspect you need to go outside Studio. Like, to an actual modeling program.

 

[Pendraia]

JCM's are specifically for when you want a morph to activate when a joint is moved in a particular way.

There are two main ways to make a model move in programs like DS and Poser. Rigging or Morphs. If you know how to rig, rigging in my view (fwiw) is superior in terms of control, for someone who hasn't got the knowledge of how to rig, morphs would probably be easier.

Think of a hair model that has movement. Most hairs aren't rigged they use morphs to achieve movement, personally I like figure hair as it will autofollow if the head size changes but it does come with its own set of problems. * Shrugs, both have advantages and disadvantages.

 

[spearcarrier]

I feel a little guilty because it appears I've hijacked Tate's thread, which is not what I wanted to do... should we move to our own thread? Turn the conversation back? *scratching head*

J0del, I could morph the ears all I wanted, but it won't give me what I NEED. Morphs are too limited for what I want. I'd have to continuously go to Blender for each new thing over and over again if two morphs don't blend well or, well, you take it. But having the ears actually be rigged frees up their movement.

I've hit a small problem, though. To get BG's ears rigged I had dialed her ears up and left the morph in the model. Now if I try to make shapes for the ears, I'm going to have all sorts of issues. And I have no desire to rerig another model.

I hadn't thought about using JCMs but I think I should add some. Arms up, down, ears moving, etc. Time to learn something else!

I will of course be creating morphs for smaller feet, face shapes, etc. That's where MCMs come in. I know that eyes blinking is an MCM. I forget how to do them. But this is where Pendraia's generous efforts come into play. Now I gotta get this thread over to my render computer so I can look at them while playing with things.

I like hair that's rigged, and usually I won't deal with hair that's not. There's a script by Mjcasual that I put on the hair for animation to simulate dynamics. With the way DAZ's dynamic system works, true dynamic hair would just fall off of the figure's head. The script depends on deformers, so with rigging I can add deformers to different bone chains to get a more varied movement. The new hair from DAZ? Won't morph for anything usually. Drives me nuts. Give me legacy any day when it comes to hair. When I play with animation it's usually with cartoons so this fits my needs perfectly. Although I admit last night I ended sucked into the Dyncreator script working with Crossdresser 4 until dawn because the situation was just bugging me that much.

 

[Pendraia]

Can you post a screen shot of what you've managed to do so far in terms of rigging? It sounds like you would prefer to have it rigged. Not being familiar with the figure it's a bit hard for me to suggest options that are more specific. Warning: I'm not an expert on rigging...just recently worked out how to rig my mermaid tail...so I can help with some things but if we get stuck we might have to call on an expert.

 

[spearcarrier]

That sounds like a good idea. I'm posting a screenshot of when the figure is zeroed out. Her ears go down with the inside facing the back of the head.
Then I'm posting a shot of when her ears are where I thought I had 'em when I put the rigging in. LOL.

I guess I'll have to get real clever with ear morphs. But this is my fault.

 

[Pendraia]

So am I right in thinking that you have posed the ears in the second shot using the parameters tab?

If so the rigging appears to be working there...so is the problem occuring when you reload the figure? Did you memorise the rigging? IIRC there is a step where you need to do that. I will have to rewatch the video I got from a webinar that I did recently to check the process, probably won't be today as I have to go to my mum's for Christmas lunch shortly. Sorry it's been a while since I played with setting up new bones.

Can you also show me a screenshot of the scene tab with the ear sections opened to view?

 

[spearcarrier]

Well, yeah, the rigging works... when the morph is dialed up. The rigging actually works great all over - so long as that morph is dialed up. LOL.
The problem with this is... let's say I make a cat ear morph. Those ears would be forward as well. I worry dialing up the cat ears will require the bunny ears to also be forward which will make her head explode. I guess I should make such a morph just to find out.

Although I wonder if there's a way to simply switch out the geometry obj with one that has ears forward to make that how her base just flat out is. I wonder if that would work.

I'll post a screenshot in just a moment. I confess. I've been stuck trying to convert a jacked into dynamics for going on 3 days now.

 

[Pendraia]

Okay...sounds like your rigging is okay for that morph. Have you when morphing it to something else used the command to fit the rigging to the body? I can't remember what the exact menu command is but essentially it realigns the rigging to fit the new shape. I had to do it when I did Diva and then you need to do an ERC command to memorise it. Sorry too late and my brain is dead but I'll find the instructions and either link to them or post them tomorrow morning.

If the rigging no longer matches the body due to an extreme morph you need to realign it otherwise it won't pose properly. If you click on bone tool so you can see the rigging you will see that it doesn't match the body shape.

 

[spearcarrier]

To do that command you right click and tell it to adjust rigging to shape.

It's not the rig that's my worry. It's how the mesh will react to the morphs. The ears up morph literally turns the mesh around to face a different direction. When down the ears face the opposite direction. So when the ears are down, the rigging doesn't work right. I'm guessing because the mesh is creased from the ears being folded, so things just move as fluidly as when the ears are pointing straight up.

I've literally lost my night on this stupid jacket. Again. I'm ready to beat things with nerf weapons.

 

[Pendraia]

That's the one...but you need to do something after that to memorise the rigging.

If you morph the shape after changing the rigging it will have an impact especially if you make large ears smaller. You need to readjust the rigging or when you pose the shape it will turn into spaghetti.

It's frustrating when things don't work the way you expect.

 

[spearcarrier]

I think the jacket might work, it's just a ram eater. My computer is weak, so often when I try to do thinks most of my work flow is me sitting and waiting. Blender seems to do that to objects, even when I decimate them. I'm not very good at modelling though. Installing chickens and then will get that screenshot. Ha.

 

[Pendraia]

Okay...sounds good. I'm working on the computer off and on. While I wait for test renders I've been sorting my teacher stuff and trying to tidy up.

 

[spearcarrier]

Okay this is a screenshot with the ears expanded. With this one I had tried to get the ear to unfold using the bones. It does... but because of the way the mesh is, the inner ear gets mangled and shifted. This is why I wonder if I can simply change the base figure to have the ears up naturally. This would elminate the issue and make morphs a better thing to deal with. I will probably try it being as all I have to do is export the figure with her ears up.

To get a morph inside the bunny you change the shape, adjust rigging to shape, then ERC and save. Easy for the most part when it comes to morphs in triax. But I wish I'd been able to simply add bones to the original bunny... triax is great for some things in regards to convenience, but it's got shrinkwrap like crazy. I look at the way clothing formed to figures in the legacy generation 3 days and how triax forces them to shrink wrap now and I feel like 3D took a huge step backwards in that department. So once chances are this bunny will forever suffer changes as I need things over the years, and then be converted to a legacy model for me to do actual animation and modelling with.

I've found that usually when the model explodes, as you describe, it's simply because some parts of the figure are being told to go up and down when they shouldn't. I go into the paremeters tab and set those things back to 0, lock them, and problem solved.

 

[spearcarrier]

Teacher stuff. Mmm... looked at that as a career once. I now hate children. J/k. But I couldn't be a teacher.

 

[Gadget Girl]

So I'm not expert (not even that great) at rigging in DS, but I was working on something recently where I needed to make MCMs in DS, and I think that might solve a lot of your problems (or at least help you understand what's going on). A lot of the tutorials I found had to do with making eye's closed controls, I think because it has similar issues to what you are worrying about when what happens as you morph the ears. Here's one of the tutorials I used Advanced: Creating Morph Controlled Morphs (WIP) [Documentation Center] if nothing else it might help you think through the problems you're having, even though they aren't identical.

 

[Pendraia]

Good link GG...

@spearcarrier, can you show an image of when it explodes that shows the rigging? You do realise that it is possible to legacy rig inside DS? That function is still there...it still eludes me even having bought one of Littlefox's wonderful tutorials. I personally prefer Triax to legacy much easier to understand.

Just looking at the expanded heirarchy in the scene tab, it looks like it is set up correctly.

The fact that you can fix things by going to the parameter tabs is making me wondering if the rotations are set up correctly on the bones. There is a particular order the figure bones need to go in from memory. When you rigged did you change the xyz order at all?

Oh...I teach grade 1/2's so think littlies...6-8 years of age. I like kids but I don't know that I could teacher the older ones. The little ones are mostly fun to teach. You do get the odd child who is challenging behaviorally though I have seen grade 1/2's throw chairs and trash the room.