Rig Help?

[rhyno]

Helloooo... I was about to make a dance sequence with a model but I needed a rig for it to make it look as natural as possible because if I had the resources I would MOCAP but I just don't have enough space to do it! T_T So I was wondering if someone would be able to help me. Either point me in the right direction or directly help me out by making it for me? :3 I keep hearing it's extremely easy to make a rig but no tutorial would help me in being able to make a rig by myself... T_T It just never loads up on my if I load it which I would assume means it won't work... the model is Hatsune Miku PDDT from the Gmod workshop. It works fine with SFM but the bones are named differenty... T_T Thanks for anyone's help in advance! :D

Here's the WIP animation that I have animating without a rig. Tell me what you think maybe? :3 Nothing to complex like leg movement, it's all upper body movement so far but it's planned to be that way for this part of the video anyways:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tIJ3ywy-IE

[raptornx01]

google miku IK rig. there are a couple selections for rigs for maya. you may be to find a way to get a maya rig into sfm. This i don't know how to do though.

[rhyno]

raptornx01님이 먼저 게시:

google miku IK rig. there are a couple selections for rigs for maya. you may be to find a way to get a maya rig into sfm. This i don't know how to do though.

I looked it up and they're all pretty out-dated. :\ They're both from 2 years ago and the latest update they recieved were from last year. One's DL link is dead. I was gonna give it a go to see how it'd work but alas, no luck! T_T Have you ever tried making a rig before? I don't know how people get to make them work, I've been looking at other IK rigs I've acquired and they don't do anything different from what I've done... So I don't really understand. I haven't been able to find a good tut on rigging for SFM. One's a drunk "sober" tut and another one is really vague on the SFM wiki. I need someone to at least teach me to do it correctly then I'd do it on my own. :P

[R234]

Maybe you could try copying the default rig_biped_simple.py and changing the bone names to those of your model. I haven't tried so I don't know if it really is that simple, but I would hope it is...

[psi onix]

fyi: using ik rig is often the exact opposite of natural looking. it's better to just get good at animating with FK. it just takes a little more work because you have to move more bones manually.

[rhyno]

Psi님이 먼저 게시:

fyi: using ik rig is often the exact opposite of natural looking. it's better to just get good at animating with FK. it just takes a little more work because you have to move more bones manually.

I guess "natural" wasn't the right word I was looking for... I haven't really delved into FK rigging but I'll look into it. I just want the animation to flow... Maybe that's the word... :3

[rhyno]

R234님이 먼저 게시:

Maybe you could try copying the default rig_biped_simple.py and changing the bone names to those of your model. I haven't tried so I don't know if it really is that simple, but I would hope it is...

It IS technically that simple from what I've read but I realized that having more than one [let's say] arm bone messes up the rigging and I guess confuses the script? So it won't work essentially with my model... I'd have to edit the model, fix bone names, maybe add jiggle bones... But I'm looking at what I can do with what I've got. :) I mean unless someone knows how to make a rig for models with more than one bone for a joint then that'd be great info to share! :D

[raptornx01]

You're video doesn't look to bad now. I'd say keep working with that. but thats up to you.

Also, more then one bone for a joint? what do you mean? (I don't have that model, so not familiar with it's issues.)

[rhyno]

raptornx01님이 먼저 게시:

You're video doesn't look to bad now. I'd say keep working with that. but thats up to you.

Also, more then one bone for a joint? what do you mean? (I don't have that model, so not familiar with it's issues.)

Thanks man! :D But I mean it has random twist bones throughout the arm or it'll have 2 or 3 bones in approximately the exact same place. I have other models that do that which are really annoying. So throughout this animation I have to reset the orientation while trying to hide it because losing keyframes for wrong bones being keyframed will mess up the whole thing.. T_T

[R234]

Some HWM TF2 characters have additional bones like that too, the Engineer for instance has 2 forearm twist bones per arm and a few for the wrists, and the Sniper has a ton of bones for finer finger adjustments. If there's nothing about these in rig_biped_simple, it means you can simply ignore them.

[rhyno]

R234님이 먼저 게시:

Some HWM TF2 characters have additional bones like that too, the Engineer for instance has 2 forearm twist bones per arm and a few for the wrists, and the Sniper has a ton of bones for finer finger adjustments. If there's nothing about these in rig_biped_simple, it means you can simply ignore them.

Python's just a hard code to understand... -_-" haha but I'll get it some day :)

[psi onix]

WIP looks good so far.. but even if you're not moving the legs at all for that part there still needs to be something slight going on with them. the body twisting on top of stiff hips/legs catches the eye as looking unnatural. but perhaps you just haven't gotten to that yet.

good job.

[rhyno]

Psi님이 먼저 게시:

WIP looks good so far.. but even if you're not moving the legs at all for that part there still needs to be something slight going on with them. the body twisting on top of stiff hips/legs catches the eye as looking unnatural. but perhaps you just haven't gotten to that yet.

good job.

Yeah, Haven't gotten to work on legs yet, I'm still a noob at animating so I don't think it's quite good... T_T Lol but I will do some slight movement, and try to make it as smooth as possible. As with the glitchy movement, I don't quite understand why it happens? I look at the graph editor and the lines are smooth like butter but it still jitters... WHY?!
Thanks though! :D

[raptornx01]

make sure you don't have any overlapping keyframes. having two keys on a single frame can cause issues. as can moving a keyframe past one ahead of it. also, check each axis individually at the point of the jitter. pos x y and z and rot x y and z sometimes something can look smooth when you look at the whole thing, but show an odd spike when looking at one separate and vice versa.

[rhyno]

raptornx01님이 먼저 게시:

make sure you don't have any overlapping keyframes. having two keys on a single frame can cause issues. as can moving a keyframe past one ahead of it. also, check each axis individually at the point of the jitter. pos x y and z and rot x y and z sometimes something can look smooth when you look at the whole thing, but show an odd spike when looking at one separate and vice versa.

Alright I'll check it next time! :) Thanks for the tip! ;)

[vote4waifu]

Psi님이 먼저 게시:

fyi: using ik rig is often the exact opposite of natural looking. it's better to just get good at animating with FK. it just takes a little more work because you have to move more bones manually.

HA
No way, animate ALL the rigged bones, then detatch it/unhide it and have fun with all the extra little ones. That's how it goes. Unless you're going -really really- toony.