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zippa · 19-07-2006, 06:29 PM

I want to thank everyone for all their help and input. A lot of greats ideas!!!

a few days have past since I got onto the forum as I locked my self away at a campground for 4 days to get this done. I am very excited to connect to all the links on the last 2 postings.

Okay, here's what I did to get the job done. Though I still want to improve it, it will do for now in order to meet the deadline.

There is a tutorial out there to animate a slug. This has to do with the talks of driving an object about a set of bones such that the object takes on the shape of the skeleton as it traverses from one end to the other.

the link: http://www.md-arts.com/tutorials.htm.
Scroll down to the slug tutorial. This worked great... on a simple version, meaning in 5 minutes I could construct a skeleton of approx 70 bones, which represents the path I need for my project, and I modeled an overly simple object, ( a capsule), and easily got this object to travel throughout the skeleton, adhering to and taking on the shape of the skeleton as it traveled through. Absolutely awesome and easy.

So I move on to apply this very same technique to my model (sort of a complex model, relative to the capsule) and 30 hrs later I could not get my object to conform to the bones neatly, without the object busting loose and going off course and/or distorting beyond recognition. Due to a shortage of time I ended up merely using the same skeleton and, frame by frame, adjusted the bones to represent the motion of the object traveling from one spool to the next. OUCH! 12 hours for one cycle and it isn't as clean and jerk-free as I wanted plus I really needed 4 cycles. But now that I am past this issue for now I will go back and try other options, work more with weight maps ect.

This technique has to work, I am very close.
When you follow the slug tutorial, be sure to check off the option 'use morph locations' (I believe that's correct, in the middle of a crunch so I can check it) on the bones property box in order for the object to snap to the shape of the bones.

Thanks again for all the inputs, you guys have all been a great help!

Paul

19-07-2006, 06:29 PM	#12
zippa Registered Member Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 19	I want to thank everyone for all their help and input. A lot of greats ideas!!! a few days have past since I got onto the forum as I locked my self away at a campground for 4 days to get this done. I am very excited to connect to all the links on the last 2 postings. Okay, here's what I did to get the job done. Though I still want to improve it, it will do for now in order to meet the deadline. There is a tutorial out there to animate a slug. This has to do with the talks of driving an object about a set of bones such that the object takes on the shape of the skeleton as it traverses from one end to the other. the link: http://www.md-arts.com/tutorials.htm. Scroll down to the slug tutorial. This worked great... on a simple version, meaning in 5 minutes I could construct a skeleton of approx 70 bones, which represents the path I need for my project, and I modeled an overly simple object, ( a capsule), and easily got this object to travel throughout the skeleton, adhering to and taking on the shape of the skeleton as it traveled through. Absolutely awesome and easy. So I move on to apply this very same technique to my model (sort of a complex model, relative to the capsule) and 30 hrs later I could not get my object to conform to the bones neatly, without the object busting loose and going off course and/or distorting beyond recognition. Due to a shortage of time I ended up merely using the same skeleton and, frame by frame, adjusted the bones to represent the motion of the object traveling from one spool to the next. OUCH! 12 hours for one cycle and it isn't as clean and jerk-free as I wanted plus I really needed 4 cycles. But now that I am past this issue for now I will go back and try other options, work more with weight maps ect. This technique has to work, I am very close. When you follow the slug tutorial, be sure to check off the option 'use morph locations' (I believe that's correct, in the middle of a crunch so I can check it) on the bones property box in order for the object to snap to the shape of the bones. Thanks again for all the inputs, you guys have all been a great help! Paul