[R4s1n]

Any updates on the texturing or the rigging?

[kumar]

Well, guess i took a few days since the last update,,, is because i went back and forth between understanding IK and UV texturing.. Guess i wont be UVing,,,, its too tiresome,,, and i am not good at it.. So i will only UV the details,, I have done the Eyes, and plan to do some others...

[kumar]

Well here is the IK Setup on the arms. Finally i learnt IK the hard way. Well i was surprised when it worked. Well now i know that its easier to animated when you only have to move one item. Now will start to IK the legs, and add a few more nulls to control the spine and get the eyes to focus. have also added a few expressions to this fellow, but that will be shown later

[firefist566]

yo kumar, its me, firefist566 from 3d links!!
noe wat, ur character reminds me of the barbarian character from the diablo 2 game!! but then, good job!!

[kumar]

Hmm,, but this guys is dark skinned and from the jungles of dark africa.... A possesed voodoo sort of a version. Hehehe Nice to see you here too.

[kumar]

Ok at last the full IK setup, total bones is 65, Ik is both on the arms from the collar bone to the wrist. Ik is also on the legs, from the top of the thigh till the ankle, covering the ball of the foot. Dont want to show the character, cause need to adjust some of the weight maps,,, heheh got distortion and all so here is the rigging,, guess i need to spend time to tweak it.

[R4s1n]

Dude that's awesome
Did you learn IK by yourself or by a tute?

[voices3d]

awsome

[kumar]

Self Learned IK,,,,

Well here is the lowdown on how i did it,,,, Say the Left leg..

You need a Hip bone to start,
then comes the thigh bone
then comes the knee cap bone
then comes the shin bone... You can add 2 here if you are going for a realistic look,,, but i added 1.
then comes the foot, ball bone.
then comes the foot toe bone.

In between the foot ball and the shin, parented to the shin you will need a small bone to do IK on. Usually call it LFoot_IKBone.

Now first you need to reset the rotation on all the bones,

After that make sure you have the parenting is correct.

Add a null positioned at exactly at the same location as the IK Bone. You can do this faster by removing parent in place and then parenting to the shin bone, and then turn on parent in place and then unparenting the bone.

Now select the hip bone and under its motion options, Unaffected by IK or Desendents.

For the Thigh, IK on Heading and Pitch stiffness 10. I dont quite like limits but its your choice i guess.

The knee cap is overlooked

The shin has IK on the heading.

The IK Bone,, select the null as the goal object, and turn on Full Time IK, Keep Goal Within Reach and i played around with the values and think that 25-75 works fine for me,,, this depends on your character and the size of him,,,, I loaded a smaller version i accidently had and the values had to be changed to look smoother.

After this step you will see a blue line from the hip to the IK Bone. Now all you have to do is move the null and the Leg bones move accordingly.

Tips* Bend the bones in the leg, before performing the IK stuff,,, I did it on a normal position and the calculations for IK went crazy. And make sure you reset the rotations, and record the rest position after. If not then prepare for joints popping out,,, Actually funny when that happened. As for the arms, heading and pitch controlling is for both bones.

Ok thats all for IK,,, Hope you enjoyed a short tutorial by a newbie for newbies....

[DigiMatt]

Great little tut kumar!
did you weight you character?

[kumar]

Well Digi i Weightmapped the character and then after bending the joints, went back to adjust the weightmaps, Just open the character in modeller and layout at the same time and in a prebend state, adjust away in modeller and switch back to layout to see the results. I used endomorphs to tweak the fine problems in distortion, Also tried the smart skin tutorial from newteks website, but have some problem with IK and expressions,,, maybe i will figure that out,,, or maybe i dont need it... Here is the screen shot of the endomorphs and the deformations adjusted. The main problem area i spent a few hours adjusting was the hip and thigh area. What you see is only weight maps, no MD or other stuff, the loincloth is also on the same layer as the character, although when i adjust in modeller i hid different parts of the character to make things easier.

[DigiMatt]

looks great!!

he looks like he's skiing lol

[kumar]

Hehe, By the way,,, how does the sliders thing work what is it usually used for..??? Keep getting,, you need to select error.

[dae]

hey Kumar great work, you have been busy, anyway, sliders are ok I dont use them that much, you add them in your object properties window, once thats done you can add channels and endomorphs if you have, but if you have a busy scene they do tend to get in the way.

Dae

[kumar]

Thanks dae, hmm i think i will stick to the normal ones... Ok guess i havent updated things in 2 days or so,, Hmm want to know what i was doing... Well fighting around trying to get animation going... Sorry if this looks bad,,, its my absolute first time doing animation.... Well with IK things are easier... If not then imagine rotating bones over and over. Ok This is a kick move. I know that i should be doing walking or other stuff,,, truth is i am sort of embarressed to show it... Once i get my framing and speed tuned to his movement and get a smoother walk then i will show you guys something. By the way,, can we like do different moves,, like walk, jog, run, jump and then use them in our scene like click to add.. Think its Motion Mixer,,, Any ideas Guys???

The video is in divx.