Hunter,

Not sure I'm getting your point.

I have increased the bend angles on the fingers to allow for a tighter fist, and I'll upload the new version when I can get SVN to work again. (It was playing games last night!) It's the bit where you say:

'For the splay thing, what i mean is that you can't make the hand close with the pinky or index finger first then have the other fingers follow.'

You can. So taking this with your latest post, where you say:
'what i'm saying is that the limits you have set are too strict.'

I'm assuming that you want to be able to close the hand one finger at a time, from completely flat to completely folded? Now, whilst this is actually possible with a real hand, it is an unusual occurrence, so I didn't model for it. To make the rig allow for such extreme cases would lead to an over-sensitivity in operation that would actually slow down animation in the bulk of cases. It also would not allow for the fingers to bend backwards from the palm. (because in order for the system to push the fingers to their extremes, the 'unbent' fingers would be slammed back onto the bent back position, rather than staying in the flat position, unless this option was removed, or made a separate control) Also, keeping the fingers totally straight is an unusual position in itself.

Anyway, let me know if I've missed your point. I'm still unsure of what it is you are trying to do with the hand that it will not do. The rig is a 'gesturing' rig, designed to handle the bulk of arm waving that people do, rather than one for picking stuff up. The only gesture I can think of that is might not do well is pointing, which I may need to address.

Matt

Alrighty then thats fine.

I fixed all this stuff, but then the SVN is palying silly *****s and I can't upload it. Can anyone else access the SVN OK?

Matt

Okay, SVN is checking in at revision 31, and because these issues can come up from time to time, I want to focus those issues in a central location, found here:

viewtopic.php?f=51&p=4786#p4786

I'll continue the topic there.

I echo what I said once before, this is a beautiful rig. I haven't played with it enough to keep up with the problems you guys are sorting out, something I plan on remedying shortly. I have added the updated rig into the files section.

Hunter,

I think the file in the SVN is now the corrected version. Check it out and see if the problems have been fixed.

(edit) just increased the finger curl a bit more,to get a tighter fist, but I'll upload that tomorrow.

Thanx.

Matt.

Hi all,

New version of the Nia rig just uploaded to the FMS. It has custom shapes for some of the control bones, improved control over the arms and wrists, with correct twist of the wrist and upper arm, and foot target and constraints so you can lock aspects of the foot to a pseudo-surface formed by a target bone, to reduce the chances of foot-slip when animating the feet.

Please download and give it a try to see if I have made any glaring errors!

Matt

Uploaded a first quick and dirty animation to test the usefulness of the Nia Rig. I have a couple of alterations to make to the rig, as I want to improve the IK/FK handling on the arms. I also want to add some bone groups and colour coding to the parts to make it faster to work with.

Link is:
http://www.openworldfilm.com/owffms/FMS/download.php?id=275

or:

http://www.vimeo.com/8689746



Any thoughts?

I know the movements are a bit jerky, especially at the start. I was kind of making it up as I went along, and this is my first animation more than a couple of seconds long.

Matt

Hi,

just a quick post to say I'm still working on the Nia/generic human rig, and I have what seems to be a workable rig so far. I'll be posting it perhaps next week for people to play with, as soon as I get the weight painting mirrored onto the other half of the rig.

It's looking crazy, with over 50 bones in each hand, 8 in the neck, and 11 in each shoulder, but it solves a lot of the mesh issues that otherwise have to be shapekeyed.


Matt

Quite looking forward to seeing it. I have had to build a few rigs for recent things, but they were only ever good enough to pull the model through the scene, they weren't really functional as all-purpose rigs.

Hi all,

Just uploaded a new rig for Nia with a default mesh to the FMS as project ID 57.

Have a go with it if you get a chance and see where the holes are.

Instructions are in the text file in the blend.

Matt

GREAT WORK MATT!!!


*feels so useless*

anyway, to help you out, i tried my hardest to break your rig and heres what i got:

one of the root bones control the left side of nia, and her body, while the other root bone only control the right side but doesnt move her body

bone armature master.002 deforms some vertices in her head
Attachment:

Screenshot-2.png [ 164.11 KiB | Viewed 15 times ]



I'm not sure what the cross-like things under her feet are for, if i move thaem fast enough, her leg bends, but if i move them slowly, the leg doesnt deform.

the fingers on her right hand go into her palms when clenched

bending her knees by moving the waist down causes her knees to intersect

and thats all i managed to find so far.

Tic,

Bone master.002 shouldn't have been there! It was left over from a left/right copy of some other bones. I have now removed it.

I tidied up the finger curl on both hands and gave them a more realistic curled position, with the fingers tapered into the palm, rather than parallel.

The crosslike things under the feet are 'floors' so you can stop the foot from passing down into the floor when you are animating. You position the top of them flush with the actual floor, and then you can constrain the foot not to pass below that, and also by manipulating the small lock bones, stop the foot from sliding/rotating relative to that floor. Obviously, one per foot, in case you are climbing stairs. Due to the constraint system having a time delay, if you move them fast enough, they will move the feet with them.

Yes, the knees do intersect if you lower the waist. This is due to the thigh bones following the path of real bones, thus offsetting the angles of rotation. It's not really a problem, as you can simply rotate the feet out a touch, and this goes away. (there are actually knee target bones you can play with directly, but it's not recommended, as it can lead to funny walks if you forget to put them back in the right place relative to the feet!)

I'll upload the corrected version when I get home tonight.

Keep on trying to break the rig.

Remember there are IK hand controls on layer 5 of the rig, as well as the normal 'puppet' controls on layer 1.

Layer 2 has all the deform bones, and layer 3 the taget and mechanism type bones.

Still not totally happy with the deforms around the armpits and knees, but they can be tweaked later and/or shapekeys added to finish the task.

Most of the deforms will handle a 'normal' range of flexing before they start to look odd. Twisting any of the joints, or the body, too far, will start to make it looked torn, but I'm not rigging for every possible motion. If we every need a severely distorted pose, it's faster to directly edit the mesh for that shot.

EDIT: new file uploaded.

Matt

New version uploaded (v5.3) with a lot of weirdness removed from the shoulders, especially the right one.

Also added a couple of bones to clean up the upper arm when it is moved backwards.

Should solve a few problems.

Matt

Quick post to point folks at a rough animation I did to test the hand controls on the Nia rig. I know it's not perfect, it's just five or six keyframes thrown together in 2 minutes. It just demonstrates the nature of the movements with only three control bones.

http://www.openworldfilm.com/owffms/FMS ... php?id=284

Matt