Allright.
Let's start this new series of character
rigging tutorials. Again, and in the
name of simplicity, we'll be using
my ol' trusty bipedal character, Astro.
He
gladly voluntaired for re-boning,
skinning and IK setup (I must mention
I also re-modeled his torso, arms
and legs. He's now a patch guy). A
task that wasn't easy on itself, but
very enlighting (in terms of r4's
new character features). This experience
was made less painful thanks to the
invaluable help of some people.
CREDIT WHERE CREDIT
IS DUE
A
couple of people who contribuited
to this IK setup with invaluable information
are Paul Neale
and Michael
B.Comet. Both contributed with
a lot of ideas and designs regarding
character setup. I'll continue to
mention them as it becomes necessary.
WORDS OF CAUTION
1.
One thing. I'll be constantly mentioning
I align certain objects to other objects.
Usually, when I do this, I align both
the position AND the orientation.
This is extremely important, due to
the way rotations work. Refer to the
pictures if in doubt.
2.
Also, as a suggestion, as I'm working
I constantly set locks on my objects.
For example, in my rotator objects,
I always turn on the move and scale
locks in all axes. This is to prevent
doing unwanted transformations on
my objects (rotators are supposed
to only rotate). This is a good working
habit, and although I don't mention
my lock setting throughout the tutorial,
you should to easily inferr which
locks to turn on per object.
3.
One more thing you should remember
THROUGHOUT the whole tutorial... ALL
of the IK solvers used in this tutorial
have their parent space set to Start
Joint. This prevents gimble locking
on the chain. REMEMBER to set this
one for each solver created UNLESS
NOTED OTHERWISE.
4.
I use sometimes local euler controllers.
These are helpful under certain situations.
To determine when you need them, perform
the following test. Grab the object
you'll rotate. Animate the rotation.
Playback. If you notice the object
wobbles instead of rotating on the
axis its supposed to, you'll be better
off using local eulers. Local eulers
are no longer supported as part of
the UI, but they can be assigned via
maxscript. Just copy the following
text onto the listener, select it,
and drag it onto a toolbar...
To
use it, just select the object(s)
you'll be assigning local euler controllers,
and hit the button. It'll instantly
assign local euler controllers to
those objects. Swami also wrote a
similar script and posted it in the
forum, so you might want to check
it out. A WARNING HERE! Local euler
controllers behave strangely a lot
of times. Some of the things you'll
notice are gimble locking and reverse-rotations.
These, however, can be easily taken
care of, and the benefits justify
them. There is also another script
at scriptspot that changes the axis
order for euler controllers. That'd
give you a local euler behavior, without
the drawbacks. I haven't tried that,
but you might want to.
OK. So, let's get started.
THE
SKELETON
For
Astro's skeleton, I decided to use
R4's new bone objects. If you're importing
a character made in previous versions
of the software (as I did), first
delete all skin modifiers before deleting
the old bones. I won't go into much
detail about the skeleton design,
since it's pretty straightforward.
In general, create your bones and
joints as close as possible to the
real thing. If you're building a human
skeleton, look into anatomy charts
to see where bones lie and how they
should be connected. The same for
animals, etc. Let's take a look at
Astro's skeleton...
SPINE
AND NECK:
As you can see, the spine was created
using a bottom-up approach. That means
I started with the joint at the waist,
and proceeded towards the neck. You
can create the neck and 'head bone'
as part of the same chain. The spine
will be animated using FK, with some
custom controls to aid in the process.
Draw the spine in any viewport. Then,
turn on the bone's fins to see which
way they're facing, and rotate them
if necessary (the 'front' fins should
be pointing towards the chest, and
the 'back' fins towards the back).
You may want to use snaps to ensure
the spine is really straight. It doesn't
matter, since we'll be using FK to
animate it. You can delete the small
bone created at the tip of it (you
won't be using IK with it, so it's
not necessary). Remember, always use
a clear naming convention here. It's
very important to keep cleanliness
in your projects, or you'll be VERY
sorry later when we start setting
up controls for the character. I named
my bones like this (from top to bottom):
Bone_Spine01 - Bone_Spine02 - .....
- Bone_Spine06. To create the neck,
just continue upwards creating two
more bones. Mines are A_Bone_neck
and A_Bone_head (The A_ prefix I should
continue to use refers to this character
in particular. This is to avoid confusion
when merging more characters onto
the scene). The fins you see coming
out from the back of the character
are used for visual refernce of the
character's actual volume (he's got
a backpack).
ARMS
The
arms are pretty straightforward. Just
Draw them from the shoulder to the
wrist. It's best to do it in the top
viewport.
Then,
add a small bone that goes from the
middle-top of the chest to the shoulder.
This will be the 'clavicle' bone.
Draw it somewhere away from the other
bones, so that it doesn't become auto-linked
to the other chains, and move it to
its proper position. I named these
bones like this: Bone_clavicleRT -
Bone_armRT - Bone_forearmRT. (RT stands
for right side. I name the left side
bones in the same way but with a LT
suffix).
LEGS
Another
simple setup. It uses three (ok,
four) bones. The ususal three for
the leg (thigh, calf, and the small
'tip' bone we need for the IK solver
to work), and a bone that goes on
top of the chain. This bone will
not move, and is only there for
skinnig purposes, so link the thigh
bone to it. I named them A_Bone_skinleg,
A_Bone_thigh and A_Bone_calf.
3DTotal
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FEET
The
feet have a very straight-forward
bone setup. Just create one bone
from the ankle to the ball of the
foot, another from the ball to the
toes, and leave the small tip bone
there. Just make sure NOT to auto-link
the first bone to the leg's calf
bone or the IKterminator bone. They're
named A_Bone_foot, A_Bone_toes,
and A_Bone_IKterminator_foot.
HANDS
I
used several bone chains here, one
for each finger. The chains are
born at the wrist, and go all the
way up to the fingertips, going
through each knuckle (I mean to
create a new bone there). The fingers
will also be animated with FK, with
some automated, pre-made poses.
Check the picture to see the complete
names for this bones.
That
covers pretty much the bone setup.
Now, we'll get into the ugly stuff...
IK.
He
gladly voluntaired for re-boning,
skinning and IK setup (I must mention
I also re-modeled his torso, arms
and legs. He's now a patch guy). A
task that wasn't easy on itself, but
very enlighting (in terms of r4's
new character features). This experience
was made less painful thanks to the
invaluable help of some people.
SPINE
AND NECK:
As you can see, the spine was created
using a bottom-up approach. That means
I started with the joint at the waist,
and proceeded towards the neck. You
can create the neck and 'head bone'
as part of the same chain. The spine
will be animated using FK, with some
custom controls to aid in the process.
Draw the spine in any viewport. Then,
turn on the bone's fins to see which
way they're facing, and rotate them
if necessary (the 'front' fins should
be pointing towards the chest, and
the 'back' fins towards the back).
You may want to use snaps to ensure
the spine is really straight. It doesn't
matter, since we'll be using FK to
animate it. You can delete the small
bone created at the tip of it (you
won't be using IK with it, so it's
not necessary). Remember, always use
a clear naming convention here. It's
very important to keep cleanliness
in your projects, or you'll be VERY
sorry later when we start setting
up controls for the character. I named
my bones like this (from top to bottom):
Bone_Spine01 - Bone_Spine02 - .....
- Bone_Spine06. To create the neck,
just continue upwards creating two
more bones. Mines are A_Bone_neck
and A_Bone_head (The A_ prefix I should
continue to use refers to this character
in particular. This is to avoid confusion
when merging more characters onto
the scene). The fins you see coming
out from the back of the character
are used for visual refernce of the
character's actual volume (he's got
a backpack).
