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Basic armature / posing rig


paulrus
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I've been searching the forums for information on creating a basic armature or posing rig from within 3D Coat and came up with nothing.

I am not talking about adding animation or anything like that to 3DC. But I feel like the pose tool is extremely limited and doesn't do what I'd like.

I'm working on a character right now. I have her in a standard T pose, but I will never be animating her. However, the client hasn't decided what pose she should be in for the final sculpt, so I'm slightly stuck. I can't easily show him some different poses with the character, so we have to revert to sketches and discussions.

What I would like to see in 3D Coat is not what I'd call a "rig" but really more of an armature like you use in sculpting. I'd like to simply set up a very basic armature and have it STAY while I work. That way not only could I pose the model, but I could move the arms around to check different angles, I could bend the legs, spread fingers, etc.

In another thread, someone mentioned RigMesh: http://cs.gmu.edu/~ygingold/rigmesh/

I think the armature that it creates is a good example of what I'm talking about.

This would give you the ability to try out different poses for your sculpts quickly and easily.

Paul

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I hope Andrew will add some basic armature for posing after version 4 is released. It indeed would be very helpful.

The best we got at this time is the Select and Move tool in the Tweak room. Of course it is best to pose a low polygon version. Use the Select and Move tool and you will right away understand how it works... Not a hard tool to learn though you do learn a few tricks from using it for awhile.

The beast model was in a relaxed T pose and the other model was in a standard T pose. They both took just a few minutes apiece to get them into a pose position.

The Select and Move tool is much better for real posing than the pose tool in the Voxel room.

We do need at least a basic armature creation tool that is more advanced than the tweak room for voxel mode if all a possible.

EDIT:

The yellow brush cursor will grab the mesh outside of the pivot point gizmo in rotate mode.

post-518-0-04035400-1360802528_thumb.png

post-518-0-72883500-1360808762_thumb.png

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In my case, the model is most likely never going to leave the voxel room. So that's why I was really hoping for some sort of armature.

If I converted it to a low-poly version, I'd end up just sending it over to Softimage for posing, since Softimage has fantastic rigging tools.

But does this make sense? I saw a previous thread where the majority of folks shot the idea down because they thought armature = animation.

Thanks,

Paul

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What you can do in the mean time is pose the voxel model (with Retopo Mesh snapped to it) and check "Conform Retopo Mesh" at the top of the UI. That feature was implemented for this very reason. It's available anytime you use the MOVE, TRANSFORM or POSE Tools.

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I just wish Andrew would give us a falloff adjustment with the Pose freeform cage as he changed it. The falloff between the control points in the cage is too great even with a 2 x 2 cage. Your mesh gets too distorted. I see no way to do this unless I am missing it to adjust the falloff from "0" to "100" between the control points.

I agree with Paul an armature system would be great for posing. It does not have to be fancy... The pose tool is great for adjusting large scale sections of your mesh but not so great for character posing.

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What you can do in the mean time is pose the voxel model (with Retopo Mesh snapped to it) and check "Conform Retopo Mesh" at the top of the UI. That feature was implemented for this very reason. It's available anytime you use the MOVE, TRANSFORM or POSE Tools.

I see that, but it's not really what I'm looking for. I'm never going to create a retopo mesh for this project.

What I need to be able to do is create like 3-5 different poses and get the client to sign off on one - then finish the sculpt. An armature would let me easily create poses - the pose tool does not.

Paul

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You don't have to retopologize. The point is, you can bind the low poly model to the high poly model. For example, with this functionality, I could use the tools in the Voxel Room to create Morph targets, or pose a character I modeled (still keeping the T-Pose model for skinning/animation)

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Right, but that's backwards to what I want to do. I don't need anything I do in the voxel room to modify anything outside the voxel room because I'm not going to be creating any poly models. With a basic rig, I could pose and re-pose the character over and over until the client was happy, then finish my sculpt. The pose tool is too cumbersome and slow for what I'd like to do.

-Paul

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Right, but that's backwards to what I want to do. I don't need anything I do in the voxel room to modify anything outside the voxel room because I'm not going to be creating any poly models. With a basic rig, I could pose and re-pose the character over and over until the client was happy, then finish my sculpt. The pose tool is too cumbersome and slow for what I'd like to do.

-Paul

Sounds just like a job for a rigging/animation program. If I want to do this, I send it to a program that already has those tools (3ds Max or Messiah, in my case). While I agree it could be handy to have some kind of baisc rig for posing, you do have tools to pose in 3D Coat. Just like Rendering....sure there could be more improvement, but it's also venturing into areas 3D Coat was never designed, nor intended to do. I've never considered 3D Coat the ideal environment for this task, so I'm kind of torn whether to join the chorus on this request.
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Sounds just like a job for a rigging/animation program. If I want to do this, I send it to a program that already has those tools (3ds Max or Messiah, in my case). While I agree it could be handy to have some kind of baisc rig for posing, you do have tools to pose in 3D Coat. Just like Rendering....sure there could be more improvement, but it's also venturing into areas 3D Coat was never designed, nor intended to do. I've never considered 3D Coat the ideal environment for this task, so I'm kind of torn whether to join the chorus on this request.

I tend to agree. I'd hate to see 3DCoat's strengths watered down by trying to be too much. Currently, it is a critical application in the pipeline. Having a half implemented feature like full-on rigging would be a waste. I think the posing tool is enough. What's next after asking for the armature? Inverse Kinematics and constraints? I'd rather keep rigging and animation for the programs which have 10+ years behind them doing that like Lightwave, Maya, Max & Blender etc. I have no problem with extra deform tools to help with modeling or sculpting or tweaking a modeled pose, sure, but to attempt to be a rigging and animation program will water down the strengths of this very strong app for painting/retopo/uv/ & sculpting.. I'd say those big 4 are a lot of features for the size of team working on things...

At best, I'm ok with adding weighting tools to the vertex paint side of things and maybe those can help with limited deform/pose tools, but to create rigging and character animation like MotionBuilder, Rhiggit or other apps is just asking for a program that does more things half as good rather than some things really really well (which is what it does now).

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Ugh... this is the same argument I found in a previous thread. It's the nuclear option for this topic. Being able to easily pose a character = Andrew will make 3DC an animation program.....

Adding basic armature functionality does not make 3DC an ANIMATION program. I'm not talking about adding IK, a timeline or anything similar. Just a basic "wire" armature like you use for real-world sculpting. It could be something as simple as drawing linear splines that have a basic parent-child relationship and can affect the voxels around them.

So to reiterate. I'm NOT talking about "full-on rigging". I'm NOT talking about animation. I'm NOT talking about IK, constraints, etc. I'm not talking about weight painting, morphs, blend shapes, etc.

Watching the Pose Tool video on YouTube is painful. It's not a good tool for posing when it requires that much work to fix all the damage it does just by trying to repose an arm.

I'm saying - the ability to draw out a very simple set of parent-child splines, curves, bones, whatever you want to call them, that give you the basic ability to repose your ENTIRE character (just using a simple area of influence) without ever leaving the VOXEL room (and the ability to keep the armature alive without having to redraw it over and over), would make the workflow a lot faster and easier when it comes to sculpting a character for NON-animation purposes.

So please stop arguing that adding an armature = Motion Builder, Maya, Softimage, Lightwave, etc.

If the ability to quickly pose and repose within the voxel room is a bad idea, that's fine. But to make the argument that having that functionality means Andrew will suddenly drop all development to convert 3DC into a character animation platform makes Andrew sound like he's fairly stupid. And I'm pretty sure he's not.

-PG

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It's like just an opinion, man. ;) I can see your point for such a feature, but I'm not sure you see ours.

Anyway, how do you propose to deal with how the armature is set up? There are tons of different skeleton types with forearm roll, clavicle bones etc. What determines the bone layout? What if the bone layout is different than the rig you do use in the animation program? Also then is this just biped only? Or does he need a dragon/dog/spider armature with addon limbs?

In a way, you are kind of asking for a voxel Poser Pro application.

I just can't envision a feature being anything other than anemically implemented without going the full hog. sorry...

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philnolan time ago give the solution about this feature request

http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=9818&st=0&p=75575&hl=armature&fromsearch=1entry75575

You draw the outline of the shape you want and it creates a mesh similar to the E-Panel tools in 3DC. But it also automatically generates bones. and can make fairly complex shapes with full rigs.

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Ugh... this is the same argument I found in a previous thread. It's the nuclear option for this topic. Being able to easily pose a character = Andrew will make 3DC an animation program.....

Adding basic armature functionality does not make 3DC an ANIMATION program. I'm not talking about adding IK, a timeline or anything similar. Just a basic "wire" armature like you use for real-world sculpting. It could be something as simple as drawing linear splines that have a basic parent-child relationship and can affect the voxels around them.

So to reiterate. I'm NOT talking about "full-on rigging". I'm NOT talking about animation. I'm NOT talking about IK, constraints, etc. I'm not talking about weight painting, morphs, blend shapes, etc.

Watching the Pose Tool video on YouTube is painful. It's not a good tool for posing when it requires that much work to fix all the damage it does just by trying to repose an arm.

I'm saying - the ability to draw out a very simple set of parent-child splines, curves, bones, whatever you want to call them, that give you the basic ability to repose your ENTIRE character (just using a simple area of influence) without ever leaving the VOXEL room (and the ability to keep the armature alive without having to redraw it over and over), would make the workflow a lot faster and easier when it comes to sculpting a character for NON-animation purposes.

So please stop arguing that adding an armature = Motion Builder, Maya, Softimage, Lightwave, etc.

If the ability to quickly pose and repose within the voxel room is a bad idea, that's fine. But to make the argument that having that functionality means Andrew will suddenly drop all development to convert 3DC into a character animation platform makes Andrew sound like he's fairly stupid. And I'm pretty sure he's not.

-PG

What damage? Many of the adjustments made using the FFD cage are STYLISTIC changes. Try it yourself before you start bashing the tools and demonstrator. You do realize that the Pose tool is for much more than just Posing...right? So, if someone is demonstrating the ability to adjust scale and form as well as posing, why is that "PAINFUL?" Setting up a basic rig takes time too, and then you have to make a lot weighting adjustments. Even on Mudbox's bone/pose tools, it takes some adjusting too. In fact just 1/1 weighting in any bone system requires a lot of secondary adjustments...including a Free Form deformation lattice (hint. hint) or morph tool. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there is no "Make Cool 3D" button...in any app.

I find using 3D Coat's Pose tool to be fairly straight forward and quick...if you take time to get to know the tools. The FFD cage is just one of the features within the Pose tool, itself. And it's demonstration starts close to the 14min mark in the following video.

By the way, I didn't say anything about implementing an animation system in 3D Coat. But to do what you want, it's better handled in applications with those rigging/character animation tools already existing and far more mature. You're telling me you can't rig and pose your characters in whatever 3D program you use (Max, Maya, Lightwave, Blender, ec.)? Why ask Andrew to invest precious time doing what your host app does much better? Same goes for Modeling tools and Rendering.

For what it's worth, when working with Andrew to implement the Mannequin preset, there was some discussion of making some type of basic bone system, but what you have to realize is that this is a one-man operation right now. It's a full time job, just tracking bugs down and trying to improve the tools that already exist. It would be nothing short of a major undertaking, and there are a lot of other feature requests that are waiting in line...some have been waiting for a few years, even. If he did entertain this feature request, low and behold there would be plenty asking for weight painting, too. Why? Because you can't use a bone system without the ugly deformations that occur in joints. Weights and, as previously mentioned, secondary devices have to be used to counter that issue. For that very reason, a bone/armature system would be relatively useless in 3D Coat.

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Ugh... this is the same argument I found in a previous thread. It's the nuclear option for this topic. Being able to easily pose a character = Andrew will make 3DC an animation program.....

Adding basic armature functionality does not make 3DC an ANIMATION program. I'm not talking about adding IK, a timeline or anything similar. Just a basic "wire" armature like you use for real-world sculpting. It could be something as simple as drawing linear splines that have a basic parent-child relationship and can affect the voxels around them.

So to reiterate. I'm NOT talking about "full-on rigging". I'm NOT talking about animation. I'm NOT talking about IK, constraints, etc. I'm not talking about weight painting, morphs, blend shapes, etc.

Watching the Pose Tool video on YouTube is painful. It's not a good tool for posing when it requires that much work to fix all the damage it does just by trying to repose an arm.

I'm saying - the ability to draw out a very simple set of parent-child splines, curves, bones, whatever you want to call them, that give you the basic ability to repose your ENTIRE character (just using a simple area of influence) without ever leaving the VOXEL room (and the ability to keep the armature alive without having to redraw it over and over), would make the workflow a lot faster and easier when it comes to sculpting a character for NON-animation purposes.

So please stop arguing that adding an armature = Motion Builder, Maya, Softimage, Lightwave, etc.

If the ability to quickly pose and repose within the voxel room is a bad idea, that's fine. But to make the argument that having that functionality means Andrew will suddenly drop all development to convert 3DC into a character animation platform makes Andrew sound like he's fairly stupid. And I'm pretty sure he's not.

-PG

You want "zsphere" rigging/posing. I agree, even though I always agree with this condition: finish the rest before starting something new. So far Andrews been adding, without finishing anything (with maybe the exception of paint/retopo rooms.)

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I ussually would say this is not useful, but just had a situation where this would come in handy. needed to post a guy and while it wasnt a big deal, could've been easier.

 

How about this. Use the curves tool to generate a deformation latice? so you can draw some curves on. And the radius of the spheres would control the radius of the quad at that point in the latice. And these could be persistent on a sublayer and deform the mesh above it?

 

no need for for arm twist, that can be controlled like it is now with the strictness parameter of the lattice.

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