Pose script and instances?

[madrobot]

Hey Synth
I saved the file before applying scripts.
So I'll try adding the roof, then regenerate rigging.

My only concern is this:
If I add the roof, then copy and paste the geometry to the other view
(and then edit for that view obviously)
Will that actually work?

I ask because I know that duping the layer maintains the correct
point order. But I have already duplicated and edited the layers
and don't particularly want to go thru all that again.

So I'm wondering if copying and pasting between layers will work,
or will I get errors (as I have in the past with this,
and the fix was to dupe the layer, as Genete said in his tute.)

Is there scripting access to point order numbering or something?

Rig editing would be useful.
Not a big drama I suppose but that flexibility would be useful.

Tell me, do I understand you correctly in thinking
that you mean I should split the headlight thru the middle
vertically?
If so I'll give that a shot. Would be good to "anchor" the headlight.

The thing with the tires isn't that interesting and having read your solution
I think I made it needlessly complicated.
Basically the same thing, just that the tire geometry
started out hanging off either side of the wheel.
And now I've realised I dont have a rear face to the wheel, so
you can see "into" the wheel from behind at the moment.
Easy fixed.

Dude, now that you say it, I DO need the tires to both
spin and steer. Especially steer, but spin would be great also.
Good thinking.
What do I do, seperate rig on seperate layers?

[synthsin75]

Okay...bad news is you pretty much have to reduplicate for the other view if you change the first. Believe me, I sympathize. I redid the side view more times than I care to admit. I wasn't able to figure any way around that. I don't remember copy/paste to two new layers helping either, but you might try it.


The headlight itself doesn't need to be split, but the face of the van needs extra contour edges at the headlights so that shapes will cover the gap currently being left by the shape that doesn't 'touch' the headlight at that angle. I would just add a vector line extending from the tops of the lights to the top of the van and bottom of light down. This will give you shapes that 'connect' to both sides of each lights profile view.

Basically 'anchor' like you say.



It's fairly simple to do the spinning/steering. You'll need to add vector points as 'axles'. These just need to be vector lines extending from any convenient points on your model and ending with a point at the pivot for each wheel. Since you don't need to steer the rear wheels, both of these could share a single pivot at the center of where the rear axle would be.

The front wheels will need individual pivot points.

When you rig your model, include these pivot points in your 'master' object, but do not rig the wheels. Once that's done, use the rig pt bones at each pivot to rig each wheel as a 'sub-object'.

Then you just need to angle constrain the rear wheel control bone that handles turning so they can only spin using the other control bone. (optional, you can just throw the turn bone way the hell out of view )

Constrain one set of front wheel control bones to the other (make sure they're the 'matching' controls).

Then you'll have one bone that handles rear wheel spin, one for front wheel spin, and one for front wheel turn. I'd probably constrain the angle for the turn as well. I might even constrain the spinning of all the wheels also.



Let me know if any of that mess is unclear.

[madrobot]

OK well I tried it
(making the roof seperately and attaching it*)
It rigged, but is behaving strangely
I've yet to work out which of 2 things is wrong
- I built it wrong OR
- the points have come in coherent enough to rig,
but out of "point order" and hence behaving unpredictably

They're playing up just enough to be a problem, but
not outrageously enough to be written off immediately
(could well be my sloppy build)

Thankyou for the tip on the headlight & front area
I get you know.
Much appreciated.

I'll tackle the wheels once I get the roof sorted
(Saving incrementally and keeping a log.
If only it was easier to alter things retroactively with this rig.)

I think I understand the wheel info
but we'll see tomorrow

Thanks again

*Just to be clear, I mean I went back to a saved version
pre-bones and pre-scripts, where geometry was all set up
appropriately using duplicated layer.
(Trying to keep this clear for anyone else who wants to head
down the 3D rig road.)
The devil's in the detail, and with Genete's awesome 3d rig,
the detail's in the planning.

[synthsin75]

The devil's in the detail, and with Genete's awesome 3d rig,
the detail's in the planning.

Yeah, there's definitely a steeper learning curve for the 3Drig in that respect.

[madrobot]

I could make the doors open too!

[synthsin75]

Yeah, I didn't know if you'd need that. I haven't come up with a good solution to a vehicle interior yet. You could model it out as well, but that could get complicated fast. Especially trying to make the second view.

One idea I had was to make a black shape across the door opening. Then I'd use a gradient mask to reveal a character entering/exiting the vehicle.

May need to make sure the black shape is well within the vehicle so as not to intersect the closed door.

Just an idea.

[chucky]

Hi guys , I've been stalking your combi rig.
Why don't you make a separate door rig?
Have you storyboarded the shot you need for that?
Don't be making anything complicated you don't need.

[madrobot]

Wise words indeed.
Thanks mate.

I was about to do a triple somersault off the diving board.

Synth pointed out that rather than deep sea diving gear,
I should don speedos.

Then Chucky asked had I checked there was any water in the pool.

[madrobot]

Well, I'm getting somewhere.
But it's not lined up properly yet
The final will look much better

Has Charger badging and everything
I put more detail than I need for wider shots, but
some fun detail for closer stuff.

More of the same tomorrow, just wanted to post an image.

The combi is coming along nicely too.
I might try to show progress on that tomorrow.

[chucky]

Well it looks you have managed a triple somersault there madrobot, and you seem to have thrown in a double twist in a piked position on top !
Nice work Adrian, you psycho!

[heyvern]

Holy cow! This is being done using Genete's 3D scripts??

Now I'm interested. This is cool.

Right before Fahim left e-frontier and then Smith Micro bought all of their stuff Fahim said he was hoping to get that "3D" stuff Genete did incorporated into AS somehow... it would be cool if it could be made a little easier to use. I still think it is WAAAYYY better than the OBJ format support.

-vern

[synthsin75]

Nice work! Some unexpected details there.

[Genete]

Good grief!
I would like to see the shapeorder script working on that too!.

It might do some bad rendering due to the shapes are sorted based on average z depths of the points it is formed. If the shape is so large and curved the it is bad calculated (for example some parts of the chassis).

With a little more triangulization it should work.

What about the outlines? how do you plan to manage them? Remember that they are also sorted based on the average of the z depths of the pointns so they cannot be so long or curved.

Keep it up!

-G

[synthsin75]

Yeah, I was just thinking of that earlier. You really don't know exactly what you have with the 3Drig until you've got the shapes created and being sorted by the layer script.

If you're being really ambitious though, you could meshinstance it and try to manually layer sort. If you create your parts smartly it could be done I think.

Like Genete said, those long shapes are going to be sorted by his script based on the center of the shape, so you'd need to make more and smaller shapes.

[madrobot]

Good Morning!
Thanks for all the comments guys.

Genete thanks for your 3d rig, it is so awesome.

Vern I agree, tests have given me better results than the OBJ format support. I think I still have a bit to learn on the "obj in AS" front,
and wouldn't mind adding that to my toolset, but I really like the kind of drawn looking quality (and shapes, masking and so on) you can get with Genete's rig. Genete's rig incorporated into AS would be awesome, as we've said before it would be good to fix it so that throughout all stages of the workflow the geometry remains editable. (I understand why it isn't, and establish a clear workflow in stages has been a big help)

Genete thanks for the tip, I'll do a test and if need be I'll break up the longer lines. Earlier in this thread you can see a 3drig test I did on a combi van (not the rotoscoped stuff at the start, but the 3drig test gif at the end of the first page) and I was blown away by how well it handled the curves. I thought maybe your 3drig would handle the boxy combi shape ok but not the charger so well, but the combi results spurred me on to give this a shot.

Synthsin yeah, I was thinking I'd see how it runs with shape sort, but my plan has kind of been to get in manually using mesh instances and manually adjust the layer order if it comes to that. It's pretty nifty how the 3drig layer script lives on the bone layer, so you can mesh instance your geometry
Hoping to shade it up a little, animate highlights, reflections and jazz it up a bit. Nothing outrageous, just enough to make it look sweet.

I don't know how well I can pull this off, I figure aim high and see how it goes.