As you say, so it shall be, my dark lord.
(Sorry, couldn't resist!)
Heyern's Character Rig Interface screen shot
Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger
I don't want to promise too much in case I can't pull it off for this first version.DK wrote:Brilliant heyverne. Can I ask what you have planned for the rest of the body?
D.K
For now it will be a basic body rig based on a skeleton I have been having a lot of success with. It has independent hip and upper body "sections" for much easier walk cycles and foot and leg positioning. The hips and legs can rotate independently from the body which is really nice.
It will also have separate "spine" controls for the back, neck and head. You won't have to hunt around for hard to fine bones on the body. They will be separated from it just like the face so there will be much less clutter and fewer bones to keep track of.
It will also have extensive fan bones for smooth joints (shoulders, elbows, torso, hips, etc).
For now I think the arm and leg bones will be in the normal positions on the body but I may experiment with "outside" controls for those as well.
Basically should be able to turn off construction curves completely to use the rig. This is great. No bones in the way... nothing to clutter the preview while animating.
Features in future versions
I really would like to extend the 2.5D aspect to the body as well and include "auto-scaling" of bones for the arms and legs. Nothing as elaborate as Genete's 3D rigs but something simple like dragging a bone around for the forearm would "scale" it to simulate foreshortening of that part.
I would also like to add a similar partial body turn to the rig. That part will be tricky.
-vern
Vern, the work you have done here is truly a milestone for AS development. One might say AS has just entered the "Vern-assic Age". I don't really understand it yet, but I'm definitely buckling in for the ride.heyvern wrote:I am going to include phonemes and expressions as actions with the final version.
I am working as hard as I can to get this thing done. I am too much of a perfectionist and I also have to do "real" work to pay the bills.
Over the past few days I have been using it in the same way as any customer would. It works well so far.
The only real problems are to do with limitations in ASP itself... mostly time line and key frame management. I wish there were a way to "highlight" key frames in the time line for specific bones. Or be able to have bone groups on separate time lines.
What happens is I do lip sync first. Then go back and do other secondary animation (head turns, eyes, eyebrows etc). All of those keys are "mixed" together in the time line. You have to select a bone to see where it is in the time line.
You also have to make sure you don't key all the bones, like when copying and pasting key frames other wise you could potentially mess up lip sync or mess up the head motion etc.
At this point there is really no way to avoid this unless I use bone slaves and masters (which I could do very easily) to put mouth motion on one layer, head motion on another... eyebrows on another... etc.
I could add this into my targeted layer script.
For instance an "empty" bone layer that would only have control over the mouth bones on the main face layer. Those keys would be all by themselves. Another empty bone layer would control eyes and/or eyebrows.
Each master layer would control specific bones in the "slave" main layer. Each part of the animation could be edited independantly without any other keys being "in the way".
I think I might try this in a future version. It would really aid in compartmentalizing the animation. More control, easier editing.
-vern
Over the past few days I have been using it in the same way as any customer would. It works well so far.
The only real problems are to do with limitations in ASP itself... mostly time line and key frame management. I wish there were a way to "highlight" key frames in the time line for specific bones. Or be able to have bone groups on separate time lines.
What happens is I do lip sync first. Then go back and do other secondary animation (head turns, eyes, eyebrows etc). All of those keys are "mixed" together in the time line. You have to select a bone to see where it is in the time line.
You also have to make sure you don't key all the bones, like when copying and pasting key frames other wise you could potentially mess up lip sync or mess up the head motion etc.
At this point there is really no way to avoid this unless I use bone slaves and masters (which I could do very easily) to put mouth motion on one layer, head motion on another... eyebrows on another... etc.
I could add this into my targeted layer script.
For instance an "empty" bone layer that would only have control over the mouth bones on the main face layer. Those keys would be all by themselves. Another empty bone layer would control eyes and/or eyebrows.
Each master layer would control specific bones in the "slave" main layer. Each part of the animation could be edited independantly without any other keys being "in the way".
I think I might try this in a future version. It would really aid in compartmentalizing the animation. More control, easier editing.
-vern
well...
I have to come up with a script to save out basic bone animation.
What happens is that I make tweaks to one file... and have a dozen others that also need that tweak.
If I could save out the basic bone animation I could just load that in to the "master" file that is tweaked to redo the animation.
Plus this would make animation "universal". I could save out animations from one character that could be instantly applied to another character. Simple small text files could be generated that others could load into a character.
I could just have one single master file with a bunch of small animation text files that can be loaded in and instantly recreate a complex animation.
It shouldn't be too hard to do and this could be really cool.
-vern
I have to come up with a script to save out basic bone animation.
What happens is that I make tweaks to one file... and have a dozen others that also need that tweak.
If I could save out the basic bone animation I could just load that in to the "master" file that is tweaked to redo the animation.
Plus this would make animation "universal". I could save out animations from one character that could be instantly applied to another character. Simple small text files could be generated that others could load into a character.
I could just have one single master file with a bunch of small animation text files that can be loaded in and instantly recreate a complex animation.
It shouldn't be too hard to do and this could be really cool.
-vern
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DarthFurby
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