[Draise]

Good news, we have around 5 or 6 new character proposals to vote on then develop, for a content series 100% in BFA. I’ll make a new thread with them soon. I’ll start a vote in Facebook too to make an interactive development thing more for artists if anything. They are cute and interesting. And blue, haha

:dance:

[Draise]

# The Update

I am this close to getting this rig going. I have been rather mellow with the way work has been the past few months, but I have been using it as fuel to move forward and make a plan – a sale campaign. This character is part of it, and also useful for the portfolio. I have been recording my work with this guy and will release some videos on him. Check back and maybe I’ll have it published!

 

I feel I need to build rigging body parts to join together later for future characters, build rigs like Lego blocks. This is taking too long – and Autoriggers never do what I want them to really do. I imagine myself so frustrated one day that I will practically write my own autoriggers.

 

# The Progress

•  – Mouth is now fully deformable Jaw Ik is working like a charm, works with head Squash/stretch/bend and shape free *(meaning it’s  non-destructive on the mesh).*
• –   Lips are now SplineIK and also squash  and stretch relatively al right. *Still missing Zip locks and Curl.*
•  –  Cheeks inflate and have controls that work nicely Eyes have SplineIK
•  –  Mouth has asymmetrical offset too
• –  Eyes can blink and right now squash and stretch relatively ok. *Offset on the eyes is still missing though.*
• –  Eyeballs now squash and flatten, also has auto lookat eyelid offset.
• – Face now has proper squash and stretch ribs for volume preservation through bones.

 

# The Roadblocks

I forgot how Blender doesn’t give clear definition or control of “Global” and “Local” transforms of bone constraints and hierarchy. So I had to work around many constraints setup incorrectly with “World” to new “Local” proxy constraint bones. That took some time to do – I had the whole head working; but when rotating the neck, it all broke spectacularly.

I have a dependency loop that has undo and reset lagging – with the curves controlled by the bones then bones constrained by SplineIK to the curve. This isn’t a technical loop, but Blender is thinking that it is. Hopefully in 2.8 this won’t be a thing.

The eye had a lot of troubles when I tried to get it squashing and stretching. Ultimately I had to try mimic the mouth.

 

 

 

:dance:

[Draise]

# The Update

I have finally got the lattice system working. After some thought, I realized the null points of the rig don’t need the ribs to work on weighting – so I will remove all the ribs. They were fun to build, but the normal focused bone null control is more than enough. WOO! Less work, less setting up, same flexibility.

# The Progress

– Eyes now have correct offset

– Eyes deform and areas around deform with head squash/stretch

– All weird offsets are fixed. *Just don’t use CHild Of constraints, they are really a big pain in the butt*

– Eyeball proxy now offsets and displaces correctly for eye mesh

– General head shape is now minimalized to not need the internodal deformer ribs – full rib system is working fine.

:dance:

[NigeC]

I watch a Youtube video a whie back about the rigging of big buck bunny and it didn’t look anywhere near as complicated, but then again I’ve failed dismally rigging anything in nearly 2 decades so what do I know lol

[Draise]

Probably because the didin’t need to export it to another software and could use all of Blenders internal features, like bendy bones, lattices and good shape drivers.

:dance:

[NigeC]

ah, yes, sorry, I forgot that little detail 

my attention span just wouldn’t allow such things, I’d be off on a crusade looking for magic wand software to do it all for me, then end up a year later back with the original software

[Reiner]

Yeah, i too can spend months and years in search for a way to save some seconds and to find a more convenient workflow. That’s why i started the fork

[Draise]

I know any request for BFA1 will probably not fly but I have a handful of request to the rigging process that could save a few seconds for later.

• Rigging layout with all 3 armature related properties tab already open (or combine them or have them as sub tabs).
• Lock on constraint transform space so I change one target and both change (target and source) -it is rare I use two spaces on the same constraint.
• Source bone picker (not just object) or add an interactive system to select source, now select constraint, now select target – button workflow (right now it’s all a submenu and hotkey entry and it won’t work till you have all selected with active already. How is someone supposed to intuitively use this work flow with the triple hotkey without a tutorial!?)
• Add a couple of icons here and there.
• Move the bone transform orientation in edit mode to the tools panel (I use it often and having them in through two sub menus – still has me using the hotkey)
• Have a “quick” parent workflow that skips the submenu. One button to parent connected and another to parent offset. No submenu.
• Have the bone visibility, editing and properties automatically check selection and apply to all bones in selection after change or have the tool tips imply that with Alt you can do this or “Copy to Selected” (or move those menu entries to the properties area for ease of access for no “labeling redundency” and confusion and remove?)
• Minimize, reorder and combine panel features, toggles and sliders
• Better BB work flow.  Currently the button is not quite there yet. (Task created)
• When creating a constraint the target or source name would be in the constraint name. Things get messy quickly when bones have more than 2 of the same constraint with the same name and I have to stop to rename everything everywhere. Or have a button in constraints to auto rename.
• Others would probably be feature request more for the Blender community: inverse the IK scaling on stretch (it violates all animation laws by INCREASING volume on stretch!), IK stretch with scale XZ preservation toggle, multi bone weight colour influences on whole armature in weight painting mode for best weight overview and editing (a la Softimage), snapping highlight on targets (vertex,  face, object, etc), drag and drop driver assignment work flows, interactive constraint assignment workflows, etc

But BFA2 will be a different beast like Blender 2.8 so… I’m not sure. I think the biggest roadblock is the Tools Shelf work flow changes and huge code changes there in general.

Rigging anywhere is always a chore, but saving seconds with intuitive work flows does make it fun. No good rig comes fully automatically (and is cross compatible) unless you are doing it for copy paste character rigs with similar humanoid dimensions… or when the whole system becomes more AI machine learning work flow reliant.

By far my favorite work flows has been Truespace for all the widgets and skin targeting to bones (and full body IK with anchors to toggle). Best weighting is Softimage.  Strongest with intuitive perks on traditional rigging is still Softimage.

But it’s not the time and I don’t have the skill to fix these things yet… I’ll be patient on BFA2 for now.

 

 

 

 

:dance:

[Reiner]

You can document all possible improvements in the tracker for Bforartists 2. It’s in fact the best solution. Forum threads will sink.

But yeah, this changes have low priority. First we need to convert the beast. And we still wait that we can even start ^^

[Draise]

Sure. I’ll put them in to document them. I’ll also tag them as postponed. When I get back to the studio.

:dance:

[Draise]

Cool! You can embed Gifs.

I’m flying with the body rigging.

:dance:

[Draise]

Here is something that Blender has always peeved me, is that bone IK has the wrong volume on stretch. it increases, instead of decreases. I have to do clever deformer mirror bones with transformation constraints with inverse scaling to make it work correctly. But other than that, this is relatively quick and easy muscle creation. 

:dance:

[Reiner]

Cool, didn’t know that you can do muscles this way

[Draise]

“When you see the soul of a rig”

Only you will be the one that knows how controllers really do their magic. If only Animators knew!

:dance:

[Reiner]

[Author]

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