[Draise]

I have finally finished up my rig enough to start weighting. I have found and squashed a number of bugs, but in concept it is working. My only concern now is the 8 influences per vertex limit, or for fur, the full on 4 limit..

:dance:

[Draise]

What have I done!?

Have I created a monster!? I don’t know, but this monster of a robot creature excites me. In a good – innocent – happy way.

 

:dance:

[Reiner]

Spooky ^^

[Draise]

I was stuck quite a bit trying to get a good wrist and forearm twist. IK upvectors weren’t cutting it. I couldn’t offset (without drivers) the IK pole. Nore could I have proper rotation constraints.. it seems Euler is just.. a concept and all bone rotaiton is ultimately in Quaternian. Local also isn’t really a thing, as rotations still work globally – meaning on elbow bend and shoulder bend, I was getting terrible gimbal lock and weird offsets on rotation.

This is one thing in the Blender core that I am nooo fan of. Softimage defines and reads out and controls Global and Local matrices as they are, as they should be, fully controllable, seperate, agnostic, and as they are, local according to bone/object axis origin, global to world center. In Blender there is no clear definition of one or the other. You can’t control Global then Local with unique transform modes, and you can’t drive one or the other properly. Things inherit Global/Local matrice control without any UI feedback nor definitive values whatsoever. You think you move in local, rotate a bone origin in local, then discover that the rotation gimbal is set to a global quaternian or euler that causes a gimbal lock. 

So.. I had to work around.. and I found that nature has the solutions, and then proceeded to make a double forearm bone to create the twist. It worked. I should have done it this way since forever. So happy to now know! It also could work in other software.

 

:dance:

[Draise]

Life has been more about hustling these days than doing 3D. I’ve been working on organizing a Halloween event, rent out rooms in my house, do design and web design, run around, assessment, be assessed – I even did a quick architectural rendering in UE4 with a new addon that will make my life of import/export infinitely faster. Life has been varied and interesting – but my Bforartists/Unreal Engine relationship still needs some love. I have learnt that no shear deformations in bones work in Unreal Engine. I have to work around it…… which is unfortunate, meaning I can’t build good inherited deformations, and do it another way.

:dance:

[Draise]

I have had a rough month this month hustling without much success, and today I sat down and started up my Trinny character rigging again. I managed to make my UE compatible eye finally. It deforms and looks around and keeps scale preservation all without a problem – with squash and stretch if I need it – to a degree. It’s nice to be good at something again.

:dance:

[Reiner]

I feel with you. Good progress

[Draise]

Ok! He’s poseable finally. Just need to iron out some kinks on his skin, face, and make teeth, eyebrows and tongue.

Oh.. and start the bug squashing of the interpobility with Unreal Engine for realtime fur..

:dance:

[Draise]

I started facial tests today, and got his eyebrows and teeth sorted. I’ve been going through each expression on his character sheet to try make the expressions. If they work, then I’m good.

Only thing left to do is the tongue and also…. figure out the expression limits. I am not sure I should limit the controls, or just leave it to the animator till he breaks it. I also have to make the animation controls a little more user friendly and with a good hide/show system.

I’m a little nervous, I haven’t got the shadow rig working just yet and the idea is that it should all export to UE – but up till this stage I haven’t tested it.

I can’t wait for Eevee with atleast a years maturity….

:dance:

[Draise]

Here are some of the tests.

:dance:

[Draise]

I need a holiday. It’s weird I feel more exhausted not having enough paying work to get out of debt and pay bills than when I’m overworked with many contracts doing work like this.

:dance:

[Reiner]

I know this feeling ^^

Looking good so far

[Draise]

He’s alive!

Still have a lot of bugs to fix.. like… amputate one arm that broke, mirror it again – fix finger geometry – fix eye socket and controls – fix deflating eye loop – and more.

 

:dance:

[Reiner]

I love this moment when they start to become alive

[NigeC]

Its looking really great, well worth all the effort I reckon

my only crit is the eyebrows seem to move on their own

 

[Author]

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