Shoulder Armor - How does one rig it?
polycounter lvl 8
Hello everyone!
So, I am currently working on my first ever highpoly character and finally got to the point where I want to start adding some armor to it. However I have been thinking about it a bit and I think I have a slight problem with how I want to do it/how it has to be set up.
The character is supposed to be able to climb (meaning the arms need to be lifted up quite highly, when for example using a zipline or swinging on a bar) and I am trying to figure out how that would work using heavy shoulder pads (think Knight/MMO Armor for the moment) without very visual clipping problems. I have been hunting around the internet a bit (and used the search function) but either my search terms were wrong or there seems to be 0 information about these kind of things.
I have a basic understanding of how the theory works from looking at the character rigs of Skyrim and WoW: make another bone (+- sub bones if there is 'scales' along the upper arm) and link the motion to the biceps bone and orient it to both the clavicle and biceps bone. This works fine to a degree, but in my current tests with just one arm rigged the shoulder armor placeholder (aka Box) would clip quite extremly with back muscle area. It would work if the armor floated high above the characters arm, but that would probably be a problem with the planned camera distance as well.
I have a backup plan which involves simply making a different kind of armor plate that is mostly along the upper arm and seems to work fine with the above described method. However since shoulders make up a lot of the visual shape of a characters clothing, I'd really like to get some plates there. Also because I like to learn new tricks.
As such I am asking you folks who are smarter than me: How exactly should I go about doing this and what do you use in your daily work for these problems?
The character is supposed to be moved to UE3 (or 4, now that we got that shiny new toy!) if that is any consideration.
So, I am currently working on my first ever highpoly character and finally got to the point where I want to start adding some armor to it. However I have been thinking about it a bit and I think I have a slight problem with how I want to do it/how it has to be set up.
The character is supposed to be able to climb (meaning the arms need to be lifted up quite highly, when for example using a zipline or swinging on a bar) and I am trying to figure out how that would work using heavy shoulder pads (think Knight/MMO Armor for the moment) without very visual clipping problems. I have been hunting around the internet a bit (and used the search function) but either my search terms were wrong or there seems to be 0 information about these kind of things.
I have a basic understanding of how the theory works from looking at the character rigs of Skyrim and WoW: make another bone (+- sub bones if there is 'scales' along the upper arm) and link the motion to the biceps bone and orient it to both the clavicle and biceps bone. This works fine to a degree, but in my current tests with just one arm rigged the shoulder armor placeholder (aka Box) would clip quite extremly with back muscle area. It would work if the armor floated high above the characters arm, but that would probably be a problem with the planned camera distance as well.
I have a backup plan which involves simply making a different kind of armor plate that is mostly along the upper arm and seems to work fine with the above described method. However since shoulders make up a lot of the visual shape of a characters clothing, I'd really like to get some plates there. Also because I like to learn new tricks.
As such I am asking you folks who are smarter than me: How exactly should I go about doing this and what do you use in your daily work for these problems?
The character is supposed to be moved to UE3 (or 4, now that we got that shiny new toy!) if that is any consideration.
Replies
Well, that's why I already made a backup plan for it, that doesn't have the problems. I just hoped someone had a glorious tip on how to do it from personal experience and could share it with me