Character Rigging Test

S-S

- Hi! Wasted yesterday into skin weighting/setup practice
- I took my old demon mesh - removed some details and rebuilt legs and hands.

- I created blend system into arms, (good information from cgtalk rigging threads) ...then I created ik foot setup and basic spine setup - and then the problems started....

- there are some thing which i hadn't quite figured out earlier....and not now... this caused some serious problems as i used orient and look at constraints - i simply couldn't get it to mirror... i think i tried all possible ways, bone mirror, mirror with all possible axis settings - no luck.
- Seems like 3dsmax don't like mirroring of bones with constraints - like this wasn't enough, i deleted all constraints and mirrored the arm, then noticed, the arm had one axis flipped - went ahead and the noticed, that right side doesn't work with skin weight mirroring - arhhh....8 hours later, i managed to get bones mirrored to right side, without negative scales, or any other strange flips which happened with mirrored bones...manually copying every bone

- but anyway,i got the first version of skin weighting done! Here are the first test renders - i wanted the character to be really muscular / cartoony to make spotting of faults easier... only twist&blend bones used in arms - no muscle bones or corrective morphs yet!





P.S.
- Does anyone know good scripts for mirroring arm / leg setups in 3dsmax? - Seems like max mirror really doesn't work too well... tips are very welcome )

pogonip

Im no expert but the rigging looks good right now ! I don't see any real issues other then the usual bit of problems in the shoulder area . I know for sure there is a good bones tool plug in for max that has a really good mirroring script but I cant remember what it is . Im sure someone will let you know though .

Equinoxx

you could try using 'mirror bones' from scriptspot. skin or die looks like a mighty fine tool as well

http://www.scriptspot.com/Main_Scripts.a...eld=bone+mirror

S-S

Equinoxx:

- Thanks - seems like it works for bones only, but it removes half of the manual work --> have to redo constrained objects manually... (maybe it can't be done properly without scripting...)

pogonip:

yep. Shoulder is always a problem - currently there is one automaticly working blend bone (shoulder/biceps) and 3 automatic twist bones in biceps area - i think rest of the deformation could be done using morphs

Mark Dygert

Looks really well weighted, especially the chest shoulders and arms. However the hips and the feet might need some work? I noticed some pinching you might want to see if you can minimize, but in those areas it is going to to be hard without changing the models mesh?