BRUTAL issue with getting my rig/animation into Marmoset 1.10...

Artaekos_inactive

Everything was going great until Marmoset 1.10 tore my rig and animation to pieces.

I spent 2 days following this tutorial to rig my creature in Maya

http://www.digitaltutors.com/tutorial/1371-Rigging-Quadrupeds-in-Maya

He uses some kind of "flexi" rig system that relies on nurbs deformation and even a bit of n-hair I believe.

It's not like the conventional solely bone and IK based rigging we're taught in school, it feels a bit "extra", and I'm not sure that this tutorial is quite video game friendly. Here's the rig I've set up in Maya...




Now the animation and everything plays fine in Maya. I created everything in Maya 2014, but I had to "export all" as FBX to Maya 2013 so that I could export this to Marmoset, because Marmoset 1.10 Stooge exported plugin doesn't support Maya 2014. After exporting the scene as .FBX from Maya 2014 to 2013, the animation, rig, and mesh still all behave accordingly. My idle cycle plays fine, and is seemingly ready for export for marmoset. But when I export to Marmoset using stooge, the flexi joint part of my rig that controls the neck and torso part of my creature doesn't seem to be aligned with my Mesh in Marmoset... causing major deformation in those areas when the animation plays..






This really sucks because If I can't get this rig that I'm using into Marmoset properly for animation, I will be forced to either have a static mesh pose in Marmoset with no animation, or seek an alternative real-time render method so I can still have my creature animated.

Is anyone familiar with the issue I'm having? I exported using Stooge from frame 1 of my idle cycle in Maya, so I know that's not the issue with the misalignment. Something tells me this flexi rig courtesy of Digital Tutors is NOT marmoset compatible, which is really going to mess me up...

antweiler

In most cases, you dont export the skeleton, that is "inside" your animation Rig, rather than a slave skeleton, that is an identical copy of your skeleton, that is constrained to the one in your Rig. You do this, because you only want to export bones, skinned meshes and animation
Look at this Tutorial, which is bit outdated, but provides a good concept of this:
http://seithcg.com/wordpress/?page_id=1303

thomasp

what antweiler said.

most game engines will give you similar trouble if you just try to export rigs with 'fancy' controls. if it's your goal to show off animation, wouldn't you want to render your asset offline instead? motion blur and all?

game engines do nasty things like animation compression that can further mess things up. also skinning can be quite limited compared to what you can do inside e.g. maya.

if it's about showing a posed model then creating the pose in your 3d package, freezing that and hand-tweaking it prior to export would be preferable over importing an animation IMO.

Artaekos_inactive

So basically what you guys are saying is for me to duplicate only the bones, joints, and IK of my mesh, and export those along with my skinned mesh, and then animations using the 2013 stooge exporter.

Here's the process I've been following for doing this to further clarify.

http://pierre.graph.free.fr/load_mesh_and_animations_in_marmoset_toolbag_EN.pdf

What does render offline mean? I've never seen the term "offline" applied to rendering until last night.

timotronprime

Offline render means render not done in real-time; vice versa.

You don't duplicate the IK's.

Copying from the other thread you abandoned:

timotronprime wrote: »

If your rig doesn't need to display any dynamic interactions, you can bind your character to a simplified skeleton and constrain the simplified joints to your advanced rig's corresponding joints. Bake out the animation of the simplified skeleton and use that for Marmoset so it's all primary animations.
That's the most straight-forward solution for artists just trying to get their rig working.

I haven't looked into Toolbag's rigging capacity yet so other real-time solutions may be worth looking into if you're looking for something beyond that.

Artaekos_inactive

timotronprime wrote: »

Offline render means render not done in real-time; vice versa.

You don't duplicate the IK's.

Copying from the other thread you abandoned:

I will try applying these steps shortly, and get back to the thread.

JohnnyRaptor

Iv only exported anims with stooge once and it was ages ago but I didn't have any probs.

Try selecting all your bind joints, bake the animation down, delete the control rig and then try exporting it with stooge.

Artaekos_inactive

JohnnyRaptor wrote: »

Iv only exported anims with stooge once and it was ages ago but I didn't have any probs.

Try selecting all your bind joints, bake the animation down, delete the control rig and then try exporting it with stooge.

How do I "bake the animation down" in Maya before exporting with stooge?

JohnnyRaptor

Select all your bind joints, edit > keys > bake all, that should do it. Pretty sure default settings will do the trick, if not, you may need to click the box next to it and tweak em.

Artaekos_inactive

Do you think this could solve the issue with my spine and neck joints being so misplaced in Marmoset? I'm not able to try your suggestion right now but I will within the next few days...

JohnnyRaptor

Not 100% but I'm guessing your control rig is doing something fancy, if as you mentioned it's using the hair n whatnot, these may be causing the freak out during the stooge export, since it probably doesn't support any of that, it probably strips them out.

So if you bake your anim down to the bind skeleton and delete your control rig, everything left should be fully compatible.

Artaekos_inactive

After baking my animation to the joints, deleting controllers causes the parts of the mesh affected by those controllers to default to their original unkeyed pose...

JohnnyRaptor

The joints that pop back to default position havent been baked on.
Make sure you select all bind joints before baking. - Remember, you need to select the joints, no the controllers.

edit, you can double check your joints after baking, before deleting the rig, to make sure they have all been baked on by selecting the joints and checking your timeline for the keys.

Artaekos_inactive

JohnnyRaptor wrote: »

The joints that pop back to default position havent been baked on.
Make sure you select all bind joints before baking. - Remember, you need to select the joints, no the controllers.

edit, you can double check your joints after baking, before deleting the rig, to make sure they have all been baked on by selecting the joints and checking your timeline for the keys.

This is strange because yes, I am selecting my joints via the outliner window which are labelled under the prefix "bind", and after having them baked, any joint I select after displays keyframes on all of the keys from 1 to 230...

Deleting the controllers still messes it up though...

JohnnyRaptor

Hm that's an odd one

I'm not by my pc right now but if your willing share it somehow, I can have a look at your file tonight,