Best way to rig pauldrons

Ottomotto

Whats the best way to rig pauldrons, and in my case in particular, theres an extra layer on top of the pauldrons. Should I make an extra bone for for the pauldrons? What should I parent it too? This is for real time Ue4 if that changes anything.

Alex_J

should be able to follow shoulder joint with 100% weight I think. probably use some corrective shapes for extreme poses that clip with teh cape

an exact example is shown on the witcher model in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1E0bEx6TCE&t=273s

edit - wrong video. this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSRuSW50_4Y

Ottomotto

Wrist joint? Surely it should be the clavicle or upper arm no?

throttlekitty

I'm curious how other people handle similar rigging for a more higher end look than just shoulder weights.

Here's an example that could be worked off to create some helper joints for the armor and cape instead of muscle deformation, skip to about 31:00 to see the joints in action. hmmm


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WKbQL8GvWY

Alex_J

should be able to follow the wrist joint I'd imagine. 100% weight to it.

Ottomotto said:

Wrist joint? Surely it should be the clavicle or upper arm no?

hey i made a mistake and edited that post

Ottomotto

Thanks, that all seems really helpfull. 

CheeseOnToast

There was a great thread on this a while back -

https://polycount.com/discussion/200175/rigging-a-spaulder-an-easy-way-a-simple-way-to-rig-shoulder-armor#latest

Ottomotto

I saw that one and it looked really good, but I'm not sure how that would work in my particular case since its more tight fitting and goes over the entire shoulder, not just the top. Corrective shapes seem like the way to go in my case, but im not sure if UE4 supports them I cant find much on them, but maybe im searching the wrong terms. Does anyone know if the stuff in the geralt video can be exported to unreal?

throttlekitty

It would seem it does, they use the term morph target. I would have been very surprised if they didn't support it, haven't used UE that much myself.

amoeba

Unreal Engine does support morphtargets/blendshapes. It's easy to manage, you can control them through variables, or bone rotations etc. I haven't used UE for a while but look up the pose driver.

Alex_J

Yes both unreal and unity support blendshapes/morph targets. There is some under the hood limits about the number of layers that can be used but for normal use you shouldn't need to worry about that.

When I used them it just gets baked into the animation requiring no setup in engine (though i tested in unity, not unreal)

Ottomotto

Alex Javor said:

When I used them it just gets baked into the animation requiring no setup in engine (though i tested in unity, not unreal)

If they get baked into the animation then they would only be used for that specific animation made in maya right? They wouldnt work for other animations applied to the same skeleton according to bone rotation im guessing?

Ive see some videos on bone driven morph target setup so I'm guessing it can be done that way, but its not as easy as just importing a file from what i see, unless someone knows otherwise?

throttlekitty

Ottomotto said:

Alex Javor said:

When I used them it just gets baked into the animation requiring no setup in engine (though i tested in unity, not unreal)

If they get baked into the animation then they would only be used for that specific animation made in maya right? They wouldnt work for other animations applied to the same skeleton according to bone rotation im guessing?

Ive see some videos on bone driven morph target setup so I'm guessing it can be done that way, but its not as easy as just importing a file from what i see, unless someone knows otherwise?

The keys on the blendshapes would be per-animation, yes. What you'd do in this setup is use something like the Pose Editor in your rig (Alex linked the video above) to drive the targets based on joint rotations to be baked.

The alternative is to have driven blendshapes in both UE4 and Maya, but not baking the keys in maya. This is for when your game has more code-driven animation than canned ones.

Ottomotto

I was planning on using some animations the unreal marketplace so I'm trying to match their skeleton. So i'd need the blend-shapes to be bone driven to make use of them. Looks like bone driven morph targets are doable, I'll see if its worth the effort for my purposes. I guess this ones pretty much answered, Thanks guys!