rigging help!

rooster

I'll post some pics of my problem soon, max just crashed and I lost what I was working on. I would be annoyed but it was going terribly..

I always struggle with character rigging, and it always drives me round the bend. I'm pretty sure something I'm doing isn't right because I always end up with this problem. I'm using the skin modifier but I don't have any better luck with physique.

It's about the leg, when a characters leg is pulled up infront of them some terrible deformation always occurs in the crotch and ass. And whenever I get it to look right when the leg swings forward, when I swing it back it looks awful. And vice-versa when it looks right swinging back it looks bad forward. I've tried the morph angle deformer but it doesn't seem to differentiate between the leg being 90 degrees forward and -90 backward?

another problem I have is that I know you are supposed to play with the skin weights until you have a good balance between the bones- but what if it doesn't look right at weight 1 or 0, or anywhere inbetween? When the leg is bent infront of the character it just loses all volume at the joint.

I've wasted a whole day flailing about in max and searching for tutorials on this and I'm totally at my wits end.. If theres something I'm missing please put me out my misery.

I dont know how many more times I can watch my model being torn apart without flipping out!

rooster

ok this is a rough version of the problem, I got it looking a bit better but not much-


maxfile- (r6) 1.3 meg
http://www.rooster13.plus.com/argh.max

animatr

if you could post a pic of his leg not deformed so we could look at the edge loops, thatd be awesome. i first had this problem when i started to weigh/skin. I fixed it by making better loops and adding bones where there arent really bones. like a butt bone. I have a range of motion of a character i just did if you want to check it out at
http://www.pankimus-prime.com/3Dart.html
hope this helps.

animatr

also, max 7 has a sweet thing called skin morphs that could fix this probelm too. Its not the best way since it can be fixed ala the methods above, but if it just isnt working for you, skin morphs allow you to resculpt a deformation the way you want it. It's also a good idea to set up a range of motion with your skeleton before you start weighing, not sure if you did or didnt, but it allows you to stay in your edit envelopes mode and still see the problem areas. Good workflow practice.
hope this helps,
Jeremy

rooster

heres an image before the carnage. Yeah i did set it up so the leg animates and I can see it change with envelopes visible. I would not be surprised if edge loops had something to do with it, but to put it bluntly I just don't know how it should look for good deformation. There doesn't seem to be many tutorials on the subject that I can find.


edit: thanks for the help and the link btw. I notice something similar happens in your deformation test when the leg bends forward all the way and intersects slightly, but it is much less noticable. When it happens in mine the smothing groups go nuts and I get big black patches of shading.

animatr

i'm going to try and post a pic later, but i can say that the legs/hip area needs to be shaped kind of like briefs. the loops nned to wrap up around the hips. always try and form your loops to the shapes of the muscles. check out Ben Mathis's character tut at http://www.poopinmymouth.com/process/character_tutorial/character_process_page_4.htm
hope this helps,
jeremy

animatr

Also, quick tip. You can easily move verts to redefine your edge loops by using shift+x to constrain your verts to edges.

rooster

cheers i'll try remodeling it a bit and see if that helps the intersecting. I'm interested to know how adding extra bones might help too. I found plenty of tutorials on creating a rig, but not much about the skinning process.

Snowfly

Another tip, you can move around edges on the base mesh while it's posed if you're having trouble figuring out how to lay them out.

Also, keep in mind how the character needs to deform. Ask yourself if it's really necessary for the model to kick its leg back 45 degrees at the butt? That's really a compound motion of the spine, pelvis, and thigh rotating. An arm swinging forward also involves rotations around the spine, and a little from the clavicle. You get the idea..

Anyway, also try tweaking your weights at extreme poses. If you can get deformations to look good in those positions, they'll look alright with more subtle rotations on the bones.