Helper Bones and technical deficit

oXYnary

This is a good spot for a helper bone right?



You know, so to move the bottom of the short so it squishes into itself versus intersecting the calf once the calf bends so far back.

So I have always had a hard time understanding maxs animation system and contraints and euler? curve for how much each bone effects such and being shitty at math. Does anyone have a link to a good tutorial on how to make a helper bone for this type of situation for the umm "technically challenged"?

animatr

if you're not worried about getting this in-game, then you could use skin morphs(check out the documentation that comes with max). if you do want it in game, then who cares. you'll never see it and if you do, its pretty standard. hell look at GoW. thier massive legs clip like crazy. what you have up about is really ok. you'll never be that up close to anyone's leg

oXYnary

Yea, its for in game. Personally, the clipping bugs the hell out of me and takes me out of the experience. I thought the newer games were trying to make it all more believable in animation as well?

animatr

well, whate ive been doing with stuff like this is putting a bone or two at the end of the shorts. making it IK(hair system in maya). putting a collision sphere at the IK handle. making the curve dynamic, and then making collision objects for the legs. worked out well. though i only know how to set it up in maya. not a clue how to rig that in max. something like that would work though.

Noren

Most straightforward is a position or orientation constraint, imho.Where those do not work, I'd use a reaction controller, since no math or scripting is involved and you can move your bone around by hand. You have to use an expose transform helper to get the rotation values of the biped limbs however. Last measure would be wiring or a scripted controller.

poopinmymouth

Newer games *cough* are using dual quaternian rigging, which eliminates the need for helper bones when you rig knowing that's your tech. I know you can turn it on in maya, but not sure how you'd get it in max. If you want a biped with helper bones already set up at the knees, elbows, and shoulders, download mine.

http://www.poopinmymouth.com/net/escapade/biped.max

Noren

"dual quaternian rigging"

Never heard of that, thx for the pointer.

Rob Galanakis

I saw it a while ago on the OGRE forums, its very cool and requires no extra rigging work, its done the same as normal hardware skinning (in the vert shader) but uses different algorithms, so the pipeline doesn't change, which is good.

http://isg.cs.tcd.ie/projects/DualQuaternions/

Hito

dual quaternions rigging? is that programmer side only, sounds like it from the link. There're no max implementations of it yet? How does it affect the rigger/animator's process?

Rick Stirling

Tech might be nice, but that clavicle still needs to be lifted.

oXYnary

[ QUOTE ]
Newer games *cough* are using dual quaternian rigging, which eliminates the need for helper bones when you rig knowing that's your tech. I know you can turn it on in maya, but not sure how you'd get it in max. If you want a biped with helper bones already set up at the knees, elbows, and shoulders, download mine.

http://www.poopinmymouth.com/net/escapade/biped.max



[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks Ben, though how did you set them up so I know how on my existing Model/Biped? Also, unless Im mistaken the knee joint isn't exactly what I meant. I need to push that short up so the dummy needs to move in space versus rotate alone. So I need to know how to do that as well if possible.

oXYnary

Auh! Its a orientation constraint.. (I know, your like Durrr).

However, when I need it to move back and up based on the percentage the calf is raised/rotated in X? , thats where I'm totally lost.