Modeling/Rigging Hands
polycounter lvl 18
Hey guys, I started a thread over at cgtalk on this topic, but I'd like to hear what the folks here have to say on the subject also. Thanks for looking!
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=5851338#post5851338
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=5851338#post5851338
Replies
Hands are just a pain to rig, but probaly the worst ive found so far are shoulders ><
I also agree with Flynny, freakin shoulders... hopefully you can use corrective shapes, or a few more bones. Either way you or the animator should get the clavicle involved it really helps.
Suggestions:
- Fingers bend one way so they're easy to model specific joints. This way you're not managing a lot of loops running under the finger. Looks like you experimented with this idea a little?
- The palm in your first image is really fat, 2x as thick as it should be. The palm should be about as thick as the thickest part of the fingers (normally the first knuckle).
- The topology also needs to change but we can talk about that later after we get the big things back in place.
- Thumbs are a free agent, the metacarpal bone in a thumb is a bit of a loner and a floater. It rotates independently from the the other metacarpal bones. Put your finger on your thumbs metacarpal bone and move your thumb around. Because it is a metacarpal bone, it connects at the wrist and the first knuckle falls roughly center of the finger metacarpals. It looks like you tacked it on as if its another finger. You need that free rotating metacarpal thumb so you can bring the thumb down and rest it on the fingers. The webbing and the meaty part of your palm are weighted to the thumb metacarpal.
- All metacarpal bones are not the same length and the fan out from the central wrist joint.
- A custom hand rig might look like this:
The finger metacarpals don't bend as much on their own (but it is important to know that they do, like when you touch your pinky to your thumb) and these bones are often culled and turned into one giant inflexible piece (I think it should be 2 in some cases) leaving the thumb metacarpal to do all the palm deformation, its one of the little things that looks off when we deform a real time hand.
- A 3dsmax Biped hand looks like this...
(this more of an example of what not to do)
The thumb is positioned and rotating oddly and finger proportions and positions are really off on biped but kind of illustrates the point... sort of... gawd biped hands are horrible...
Now its time to tackle the palm topology then its off to the wrist and forearms! Frustration and madness await you my fine friend...