Dog Rig

barnesy

Hey guys,
For a uni module I have to rig a dog model, and sadly I have practically no experience with advanced rigging....All that I have used is the skin modifer ha



Heres my current progress. Sadly the tripple IK leg is broken and the IK solver spine doesnt work either so I will have to re do them



I plan on using dynamic bones to simulate skin jiggle around the neck area, to use a joystick for both the neck and tounge aswell.

All in all theres still an awful lot of work to do here

Tyrone70

If you're using Max, get PuppetShop, pronto. It'll let you setup the basic rig and when let you add "muscle" bones along the way. Ignore those bones though if you're supposed to bring them into an engine.

barnesy

Tyrone70 wrote: »

If you're using Max, get PuppetShop, pronto. It'll let you setup the basic rig and when let you add "muscle" bones along the way. Ignore those bones though if you're supposed to bring them into an engine.

Thanks I'll have to check that out.
Im hoping to export it to Unreal , so Ill have to establish what animations and effects I can actually achieve in Unreal other than Morph targets.

My main issue will be setting up the foot rolls, I'm going to have to find a decent tutorial for it and make the FK blend for the legs

Tyrone70

Well, your jiggle bones will definitely work in Unreal. In fact, I'm pretty Unreal will dynamically move those for you(like breast, cloth, and hair), but I haven't figured out how to do that.
As for the FK blends, look at the video's on PuppetShops website. You're able to blend between FK and IK if that's what you mean.

barnesy

I have tried to get Puppetshop for max but Im running 2011 and the PS only goes up to 2010 :S , do you know if theres a way of getting around this?

Thanks

Mark Dygert

It works in 2011, you just install the 2010 version and point it to the 2011 3dsmax folder.
I'm not really sure if or how PuppetShop uses muscle I've never run into that feature and I've used it quite a bit.
Unless he's talking about using another lumonix product? They do have some kind of muscle simulation plug-in but its separate from puppetshop and I don't think its free.

There is however CAT Muscle inside of CAT which was included in 2011. I would probably explore that before installing puppetshop.

barnesy

Thanks for the help so far guys.

I have been trying to sort out these darrn legs. I have been following Paul Neales tripple IK leg tutorail. Ive gone over it that many time that ive literally memorized it. Im doing everything right , but for some reason when I select the the second HI chain and select and change the solver plan to IK goal it rotates the bones 90 degrees. I re made the leg afew times and it did the same thing :S



I mirrored the leg and set and linked everything again , made new HI solvers etc and that seemed to fix it. But then when I tried mirroring it back it gets the problem again :S

Any suggestions as to where im going wrong or a work around for this???

p.s this is only happeining on the back legs and not on the front legs

Mark Dygert

You might want to remake the leg again, and before you apply any solvers reset the scale and transform (NOT reset xform) in the hierarchy tab, down toward the bottom.

barnesy

I managed to sort out this problem by duplicating the working leg through the layer manager. It seems to work fine now.

I have also created the spline IK spine , neck , and tail as suggested.

They seem to work fine but the bones stretch at the moment which is something that I will have to sort out aswell



I have also created some muscles aswell. They are not attatched yet. Im not quite sure what stage I should attatch them at



Next I am going to set up an IK FK blend for the legs and set up some foot rolls etc

Tyrone70

yeah, puppetshop doesn't have specially made muscles, but in their "Tale" video, they show a technique for making muscle bones.

barnesy

Today I have been setting up the primary and secondary foot controls and I have ran into afew problems.



Excuse the rubbish paint over lol

When I try duplicating the foot bone to apply a wire parameter to it , the bone flips , might this be becasuse the bone beneath has had its postition frozen

Also, once I apply the toe bend to the front left leg the bone starts in that posititon. However once adjusting the sliders it will move fine

If anyone can help me out here that would be really appreciated

Thanks

barnesy

I havea managed to sort out the legs in terms of the linking and foot rolls along with the eye controls as well as the COG.

I have ran into a couple of problems that are driving me insane though

The first is the Spline IK spine.



I cant seem to stop the bones from stretching when I move the controlers. In the bone edit tool stretch is turned off :S

The second is the IK/FK blend for the legs.
Im really not sure how to go about it as I have already contrained each of the driver bones to solvers and helpers



I have constrained the ik / fk bones to the driver bones and they seem to literally just follow them rather than blen

Any suggestions on these issues will be greatly appreciated
Thanks

barnesy

It's been a while since my last post! , I have reason for my madness, and that reaso is mistakes and corrections likt this one.

I have just followed Paul Neales tutorial on IK/FK blend arms and applied it to my dog legs.





Sadly when I applied it I forgot to link up the hand (bottom 2 bones) as I thoght they would follow the bones above....I was wrong.

I have managed to wire in the paramaters and got it pretty close but its not 100*on the IK

Is this really a problem , as in is it worth a redo of the leg?

I have also made a new spine neck and tail with much more control. I still have to work on the foot rolls, spring bones and the facial animations then im ready to skin the character.

barnesy

I have practically had to re make the entire rig which sucked, but I have learnt tonnes from doing it which is great.

I have ran into a problem though.

I am following a tutorial where I am wiring up the paramaters for the toe bend.
However when i right click my foot control I have slightly different options.




The image below shows the route that I am taking in my version of Max



When I try applying the degToRad it doesn't do anything

They are tripple IK legs, but I can't see how that would affect the foot control

Cortes

I'm learning rigging as well, and I'd be interested in how your rig turns out.

How did you create the muscles in max?