how best to rig hair and cloth for animation by hand?

melviso

Pls,guys.I need some suggestions from thy experienced IQs on what technique would be the best for rigging hair and cloth so that I can animate them by hand.I have used wire deformers before but that was for a mas of hair so I need some suggestion of how best to rig lets say a head with a good number of clumps say 25.A long gown and necklace moving about as fighting ensues.

Thanks.

Eric Chadwick

This might be interesting to you. Sounds like you might be in Maya, but the ideas should carry through.
Procedurally Generating Secondary Animation for Characters in 3DS Max

melviso

Thanks for replying,Eric.I am using Maya.I posted a thread like this before and it was of how cloth and hair were animated for games and the answers are exactly like the one in the thread u posted.I have been having a difficult time simulating anything in 3d(Maya)as its intensive,time consuming and tweaking parameters that doesn't give me good results,not to mention the cloth getting trapped in the character's mesh.I could go on with all the problems I have had...lol.So I have decided I want to animate the cloth/hair movement myself by hand rather than relying on simulations as I can get them to move exactly the way I want.I know it may sound like a lot of work but I feel its good for animation practice and horning my skills, so the question is how can the hair/cloth e.tc best be rigged so I can animate them easily by hand.I am thinking:
-maybe bones with spline/ik handle
-wire deformers but that means I will have to make each cv of the curves a culster.Moving them around will be too much.
Any other suggestion will be greatly appreciated.So the question is about rigging involving no simulation at all.

melviso

no suggestions at all?....

Mark Dygert

It's very specific to the model, the project, the animator and the persons rigging ability. Most of the time people like to automate the secondary motion stuff like Eric pointed out. There are a few other things you can do to simulate some kind of secondary motion, like use a flex modifier or a spring controller, but that depends on the game, the engine and the exporter.

melviso

Its a solo project.Its not for a game.Its just an animation video I want to make for animation practice.I am not a pro at rigging but if I can get some suggestions I would do further research on how I can get it done myself(also rigging practice).Everything will be done in Maya for animation and rigging and I will render out the scenes for compositing.

I don't think there is any tool called Flex modifier or spring controller in Maya?

melviso

Still no pointers.I wonder.

Well..I found this video:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18X2L8e5AkQ"]Dynamic FK - YouTube[/ame]

This is clearly what I have been searching for.I wonder if the mel script is available .Does anyone know where I can get the script?

Eric Chadwick

Some similar options on CreativeCrash
http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/animation/c/search?search=mel+hair+script&x=0&y=0

melviso

Thanks,man.Will check them out scriptfully.