Urgent Rigging Question - How would i Rig this?
Hi, Im having trouble with this character im working on, im not after critque i was just wondering how i could Rig it. The idea is the human will control the mechnical skeleton so to speak so would i Rig both at same time?, could i use CAT in 3d max? im not a rigger so any help would be great. this is early concept but i want to get workings of the rigging sorted before i improve it. many thanks in advance.
sorry if i posted this twice
sorry if i posted this twice
Replies
Does the engine support only bones and rotations and everything has to be baked in? OR can the engine handle some advanced mechanical rigging just fine?
Tests should probably be done.
You really need to rethink some of the mechanics before you start rigging.
Your mechanics need to at least be semi plausible. Function often helps drive design which makes the rigging/animation job a bit easier. When one takes over and drives for too long without checking in with the others that's when things go horribly wrong.
Test early and often to avoid having to redo weeks of work.
It looks like you have rigid joints that bend on one axis (hips, shoulders, wrists) when in reality they should rotate around several axes like a ball joint and have systems in place to manipulate that joint, maybe the ball joints are there but they aren't shown very well? If so they still lack the necessary systems to make them work.
Also the spacing of the mechanical joints should be as close to the actual human joints as you can get it, the farther away the mechanical joints are the less likely it is to work and the greater the chances are of the human being torn in an odd way that isn't natural.
You also have rods or single pistons connecting the pieces but there are two muscles for every single axis of movement + and -. You don't just have muscle on the tops of your thighs that control everything. You have muscles on the back of your legs that work in concert with the thigh muscles.
But really not much can be done until you have a good grasp on the technical requirements of the game and what you can and can't do. If its just for rendering there is a lot more you can do but you still should think about everything else.
- What kind of animation is the character going to do?
- Does he float around in a hover chair moving only his eyeballs?
- Is he super active like in a sports game?
- What range of motion is needed in the various parts?
- Does he only move forward and back or does he need to side step?
- Do his feet need to only rotate in one direction like design is suggesting or will the feet be required to act more like a ball joint?
- Is he the main character of a 3rd person shooter and we are going to spend a lot of time starring at a lot of moving pieces up close? Or is he a NPC you talk to but he just stands there and maybe shifts his weight?
- What are all of the pieces that need to move?
- Since this is unfinished do you plan to have pistons or is it just sticks, joints and magic?
- If Yes to pistons does the engine support look at controllers, if not how have other examples handled the same ideas?
- How many pistons can you realistically use and where are they going to go? (this would effect the design)
- Testing and research need to be done, with design in mind.
- How can design help the rigging process by changing the character?
- Where has this type of character been done before, how was it designed and why?
- Could making the mechanical parts bigger so the humans arms only follow the biceps.
- How do various mech designs handle these problems.
- What does the US Army exo-suit look like and how does it move?
All of that effects how you would start to approach the rigging.If you move the ball joints closer together (shoulders, feet, hips, wrists) it would be easier to share a skeleton, The single axis joints don't necessarily need to be close to each other. If the rotation point for your arm was 6 inches above your shoulder your arm is going to rip out of its socket, if you have two separate points of rotation its going to be harder to drive them both off of one rig.
In that case the design needs to be reevaluated, what solutions do they have?
Leaving it as is means there is going to be a lot of extra rigging that goes into getting one rig to read the other and not only follow along but adjust it's rotations and ranges on the fly so it doesn't fall apart.
How do you rig this? That depends on how it moves.