Help with armature problem

[Sza]

There is a KB command to snap the rolls CTRL + R ,then mirror copy.

So it must be very foken easy. I could be more easy using bones and mirror... i am only a 3d noob modeler so i cant say much. and the env stays untouched?

[bluntz]

So it must be very foken easy. I could be more easy using bones and mirror... i am only a 3d noob modeler so i cant say much. and the env stays untouched?

It is a work around because duplication does not work exactly the same forwards and back in 2.4 anyway.
CTRL + N + 1 will clear the roll and CTRL + R chooses all the rolls in the chain.

[MadGypsy]

Cntrl+R is just roll.

What really happened and why it matters. I want to say right off that, everything I am about to say is "by observation" but I am right.

Technically, the roll of the bone barely matters at all. If you made some simple rig and duplicated it, the roll offset is not gonna make a damn bit of difference.

Now let's look at my case and why it mattered.

I technically have 2 rigs. A deform rig and a control rig. The deform rig is solely used to add bone influence to the mesh, the control rig forces my deform rig to move.

Before I get to the answer of all of this, let me educate you a bit as to why I have 2 rigs. Let's take a finger, for instance. A finger has 3 bones (segments). If you wanted to make a simple rig for a finger you will just add a bone and extrude 2 more. When you go to animate that finger though, you will have to manipulate each bone individually. That's not simple at all. Definitely not more simple than my way.

I still use the three finger bones, but I add a fourth bone that travels the entire length of the finger from root to tip. With a little more wizardry (IK chains and such) I have a rigged finger that all I have to do is scale the 4th bone (control bone) and the finger acts like a finger. This is why I use 2 rigs combined. The finger is not the only place where you can do stuff like this.

Let's get back to what happened and why. The forearm of my rig had 5 segments on the deform bone. This allows for me to rotate one end a lot (wrist end) but the other end (elbow end) wont rotate as much (or at all). When I "mirrored" my rig it threw off all my rolls and that really didn't matter except for the forearm because it twisted my segments before they were supposed to be. This means a small twist was a lot more twisty than it should be due to the "primer" twist that the roll gave it.

And that's all. If you make a complicated rig and you start adding segments to your bones, you will have to fix the roll of it after "mirroring". Personally, I'm hella anal so I would probably still match the roll of the whole rig, regardless of the fact that it isn't necessary.

[bluntz]

From the wiki
Menu>Armatures>duplicate or SHIFT + D
As in mesh editing, by pressing ⇧ ShiftD:

the selected bones will be duplicated,
the duplicates become the selected elements and they are placed in grab mode, so you can move them wherever you like.

If you select part of a chain, by duplicating it you�ll get a copy of the selected chain, so the copied bones are interconnected exactly as the original ones.

The duplicate of a bone which is parented to another bone will also be parented to the same bone, even if the root bone is not selected for the duplication. Be aware, though, that if a bone is parented and connected to an unselected bone, its copy will be parented but not connected to the unselected bone

[Sza]

It is a work around because duplication does not work exactly the same forwards and back in 2.4 anyway.

You mean that this method is not very precise?

CTRL + N + 1 will clear the roll and CTRL + R chooses all the rolls in the chain.

Sorry but i dont even understand what you mean ("chooses all the rolls in the chain"? wtf ) I have used very often 3d max but only for some small things like converting or fixing uv maps. Idk the meaning of very much professional words which are used by the 3d modellers.

From the wiki
Menu>Armatures>duplicate or SHIFT + D
As in mesh editing, by pressing ⇧ ShiftD:

the selected bones will be duplicated,
the duplicates become the selected elements and they are placed in grab mode, so you can move them wherever you like.

If you select part of a chain, by duplicating it you’ll get a copy of the selected chain, so the copied bones are interconnected exactly as the original ones.

The duplicate of a bone which is parented to another bone will also be parented to the same bone, even if the root bone is not selected for the duplication. Be aware, though, that if a bone is parented and connected to an unselected bone, its copy will be parented but not connected to the unselected bone

Hmm... but how to put the bones in the right positions inside a model which dont have a perfect T pose?

I though that placing the bones somehow (the best way will be by some automatic function ) inside a md2 model could save very much time. I thought that way you could use some T pose preset with a mirror for the bones to place the body parts very fast in a correct angles and positions (T pose). I am not sure but i think its foken makable I hope

BTW: I have heard there is a tool which is placing the bones automatic in a good postion. md2 to mesh or something like that. Its a tool which can convert it to md5 (?) or something but i have forgot the name. Okay i have found it. Idk if this is the same thing that i am thinking about.

Ogre Forums • View topic - Quake (MD2, MD3 and MD5) to Ogre Mesh Converter (v2.1)

Here is the original q2 model (i think the best frame from the walk animation) and the problem. Like u see even the shape is not perfect. The both arms and the head are not together with the body. May be there are some plugins or scripts for blender or some other tools which making it "automatic".

[bluntz]

Check this out Sza,
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lXKX93fcyc]Blender 3D / rigging: How to adjust the roll of bones in a bones chain the proper way / HD - YouTube[/ame]

[MadGypsy]

Here is an illustration of a finger control rig. All bright blue outlined bones were sized and the fingertips followed, applying an IK chain as it moves.

[MadGypsy]

Actually, I'll do better than that. Let's really talk about that finger rig.

First off it will be a lot easier to talk about it if we (as in you and I) are using the same name for each part.

Let's call the natural 3 segments of the finger fing1, fing2, and fing3 where fing3 is the bone where your fingernail goes. Lets call the long controller bone fingC and that little extra tip we will call fingIKLock.

fing1 is a parent of fing2 and fing3. This means any way that you move fing1, fing2 and fing3 are going to follow (respectively). So the first thing we do is create a long bone that spans the length of the finger and we tell fing1 to lock it's location and rotation to the loc and rot of fingC (controller bone). This way, any which way you move fingC, the finger will follow.

The next thing we do is extrude the tip of fingC to create fingIKLock. This will make fingC the parent of fingIKLock and therefore fingIKLock will follow fingC around. Now we select fingIKLock followed by selecting fing3 and we attach an IK to fing3.

so, this is what happens. When you scale fingC, fingIKLock follows, but since fingIKLock is technically a controller for the IK of fing3, as fingIKLock starts to move it's forcing fing3 to start applying the IK chain, hence bending the finger.

[Phenom]

Duplicating the armature and then scaling it x-1 destroys the roll of the bone.

I was about to say this

It took me a while to figure this one out too, you'd mirror the bone1.L for the bone1.R and things just twisted up... Frustrating when most all other bones mirrored just fine!

Glad you got it working! Keep going! Good stuff man!

PS

Ward has awesome rigging tutorial videos on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/user/ward7299

[bluntz]

Actually, I'll do better than that. Let's really talk about that finger rig.

First off it will be a lot easier to talk about it if we (as in you and I) are using the same name for each part.

Let's call the natural 3 segments of the finger fing1, fing2, and fing3 where fing3 is the bone where your fingernail goes. Lets call the long controller bone fingC and that little extra tip we will call fingIKLock.

fing1 is a parent of fing2 and fing3. This means any way that you move fing1, fing2 and fing3 are going to follow (respectively). So the first thing we do is create a long bone that spans the length of the finger and we tell fing1 to lock it's location and rotation to the loc and rot of fingC (controller bone). This way, any which way you move fingC, the finger will follow.

The next thing we do is extrude the tip of fingC to create fingIKLock. This will make fingC the parent of fingIKLock and therefore fingIKLock will follow fingC around. Now we select fingIKLock followed by selecting fing3 and we attach an IK to fing3.

so, this is what happens. When you scale fingC, fingIKLock follows, but since fingIKLock is technically a controller for the IK of fing3, as fingIKLock starts to move it's forcing fing3 to start applying the IK chain, hence bending the finger.

You are getting away from the duplication errors of the armatures by introducing the control rig.
Im thinking that because the duplicate root is left unconnected that one less bone gets recalculated in the chain ,making for the difference in the mirror.
Regardless of the control rig.Try creating a single armature and X-1 it to check,if the roll value is not destroyed for a single armature mirror then it is indeed the situation.But even if that si not the reason, the fix is to make the chains as one bone and subdivide as shown in the video or at least constrain the axis as you extrude the armature.
This condition is not exclusive to Blender either as I have seen other tuts for max and maya using this technique to fix it.

[Sza]

hehe guys 3d modeling is starting to making fun for me. I would never thought that it will happen

Check this out Sza,
Blender 3D / rigging: How to adjust the roll of bones in a bones chain the proper way / HD - YouTube

But i think that i need a perfect T pose fist(!). BTW: Sometimes i understand from this tutorial (your link) completely nothing... and its not that what i am looking for.

Here is the solution for my problem. A very fast and easy solution for me. I have another litlle problem because idk how to change the language to english... omg xD

[bluntz]

hehe guys 3d modeling is starting to making fun for me. I would never thought that it will happen


But i think that i need a perfect T pose fist(!). BTW: Sometimes i understand from this tutorial (your link) completely nothing... and its not that what i am looking for.

Here is the solution for my problem. A very fast and easy solution for me. I have another litlle problem because idk how to change the language to english... omg xD

Pay attention to the use of the sketch tool for placing the chain in the mesh.
The video illustrates MG's getting a flipped axis in his chain and how to adjust a chain to a mesh for you.
What I think you need is to get MG to write you a tut for control rigging in another thread.

[bluntz]

@Mg
Doing a single armature mirror reveals that the -1 makes a 1 degree change in the child.So the fix is to just enter X not X-1.
So do SHIFT + D then CTRL + M followed by X then enter.Let me know if that works.

[Sza]

Doing a single armature mirror reveals that the -1 makes a 1 degree change in the child.So the fix is to just enter X not X-1.
So do SHIFT + D then CTRL + M followed by X then enter.Let me know if that works.

Thank You

Idk if you understand what i want to do so i write here about my method. I load md2 in a MF3d to save one frame as a obj model. After that i use the one frame to make a T pose for MB. Both models (the original and the frame) must have same uv map and same amount of polys. If i change the stand model to much the texture will be unusable for the original model.

Update: Its very good method to mirror body parts to check if the angles and positions are good but i must still fix many of the points on the other side by using my "hand" so its the same as with MF3d.

[MadGypsy]

I have another litlle problem because idk how to change the language to english... omg xD

That's OK, you don't know any English...lol (I'm jus messin with ya')

@ MG write tutorial in another thread.

way ahead of you. I started it last night but there is a lot to talk about and there is one last thing to do to my rig before I can complete the tutorial. However, it's not going to really be a tutorial so much as it's gonna be an overview.