hell yeah dude! glad you got the ribbon spine sussed and it looks like its squetching exactly as it should. now go forth and use the ribbon and abuse it all that you can.

really the only constructive feedback i can give is suggestions for things you can add to give your rig more features or flexibility, but this all depends on how much time you really want to put into it. There are some things i would do different but that comes down to personal preference as to how i like things set up, so no big deal.

The real test is when it comes time to animate it but seriously this looks like a really solid rig.

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and it's a story that might bore you, but you don't have to listen, because I always knew it was going to be like that.

thanks man. Yeah I do want some more features but with every improvement comes a new problem to solve. I tried rigging in some FK controls for the arms but my hand setup has an orient constraint on the hand joint and a position constraint on the IK handle so I'm not sure how to set it up so you can have both Ik and FK. I figured you could link in the IK blend value to the hand control and switch between but with the constraints it breaks the FK. I'm sure theres a solution but I was getting impatient.

Also, what type of finger controls do you prefer. I was going to set up a control object on each digit with rotations for each joint as extra attributes but maybe there is a better way. I figure that setting up automatic stuff for hands is a bit useless as you nearly always want to pose hands quite carefully. and yeah, now its time to test him in the field and find out what is actually usefull when it comes to animating the rig.

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"but with every improvement comes a new problem to solve" haha yeah thats rigging for ya.

yeah with the hand FK/IK switch, it sounds like your kinda on the right track. what i did was have my hand setup, joints, ctrls and everything in a group and I point and orient constrained it to both the ik control and the fk wrist control. then using using set driven keys i linked the constraints to my IK/FK switch attribute so that when it is set to FK the constraints are 100% to the fk control and vice versa for ik control and teh group follows along in the blend.

this has given me pretty good results so far even with a squash and stretch setup, but I made it up for the most part and based it on what info i could gather from the figaro rig. it may in fact be very breakable but so far its been ok.

for fingers, i like controls for every joint so i can do anything i want. I really hate being limited as who knows how i will have to pose a character to get exactly what i want. I hate automated finger setups made with sliders, it feels rigid and unnatural to animate with.

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and it's a story that might bore you, but you don't have to listen, because I always knew it was going to be like that.

Ok thats pretty cool. I think I can almost see how that works. I will have to try it out to understand properly. Thanks again mate .

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wow man that's awesome! i'm gonna start learning rigging tomorrow! damn!

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Cogito, Ergo Sum

very nice bone rig and skinning looks like the babys ready for animation. btw did he have fangs? I wasn't sure but it looked like the baby had some chompers

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"I change my mind so much I can't even trust it. My mind changes me so much I can't even trust myself."

You need to paste the "embed" code from youtube in that field, then the video will display properly.

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Please support us and post a [Link to www.digitalartsfront.com] on your website.

--Matt

Thanks for that. This embed feature is AWESOME!!. cheers.
as for the question about fangs. he does have some pretty weird teeth. I'm not quite happy with them
and for some reason they slow down the rig when they are linked to the head. No sure why. probably just something to do with the morphs being linked together for the mouth open and teeth open blend shapes.
I think I will replace them with simple teeth made from a curved box. they look too weird as individual teeth and gums.

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Wow thats some great rigging tyson. Do you have plans for a story?

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Please support us and post a [Link to www.digitalartsfront.com] on your website.

--Matt

That ribbon spine thing looks very cool. The whole rigg looks good actually and the skin seems to be deforming as it should be. The only problem I might point out is at the end there where the foot bends in the middle rather than at the toes. It looks ok when you roll the ankle up, but it doesn't look quite right when you bend the foot on it's own. Probably not a huge problem, I'm just being picky.

Got an animation in mind?

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

yeah, he does have a few weighting problems here and there but each thing is a trade of against another.
I guess I'll see how he performs in some tests to determine which bits need fixing.
As for an animation. I have another character designed to go with the caveboy. hes a huge stupid guy with tiny legs and a small head with his hair forever in his face. the plan is that they be buddies. Its just an excuse to try and rig a different style of character and take a look at maya muscles in the process but I would like to make an animation with the two of them doing some sort of skit eventually. I like matts idea of doing super short comic gags. its something that is a bit more achievable than a proper short while still having a goal. still I'm sure everyone can relate to that thing of having big plans and then getting sidetracked by the next big plan a few weeks later. I keep doing it over and over again so we will see. for now I will just do a walk cycle. I only just started using maya after all and there is some weird stuff to get my head around when it comes to animation techniques. Thanks for the crits. feel free to shoot me some ideas for a short little skit with these two characters. I'll post the design sketch soon.

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I'm thinking the two of them would come across some sort of problem which requires a high level of thinking to solve. After much thought and perhaps trial and error by cave boy, the problem is solved by his big brother - using brute force.

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

Heres a first draft on the caveboys dopey big brother. I'm not really sure about his design at this stage. I will probably play with some options when I'm modelling but I guess this is what I have in mind.

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cool character and it def suits the dopey slow character type. buuuuuut, the no neck design it looks like you have in mind can be a bitch to animate sometimes. One of the characters in the figaro show had the same body type and his high back and shoulders and no neck frustrated the hell out of me. I always found myself having to come up with creative ways to work around it. the rig was also an auto set up piece of shit so that didn't help.

but having said its still very do-able. anyway i know you understand the challenges of bulky characters anyway which is why you urged us at mad to make skinny characters.

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and it's a story that might bore you, but you don't have to listen, because I always knew it was going to be like that.

yeah, I have always avoided it, and in classes I really didnt want people to struggle with bulging muscles and all that stuff. In max its really a messy business. I guess I want to see if I can rig a bulky character with even just a small degree of success. I wouldnt even want to try in max but with set driven keys and the maya muscles system it might have a chance.

You are right about the no neck thing. I figure he will evolve into something slightly more anatomically correct when he is built.
Is there anything that could improve the "appeal" you said they stressed that in the pixar seminar and I'm inclined to agree that that is what really makes a character succesfull. the first reaction from a girl at work was "oooh, yuck, is he some sort of gorilla man" then when I showed her the caveboy she went all "awww, now he's cute" Too late for changes on caveboy at this point but the blue guy is still very much in the design stage .

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you can still make some changes to the cave boy like the teeth, which you mentioned anyway. The curved box teeth would be more appealing.

Appeals a funny thing, it doesn't necessarily have to be cute to be appealing. yeah big eyes big heads is cute and generally appealing but you can also have a character which is ugly as all hell but if theres reasoning behind it, suits them and is still an interesting character then people will be drawn to it. thus it has appeal. just look at some disney villains they're not all cute or gorgous some are downright ugly.

I guess you could give him doe eyes under that mop top of hair. you could also make his muscles more curvy instead of sharp in some places. Its all very subjective and appeal is so broad and kinda vague actually. I would give him eyes actually because you can display so much emotion with them, but thats just me I am obsessed with good animation in the eyes. look to mr incredible or sully from monsters inc both are big and bulky and in my opinion are very appealing.

also on another note appeal doesn't stop at character designs it also includes the shapes and poses you make when animating. they should keep the original appeal of the character.

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and it's a story that might bore you, but you don't have to listen, because I always knew it was going to be like that.

yeah I fixed his teeth. they look a little better. I'll make a few more designs before I start modelling the next one. needs a bit more consideration. thanks for the advice.

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Awesome job Tyson. I can't wait to see it in action.

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Rick

[Link to www.3dartconcepts.com]

hey tyson (and anyone else who has an opinion feel free)i just have a question about your preferences for IK FK switching, i guess you could call it research for future rigs. when you have used IK FK switching in the past do you like to blend it between the two over several frames or would you prefer to just have it "pop" between IK and FK and match it yourself or have an auto snap IKFK feature.

personally i never ever use the blend over several frames and always make the switch in a single frame and match the IK and FK joints manually and make it work through careful positioning and keyframing.

the reason i ask is because maya has the attribute option 'enum' which provides a drop down menu so you can select between IK or FK and using set driven keys and the standard IK FK setup it will just pop between IK and FK without a blend. Now i think this is good because the blend between the two can cause weird deformations in the skinning. but on the other hand it can be tough to match their positions manually. which brings me to IK FK snapping which i have seen in a few rigging demo reels but seems tough to set up.

so yeah i was just wondering what your preference is?

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and it's a story that might bore you, but you don't have to listen, because I always knew it was going to be like that.

I think ideally being able to hit a button to automatically match IK to FK would be ideal. I agree the switch is better as an on off thing rather than a blend, I still havent set up the ik/fk in my caveboy and I'm starting to wish I had, Ive done the first walk cycle, will post it when I do a quick render.

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Ok on the subject of Ik arms I'm having a small issue that you might be able to solve matt.
My hand ik handle is position constrained to the hand ctrl (nurbs curve) then the hand joint is orient constrained to the same control. (that much I have explained before) but before I make the constraints I have aligned the control curve to the hand joint (using a script that aligns rotation and position) so that my control object rotates around the same local space as the hand joint. But when I freeze transform on the control object its local space swaps to world space which doesnt work for local rotation of the hand. So I just left the control object as is after aligning it. so that works just fine but now I can no longer zero out the hand control or get equivocal values for both hands as I could if the control objects transforms were at zero. any ideas?. hope that makes sense?

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hmmm tricky, i'm not entirely sure how to fix it to be honest. Could you put the control curve into a group and use your align and rotate script on the group leaving the channels of the curve clean. It will leave you with a group in the rig but thats not a huge deal. Try it if it doesn't work.....well back to the drawing board.

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and it's a story that might bore you, but you don't have to listen, because I always knew it was going to be like that.

i beleive i have an answer for you now on this little problem and its pretty simple.

just group your control curve to itself then point and orient constrain the group to the joint. this will align and orient it correctly. delete the constraint nodes and it will stay positioned and oriented. the group will have values but the control curve will have clean attributes. and your done.

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and it's a story that might bore you, but you don't have to listen, because I always knew it was going to be like that.

Thanks dude.

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tis alright, now i know that trick i use it a lot

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and it's a story that might bore you, but you don't have to listen, because I always knew it was going to be like that.

No worries, I'll try and figure it out on the next rig. for now my caveboy works and I'm over messing with removing constraints.
I am confused as to why the rotation axis changes when you freeze transform. I thought the point of it was to set the current values as a new zero value without changing them but it seems like if you freeze transform on any object that isnt linked to a parent it resets the rotations to world space. I guess because the world is the parent of any unlinked object. Maybe I'm just thinking about things wrong. do you usually have all your control objects zeroed out at the bind pose?

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yeah sorry unfortunately i dont have all the answers, i wish i did. really i only know how to do a few things in rigging and anything complicated i try to do i kinda hack together through trial and error using what i know.

yeah freeze transform sets the values to zero but changes the rotations to world space, which is why there are tricks like the parent shape script for controls. mayas a little flawed like that. it really used to screw me up before i learnt the parent shape trick. i think lightwave has setting up controls automated which is a feature i wish maya would adopt.

yeah i have all my controls zeroed out at the bind pose. i find i reset the values to zero all the time when animating and you HAVE to know where you are in the graph editor. things can get confusing if you have random values floating around.

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and it's a story that might bore you, but you don't have to listen, because I always knew it was going to be like that.

hey thats ok. But that sounds like you do have an answer though . I just got the shape parent script but I'm not quite understanding the reason for it do you mind giving me a quick example of where you would use it over a parent constraint? sorry this is all very new territory

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its basically a handy way to make controls that have clean channels and that are oriented correctly. its also a very clean method of working and keeping things organised, because instead of having joints and control curves and constraint nodes floating around your pretty much just left with joint hierarchy.

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and it's a story that might bore you, but you don't have to listen, because I always knew it was going to be like that.

yeah sorry for all the techy questions dude. Ive just suddenly realised there is some glaring gaps in my understanding here. Ive just been reading about how mayas nodes work and its highlighted a bunch of things I really need to clarify before I can move ahead on a better rig.
I might have to sleep on it -cheers

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That is a bloody awesome rig man

Hey I know this is of topic but can you highlight some of the reason you would use maya over max?

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Please support us and post a [Link to www.digitalartsfront.com] on your website.

thanks Jamie. yeah, lets see. So far knowing max very well and moving into Maya its been a very liberating experience. knowing both opens up all the functionality pros and cons of each program. Obviously i have only just begun the journey with Maya so there is a wealth of tools in there that I havent even looked at but.

So far the key difference is that Maya gives you control over absolutely everything, you can open an editor and simply connect parameters and there is a parameter or attribute for everything. everything has a node and can be manipulated with another node at will. This is similar to wire parameters in max but its just easier to visualise in maya. then you have an expression editor which makes creating expression connections much simpler. but then the icing on the cake is the set driven keys function which lets you drive an attribute or attributes by setting states with keyframes. for example you load up two objects select a driver attribute and one or more driven attributes and set a key. then change all your driven attributes to specific values and set key again. then when you change the driver all the other attributes are triggered to the specific values in the keyframe. You can do that with reaction controller in max but its much harder to set up.

Other things about the program that could be difficult for beginners in 3d are just more transparent in maya if you already know about them from experience with another package. for instance in max the uvw unwrap modifier can be confusing making you believe you are adding uvs to a mesh when you are really just editing uvs. in maya you have a mesh and you just simply look at its uvs in an editor window. you can add and change the mapping and if there arent any workable uvs you can add different projections but the whole process is just more direct.

Likewise with editing the mesh, you don't convert to editable poly. you just enter component mode (sub-object)

The same types of things are evident throughout the program opening windows and having everything just there to be controlled. like being able to remove or add every conceivable attribute to be hidden or non keyable (good for controls in a rig that you only want to rotate etc..)

There are many things that annoy me coming from max but many of those things are addressed with the nex plugin (mainly for modelling but also for tons of missing shortcuts and functions) and obviously a massive amount of script fixes. A notable one being the align script. I still can't fathom why they have an align tool that doesnt align rotation as well as position. but the script fixes that.

I guess essentially they both do the same task but I can really see why for character animation and character rigging Maya is the first choice.
For modelling, especially polygon modelling Max is still supreme but not really, if you use the nex plugin theres really not that much difference its just a matter of preference, although I think with max 2010's new tools max still might have the lead. rendering on the other hand I still much prefer max just because I know Vray so well and as of yet vray for maya isnt as well integrated. mental ray is still a strong renderer though and I'm starting to like it in maya. Time will tell on that one.

Right now I have decided to use both programs interchangably. if there is a modelling task I know how to do in max very well I just export it and import into max. then export it again. I dont want to lose max and get lost completely in Maya, i just want there to be another tool in my kit. like zbrush or photoshop or digital fusion. It would be very cool if they could talk to each other even better though. seeing as they are now made by the same company. such as rendering a max environment and a maya character in a parallel scene that updated in each environment. not likely though i guess.

woah thats a long post I'll leave it there I guess

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That was a bloody good response man. I tried to model in maya once and it was such a pain in the ass. Thanks man I hope this is useful to others.

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Please support us and post a [Link to www.digitalartsfront.com] on your website.

oh man i just noticed this topic. Great rig man, and i really like your concepts, specially the big guy. I was considering switching over to maya, i have a friend that works in it and he always tries to persuade me, maya this, maya that etc... but i always stayed at max, mostly because i didn't want to start learning new program when there's so much to learn in max, but reading through your post makes me wanna download trial version and give it a shot, when i get the time to play around with it a bit, not any time soon i'm afraid.

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The secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
-Albert Einstein