3D rig tutorial STEP BY STEP

DarthFurby · Post by **DarthFurby** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 2:24 am

I'm going to have questions for you Genete, but I want to see if I can figure it out on my own first.

Have a great vacation!

DK · Post by DK » Thu Apr 05, 2007 2:27 am

Darth, if you manage any progress please share it with the rest of us

while genete is away.

D.K

DarthFurby · Post by **DarthFurby** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 2:34 am

I'm going to be making a video tutorial in the next few days about actions, but I'll share what I can.

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Mon Apr 09, 2007 7:03 pm

DarthFurby wrote:I'm going to have questions for you Genete, but I want to see if I can figure it out on my own first.

Have a great vacation!

I'm here again!!
Yeah! I love Roma!!!

... but my legs don't

I think we did more than 30 kilometers walking during three days.... Including the staris to the top of St. Peter's Basilica dome... Also carrying on the neck a Nikon D70 and a 18-70 AS- DX zoom kit ,,,

With stiffness in the legs but happy.

Very soon more additions to the toturial...
Bye!
Genete

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Mon Apr 09, 2007 10:55 pm

Since the first post is getting so losng I'll break it into small parts and link them with hiperlinks.
If you ocasionally have started reading this post and don't know what I'm talking about, please visit this one.

D) TARGETTING AN ARBITRARY POINT IN SPACE.

Well, if you have followed the tutorial you should have some idea of how make a "point" oscilate like if it were turning around an axis parallel to the projection plane (The X or Y axis are parallel to the projection plane in this case the XY plane (or the called FRONT view)). In fact you have learned to rotate a point using a master bone by a particular starting position of the point (2*a, 0, 0) for horizontal oscilation (rotation by the Y axis) or (0,2*a, 0) for the vertical oscilation (the second example of the rotation around the X axis). But what about to rotate a point which is at an arbitary position in the 3D space? I mean rotate by X or Y axis. Let's start to do it step by step.

e) ROTATE A POINT WITH ARBITRARY STARTING ANGLE

See this image:

The springy mechanism and the only for educational propuses bone of the top view have been rotated at frame 0 unlike the master bone still being with the same initial angle. It means that now the springy mechanism is offset from the rotation of the master bone an amount. In this particular case the rotation ofset is an arbitrary value (25º). You will see later that this is very important for a complete 3D rig.

Here the sample file for your tests.
http://amanoalzada.iespana.es/3DTutoria ... ew-25.anme

"HOW CAN I DO THE SAME?"
There are many ways to obtain this file (for example creating the bones by its length and angle but it is tedious and slow). I have a quick way to convert the front-top-view.anme file to the front-top-view-25.anme file.

Select the master bone.
Put the cursor at frame 1
Rotate the master bone to the desired arbitrary angle.
Unselect the master bone
Select the bones A,B,C and the bone of the top view. (This last one is only for educational propouses not needed in the real 3D rig.) SHIFT and Select bone tool is valid to select a group of bones.
Select the rotate Bones tool.
Make left clich in the main window.
Go to timeline window and select the just created keyframe (the keyframe from the selected bones angle)
Press the copy keyframe button.
Put the cursor at frame 0
Press the paste the keyframe button.
Select all keyframes at frame 1 and press the Delete keyframes button.

It could seem to be very large but in fact is a very quick way of manipulating a complete contrained mechanism.

Try to do it by your self.

Tomorrow we will learn how to modify the length of the springy mechanism in a similar way.

DK · Post by DK » Mon Apr 09, 2007 11:09 pm

Hi Genete. Welcome back! Just thought to let you know while you were away I re-read your 3D tutorial.pdf and it made much more sense to me largely due to the fact I was able to read and understand the first part of this tutorial. The remainder of the process does look like it's still going to be very complicated though.

D.K

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Mon Apr 09, 2007 11:52 pm

DK wrote:Hi Genete. Welcome back! Just thought to let you know while you were away I re-read your 3D tutorial.pdf and it made much more sense to me largely due to the fact I was able to read and understand the first part of this tutorial. The remainder of the process does look like it's still going to be very complicated though.

D.K

Yes it is a little complicate to understand but once you have it you are completely addicted to it. Remember that you should not rig every point of your model only the main rotation parts (see the 3D hand where only the joints are modelled). depending on the model and its complexity you need more or less 3D points. For a rounded head and a bounced nose you should only need 4 complete springy mechanisms (the complete one of 15 bones) one for each eye, one for the nose and one for the mouth. The rest could be done with bone motion / point motion and shape ordering.

I cannot stop thinking to rig a 3D seagull... The winds and the tail are similar to the hand fingers, the body is very smooth so only two or three shapes are needed... and the head is perfect for a 3D rig...

Please share with me any doubt you have (big or small) and I'll try to explain it better,

Waiting for your feed back.
Best
Genete

DK · Post by DK » Tue Apr 10, 2007 7:22 am

Hello Genete.
Question. Is it possible to make a template 3D bone rig that can be used to make your own character? Let's say a template head 3D rig where you could simply replace a basic set of facial features with your own artwork?

D.K

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 3:45 pm

DK wrote:Hello Genete.
Question. Is it possible to make a template 3D bone rig that can be used to make your own character? Let's say a template head 3D rig where you could simply replace a basic set of facial features with your own artwork?

D.K

Of course! Really what you are defining is a three dimensional skeleton. The only problem is that you cannot change easily the size and angle of a "3D bone" like the 2D one. You have to change almost angle and size of the 15 bons depending on the modification (take account that now you need more variables to define a point in space).
If you want I can make a template of a 3D face two eyes a nose and a mouth. But I prefer you (all) understand the basics. If not finally I have to sell the template like heyvern!

Honestly I think is better to share the knowledge than the template, but don't worry I'll post it in another topic.

Please feeeeeed baaaaaack!!!

Tahnks

Bye

Genete

DK · Post by DK » Wed Apr 11, 2007 1:59 am

Hi Genete.
I was going to suggest that you create a 3D bone template with instructions, examples etc and sell it on Content Paradise. I would buy it for sure!

D.K

DK · Post by DK » Wed Apr 11, 2007 2:17 am

Hi Genete.
I think for a general appeal you might be still over complicating your tutorials by offering too much information. I can understand how your rig works in 3D space but I find myself having to search through the tutorials just to find the core information on assembling the rig. Could someone else offer any feedback on this?

Regards
D.K

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 8:00 am

DK wrote:Hi Genete.
I think for a general appeal you might be still over complicating your tutorials by offering too much information. I can understand how your rig works in 3D space but I find myself having to search through the tutorials just to find the core information on assembling the rig. Could someone else offer any feedback on this?

Regards
D.K

I'm sorry for that. It is very difficult to me syntesize the needed information in less steps because I don't know if you understand each step. And the amount of information you need to understand is a very big amount.
I was yestesrday trying to make a video of my screen using my camera video. Awful result (very bad resolution and ilumination). Then I review the posibility of use pyvnc2swftool but did not work well with sound. I finally found a blog that explained hot to use ffmpeg to make a screencast of your session. It worked very well even the voice was good. (My microphone is very bad but works). So, what about a video tutorial? Even the tutorial could be the same steps than the current one I think it is easier to you to understand how to assemblt a 3D rig.

The idea of sell the rig don't attract to me. I'm not going to live with this so I prefer to share freely.

One restriction is my english pronunciation and poor vocabulary. But I think you can live with that because finally we are talking about bones!!!!

What do you think?

Best
Genete

ulrik · Post by **ulrik** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 8:08 am

Hi Genete, and thank you for sharing this information, I would like to see a video on this, it would help me a lot to understand how you accomplish this 3D stuff and how I should think to understand the process. When reading this tutorial I get lost, it gets to complicated for my small brain...

, so I think it would be easier with both reading and watching thru a video example.
cheers!

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 9:35 pm

Yeah!!

A video tutorial have been uploaded you can find it im my footage web link. On the left there is a link to it.

Here the direct link.
http://genetita.googlepages.com/springy-sample2-1.avi

It was loosing the frame speed due to my poor capabilities of my computer and the voice goes faster. I need to record to a maximum of 12 fps.

Think about if as a trial. I want to make more Tutorial more elaborated and planne. Just for a test.

By the way I have been holding the microphone with the left because it don't have plataform. The mouse with the rigth. Sorry for the sound.

I¡ll continue anyway with the written tutorial because in the video you can not have all the background.

Thanks for listen.

Genete

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 10:06 pm

New one have arrived!

Check it out here.
It talks about change the length of the springy mechanism. Very important for future development.

NOTE: When I said shorter I wanted to say longer... Things that happen when the movie is so fresh...

Also check out the main webpage. See my signature.

Best
Genete