Spikes on Joints

BunyanFilms · Post by **BunyanFilms** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 4:20 am

I probably should have made the character with offset bones or something but I have a problem with little spikes appearing on the leg areas where I have segmented the joints to make the leg bend properly.

Is there a way to fix this or would I have to start from scratch?

Here si the anime file http://www.bunyanfilms.com.au/hightower ... ve_01.anme

Thanks

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 4:42 am

There doesn't really seem to be a bump there in the AS file. When I load the render into photoshop and zoom in it's just one pixel that sticks out.

Maybe if enlarged the layer just slightly or moved it ever so slightly that pixel would go away.

Also I think there are an awful lot of unneeded points but I won't go into that right now. Big can of worms.

-vern

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 10:19 am

(Very nice style!)

If this is the character for a TV spot, I'd say leave it as it is. Nobody will notice this in movement. If you see the whole character, it will only be 500 lines tall: the spike will vanish between two pixels. And you will certainly not have a close-up of his knees, right?

BunyanFilms · Post by **BunyanFilms** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 6:35 pm

Thanks Vern and Slowtiger. It's weird that the bump only appears in the render. This is indeed a character for a TV spot. The number of points was due mainly to the end position this character has to bend into to form a company logo.
I'll try and adjust the layer to see if that will affect those little spikes. Due to time restrains though I'll probably end up taking Slowtigers advise and just leave them. It's more annoying rather than a real problem.
Ha.. I thought I'd save some time and lock the foot bones now and then. That was a mistake. It was good while I was blocking out some main movements but when I went in to stop a wobbly knee I just could not get it to be in the right position. So I then unlocked the foot and all my nice positions went crazy with legs bending backwards and feet rotating at stupid angles. In the end there was a lot of frame by frame manipulations that did not save time at all. I wish there was a way to have different coloured onion skin outlines or a way to colour the points something different especially as this character was a teal green.

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 7:51 pm

I wish there was a way to have different coloured onion skin outlines or a way to colour the points something different especially as this character was a teal green.

Just view in wireframe or set the prefs colors for the vectors to a different color. You can switch back easily later.

About bone locking... when you lock a bone and rotate parent bones of the locked bone it is going to naturally cause a nightmare if you unlock that key. I've had pretty good luck fixing "wobbly" knees. Rather than rotate bones to fix pops and such, use the SCALE bone tool... just slight scaling along with rotation will ease the bone into position.

Keep in mind what AS is doing... it is using the chain of bones to create "IK Targets" from the locked bone. So when you try to force a position it can't reach with the bone chain... it gets stuck and causes those pops and wobbles.

It can't reach the exact position you want because it isn't physically possible to do it. The length of the bones, maintaining the locked postion.. it just can't reach.

That is why slight scaling of one of the parent bones can help. It isn't noticeeable if it is slight and also "covered" by a rotation. This is tricky even in some 3D software. Animation Master gets those weird popping bones in some of the rigs.

-vern