3D hand skeleton

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 12:31 am

Hi
I've been working a little more with rigging points "like" 3D. Also I have added some Z rotation. Finally I've rigged a skeleton of a 3d hand.
Feel free to play with the file.

http://amanoalzada.iespana.es/Mohostuff/2nd3Dhand.swf
http://amanoalzada.iespana.es/Mohostuff/2nd3Dhand.anme

WARNING: 271 bones in one layer. Please check "Hide controlled bones"

Feed back is welcomed

Genete

Touched · Post by **Touched** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 1:56 am

And after I've spent the past week or so working on hands for my characters. ^^ Well, the effect is quite convincing in your skeleton, but when the fingers are rotated and you've made thick, non-line fingers (i.e. a fill with an outline), how would you propose preserving the proper volume and proper back-to-front appearance of the finger joints as they flex?

DK · Post by DK » Tue Feb 20, 2007 3:34 am

Genete, that's fantastic. When I get the time I will sit down and get my head around what you guys are doing. Keep up the great work!

D.K

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 5:12 am

Man I am so tempted by this rig... it really is cool.

So many bones! I wonder what would happen if added this to my already 300+ bone rig. Probably explode.

-vern

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 8:47 am

Touched wrote:And after I've spent the past week or so working on hands for my characters. ^^ Well, the effect is quite convincing in your skeleton, but when the fingers are rotated and you've made thick, non-line fingers (i.e. a fill with an outline), how would you propose preserving the proper volume and proper back-to-front appearance of the finger joints as they flex?

I could try to do it with more points/bones but it will get crazy the file itself. There are two steps in my mind to reach a better hand rig.

1) Give volume to the fingers. I have an idea about this avoiding adding more "3D" points. Every joint of every finger should have 2 brother points ("brother" hehe, let's continue with this "family" speaking

) which give volume in a certain view (rotation). I plan to let the user give the volume to every finger only rotating properly a bone for finger. The 2 brother points remain almost static around the skeleton bone giving him a volume for every projection. I know it is a bone more to control by the user but for the moment I need it. Once I have it works I'll try to automate it. For the palm I should need more points/bones because it don't have same thickness in each view.

3) Put every finger in a separate bone layer. It will separate also the controller bones and will require more clicks from the user. But it will reduce the amount of bones in one layer (it slow down the computer a lot!! - BTW it is not a problem of memory or graphic card, it is pure processor work-) and will help a lot to order the fingers visibility by actions for example.

Time will answer.

@DK, heyvern and Touched: thanks for the feedback.

Regards
Genete

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 6:09 pm

I cannot wait to show you the results of giving volume to the 3D hand skeleton. I'm so excited!!!!

I have only 4 of 5 fingers, because I have to think a little how to perform the joint of the big finger to the hand. I'm still thinking on it.

The rotation of the shapes are made with bones but with fine tuning, not automatic. I haven' found the way to make a bone point always to the center of rotation of other bone automatically. Perhaps some script would help.
I have some ideas for dinamically hide the proper lines of the fingers for every position but I have not decide yet for one of them. Any suggestion?

Please ask me whatever you want!!! and of course!!! any sugestion/help will be welcome!!!!

Regards
Genete

oops the files!!
http://amanoalzada.iespana.es/Mohostuff ... volume.swf
http://amanoalzada.iespana.es/Mohostuff ... olume.anme

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 6:40 pm

Not bad! Looking good.

You know hopefully if e-frontier adds some additional features to bone constraints down the road the number of bones needed might go way down. That is my dream anyway.

I don't have time at this point to add this hand into my rig. I will have to try it later and see how much it will slow down my current set up.

-vern

human · Post by **human** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 7:07 pm

Wow, that's marvelous.

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 8:13 pm

Thankyou guys.
The anme file is updated with a new finger.
Here are again the updated files.

http://amanoalzada.iespana.es/Mohostuff ... olume2.swf
http://amanoalzada.iespana.es/Mohostuff ... olume.anme

I have some troubles when the finger is bended in a perpendicular plane to the point of view and after released with another rotation. I need to put then a extra keyframe right closed to a previous one to make a 180 rotaion of the small bones without any interference of the observer. Anyway you can see that in this new version there is a undesired rotation of the small finger. It is an error from my side during fine tunning animation.

I wuold apreciate so much some suggestions to improve the 3D effect.
Regards
Genete

Touched · Post by **Touched** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 10:36 pm

Jesus Christ, you really did it! I'm astoundingly impressed!

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 1:17 am

Touched wrote:Jesus Christ, you really did it! I'm astoundingly impressed!

Thanks Touched.
I hope now people believe me when I dully said that this 3D stuff has a lot of potential...
The palm would be a little hard to recreate but I will try.

See you next post!!
Genete

dekka · Post by **dekka** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 10:33 am

hi genete, let me start by telling you you are doing a great job that rig looks really good.
The problem i have is i downloaded the rig to study it but when i click on the bone which are to the very far left (the control bones) AS crashes on me. Now i am wondering if i am missing a script or something because AS will not let me use the rig without crashing.
any idea
thank you

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 11:22 am

dekka wrote:hi genete, let me start by telling you you are doing a great job that rig looks really good.
The problem i have is i downloaded the rig to study it but when i click on the bone which are to the very far left (the control bones) AS crashes on me. Now i am wondering if i am missing a script or something because AS will not let me use the rig without crashing.
any idea
thank you

Oh my God!!!

. I was waiting sadly that something like that would happen to some user!!!.

I supouse you were out of memory. I have 1GB in my linux box. The big amount of bones slow down a little but no more that when using particles or onionskin. I haven't any script in the file and all the rig is only made with built in features (points, bones, vector layers, bones layers, bone constraints and bones hierarchy). (Bones and bones contraints are the main contributors to the slow down issue).

I can put fones for every finger in one separate layer and I supouse that it would increase velocity but not the amount of memory needed because as far as I know from the forum experts, AS have all the whole project in memory. But if I do this I need to include heyvern's script that moves a bone from another bone in other layer so it could crash also (I have to test). If I do not include that script, then the user must rotate every Y-rotation bone for every finger, the same amount ofrotation in every keyframe that were created (a pain for the user).

By the way, what OS are you using, which version of Moho/AS do you have and what are the characteristics of your computer?
Are you able to test the file in other computer/OS?

Does any other user have the same problem?

Regards
Genete

EDITED: Perhaps it is not a problem of TOTAL memory and more a problem of overflow of the internal routines of the program. You know, some computational subroutines are using recursion methods and if the library functions are not properly designed an stack overflow could happen.

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 4:08 pm

My Mac is kind of low end (733mhz 640 mb ram) and I can run this file without a problem.

My PC also only has 640mb ram and doesn't have trouble with lots of bones.

The number of bones required for the 3D trick is one of the main reasons I have not made extensive use of it for my rig.

Genete, do NOT use my bone script for this rig. The performance will be AWFUL. With that many bones it will bog down too much to be usable. If the application can't keep up with the script processing it just stops working, you get an error and you have to go to frame 0 to reset it.

-vern

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 12:15 am

New update!!!!
Now it is time to think about hide some lines dinamically.
Feed back is welcome.

http://amanoalzada.iespana.es/Mohostuff ... volume.swf
http://amanoalzada.iespana.es/Mohostuff ... olume.anme

Best
Genete