Maya Animation :: Knee Popping Out To The Side During Rigging Process?
Nov 20, 2013
I am having a problem while rigging a series of characters modeled by my company. I have set up a reverse foot and a no-flip knee (Art of Rigging Vol. 1's method). The leg functions properly, my attributes work fine, but I am not using a pole vector for the knee and when I raise the foot control the knee pops out to the side.
I never use a pole vector, I use a knee twist attribute. However, even after experimenting with a simple pole vector constraint on the ankle/leg IK to a locator, this still happens. I have had to counter animate the knee on the last 4 characters because of this.
Unfortunately, these models aren't in a true T-pose, the legs are wider than the hips, and the toes and knees are pointed outward. I create the bones, then orient the rotation down the chain so the orientation is correct--- I'm wondering if this is happening because the leg bones aren't going straight up and down, but more trying to follow the contours of the model. And no matter if I use a no-flip knee, a pole vector, or what, the knee STILL pops out to the side. It's making animating these models a pain in the butt because I'm constantly counter animating the knee so the leg is straight on simple things like run cycles.
I'm pretty new to the whole rigging and skinning process, so in order to skin my model I've used the Interactive Skin Bind Tool (Skin>Bind Skin>Interactive Skin Bind Tool) which so far hasn't caused any problems. But when I started to modify the weighting on the geometry it appeared that the weights are reversed meaning that when using the Interactive Skin Bind Tool (Skin>Edit Smooth Skin>Interactive Skin Bind) on the left leg, I actually modify the weights on the right leg and vice versa (see image below).
I need to rig two objects together that follow one another the same way a train car or truck-trailer rig would. I've Googled for days and have tried several different constraint and skeleton options but haven;t been able to figure this out yet.
I'm currently rigging a character who is standing in a relaxed pose. Everything works fine until I get to the hands. The hands are also relaxed and a bit bent which makes it a bit hard to get the joints exactly where I want them. I have to jump between every viewport view to tweak the joints.. and it's rather tedious. I've read on several animation forums that people prefer to rig a character in relaxed position and that the T-pose is pretty much outdated. I watched a video from Naughty Dogs (the studio behind Uncharted game-series) and apparently they rig their characters in relaxed pose.
Best way to keep clusters in alignment with bone rigging. I'm trying to parent clusters that control facial movements to the head bone of my skeleton so as when I move my character about the clusters retain there position in relationship to the face.
I am almost done with my model. He is in a naked state for the sake of making sure the anatomy is correct. I am preparing to rig, texture, and animate him. I plan on modeling the shirt and pants separate and use Maya's nCloth for those. I have also modeled glasses that are a completely separate mesh that will need to follow every movement of the head of my model.
Here is my issue, I am puzzled on how to model my shoes and socks.
1) Should i model them as part of the legs to eliminate further animation? 2) Should I model thee shoes and socks separate from the legs?
way to form a hierarchy where i can model everything individually and then make the main body rig a parent to everything secondary (shoes, socks, glasses, etc...)?
I am having issues with rigging a simple character in Maya 2013. I was able to set up the joints and the skeleton but when I move the joints to start animating, the model moves separatly from the skeleton. It seems to be moving in the same direction but exponentially more than the skeleton, creating separation between the model and the skeleton. I am new to rigging and was going off the tutorial and am stuck at this point.
i did a Locator (Null) and parented to the Head Bone.this is where i am going to parent the sphere geometry of the eye.
but i cant find the way to mirror this Locator to the other side for the other eye.i try with Duplicate special, -x but it does it on its own, the only different is the scale is -X but didn't move from the original position, and the 2 are overlap.
how do i mirror / duplicate the Locator to the other side?
Is there a tool to mirror objects like there is in Max inside Maya? I am trying to copy my rig controllers to the opposite side but I cant find any tools to do it in 1 click...
The problem I'm having with Skin Morph is that it's skewing my vertices side-to-side locally.
I'm using Skin Morph to better preserve the volume around the two joints of each finger of my hand model (See Arm1).
The two skin morph targets were created for the index finger while it was in the same position as the second image (Arm2).
I repeated this process, creating skin morph targets for the other two joints on the three other fingers and on the thumb.
The problem comes when I rotate the knuckle joint in any axis, in the third image (Arm3) I've rotated the knuckle downwards and you can see the vertices affected by the Skin Morph modifier have skewed to the left. When I turn the modifier off the vertices go back to their original position - so the problem isn't being caused by something like non-uniform scaling of my model (I reset the transforms before skinning).
The fourth image (Arm4) just shows the basic child/parent relationship that I've setup with the Bones and SplineShapes.
The fifth images show the (perhaps strange) position of the Driver Bone Matrix and the Morph Bone Matrix which could be constributing to the problem somehow.
I've uploaded the file so that you can explore my scene. armrigskinmorphproblems.zip
3ds Max 2013 64-bit Student Version nVidia GeForce GTX 560 Windows 7 64-bit Intel i7
I was wondering if there was any quick way to save each animation frame right next to each other in one large png in Photoshop CS6? For example, lets say I have an animation which has 10 frames, each frame being 100px x 100px, I want to be able to save the first frame in the first 100 x 100 enclosure of my canvas, the next frame in the next 100px, and so on and so on for the rest of the frames, resulting in a png which is 100px x 1000px at finish, having the first frame at the very left, and the final frame at the very right.At the moment I'm moving each frame individually to the right by 100,200,300px however I need to do this for over 400 animations with varying dimensions, so it's a bit time consuming and I feel that I might lose track and enter a value wrong at some point. Any other program that might achieve this in which I'm able to import Photoshop animations that can also work.
I've got a 2 bone chain that I have attached a spline IK to with a flex modifier on the spline. This was working pretty well however, once I skinned the mesh to these bones I noticed that when I rotated the 2nd bone it would seem to pop on a different axis. It was hard to spot at first because it popped between 2 frames, popped 90 degrees and seems to happen at the same rotation amount (can't recall exact degree at the moment).
I turned off the flex modifier and it is still popping so I'm assuming it is from the spline IK. Is there a way to prevent this?
Basically, I have one dummy that controls the position and rotation of the chair. As the Chair goes forward or backward, the casters will need to swivel around and would be following the chair from behind. Likewise, when the chair rotates, the casters would swivel and follow from behind. Would this be Wire Parameters?
I am rigging a car that will definitely change at a later stage. To avoid having to redo a lot of work, I am using the Xref Objects option to bring the car into a new scene. In the new scene I have built my rig with all my controllers etc. I used simple linking to attach the various pieces of geometry to the rig. At this point everything works great - wheels turn and steer, body rolls, suspension works. I hit save.
Now when I close Max and then open the file again, the geometry has jumped all over the place (see the image attached)! I have tried various things to fix this with no luck...
I have reset xforms on all the original geometry, aligned the pivots so that they match exactly to the controllers they will be linked to, checked scale to make sure everything was at 100%, I have reset transforms. None of these solved the problem. Is this even the correct method to rig?
I have an imported set of models. Part of the set is a rubber straw that has a plastic tip attached on one end (please see attached image). I need to animate this bending and also being clasped (squished slightly) later in the animation.
The tube and tip models are currently body objects, I am reluctant to remodel the tube as it has text detailing across it. The tube material should have a slight rigidity similar to a garden hose (ie if you held it in our hand it bend down, but would maintain it's shape more if you held it nearer the end). I don't need to animate it too much but it needs to start coiled up, then be uncoiled, then bend slighly in the middle. I have tried making a SplineIK animation which just made the tube pivot on one end. I also tried an HI solver and this did the same. I have also tried to use the Bend Modifier but this does not seem versatile enough.
The second part of the animation I need to add two clamps to the tube and show the two clamped points squishing the tube slightly, which I am also struggling with.
3DS Max 2014 x 64. Windows 7 Pro 64-Bit, 2 x Intel Xeon 2.93GHz, NVIDIA Quadro 4000, 24GB Ram.
I've been building a robot for a while now and I'm stuck with one of the shoulder mechanisms. I'm trying to link one sphere to one shoulder blade, and the second one to the outer shoulder blade. So I could move the outer shoulderblade, and the 4 balls touching that side would move along with it, but would just rotate and not be transformed or the mesh changed any way. When I move the inner bigger shoulder blade, the whole thing would move as a whole.
Any way to get the same squash and stretch (preserving volume) results using 3Ds Max CAT and the Skin Modifier. I heard that using an Expression Controller is one way of doing it but where to find documentation or tutorials on the process.
Moving the Global Control moves the entire rig - Awesome. Rotating the Global Control rotates the entire rig - Also Awesome.
But when I scale the Global Control, the bones associated with the arms don't scale. To clarify: The arm bones still conform to their position/orientation constraints, as well as the IK chain, but they remain the same size upon scaling.
I'm following along with Delano Athias' "Character Rigging for Production in 3ds Max", provided by Digital-Tutors.Upon closer inspection, the IK side of things also moves when rotating. Almost as if the swivel angle is changing (currently its parametres are wired to an arm Control)
I've created a model of an iPod Nano fourth gen (wich is no where near perfect). This model has a lock switch as a seperate object. What I'd like to do is make a slider helper object and when I move it, the lock switch gradually goes from locked to unlocked. I don't know how I'd have to make this except for the fact that I'd probably have to use a script controller for the position of the switch and have the script work in the parent's (the iPod body) local coordinate system. But I don't have enough knowledge of MAXscript for that and maybe there's a diffrent approach.
I'm a cartographer not a 3D modeler! However, I've been tasked with creating a simple animation of a two-axis solar PV panel as it tracks the sun across the sky during a single day.
I've got everything modeled but don't understand how to constrain and establish the motion relationships - IK chains, rigging and such. See attached image for my needs. I believe I have the rotation pivot points established.
Coming to my specific issue as hinted in the title above:
*I have 3DS Max 2011.
*I am working on a soldier model. The soldier has a rifle as his weapon. The soldier + weapon model, after animation, will be exported to a game engine.
*Some of the animations that the game needs are: -Reloading the rifle from a standing position. -Shouldering the rifle and firing from a standing position. -Fixing the bayonet and stabbing forward. Etc etc.
*The game needs several different soldier models (each with its unique uniforms). But the weapon for all the soldier models is the same rifle.
*Thus, it would be advantageous if I animate the soldier and the rifle together but export the animations to the game engine separately (i.e., the soldier animation separate from the rifle animation.) This way I can connect different soldiers with the same rifle in the game.
* I am done with the low poly models for both the soldier and the rifle.
*I have rigged the soldier model and skinned it. The walk cycle looks decent. I am using CAT by the way.
*Now the question is, how to connect the rifle to the soldier model so that it will be easy for me when it comes to exporting the animations.
*After going through a lot of posts here and YouTube videos, my vaugue thoughts are along the following lines:
-Create two dummy helper objects and attach them to the soldier's hands. -Attach the rifle to the dummy objects. -Animate the soldier. The rifle,through the dummy object linkages, will follow suit.
1* Does the above plan seem workable?
2* When connecting a dummy object to the soldier do I use a "Link Constraint" or an "Attachment Constraint"?
3* When connecting the rifle to a dummy object do I use a "Link Constraint" or an "Attachment Constraint"?
4* Once I am done with an animation ( say reloading) how do I split the combined soldier + rifle animation into two to be saved as soldier animation and rifle animation separately?
I am new to rigging! I have the hook working how i want, it is just getting the boom cable and arm to work that is giving me trouble (they create the triangle you can see in the images). I just need it so that if i rotate the arm then in pulls the cable, which in turn pulls the end of the boom, while keeping the other end of the boom fixed (the cable doesn't change length, it is always in tension). I have been messing around with IK solvers but i really don't have enough time to mess around with trial and error!
I am having trouble rigging my character using the bone systems in 3 ds max. I boned out the front leg and cloned the bones for the other front leg, and that went well. the problem came when i tried to create the bones for the back legs. When i try to make the bones, they will only go on the x and y axis. I think the z axis is constrained somehow.
I made and rigged some bones to animate a mech a modelled. However, after rigging I realised that one of the bones was too short, effectively making the 'thigh' pivot around an area lower than the 'hip'.
Is there a way of lengthening the bone, or do I have to delete it all and start again?
As you can see on the attached image, I've got a Monitor on a movable arm that is fixed at the opposite end. I am having trouble rigging a section of the arm (shown as 'arm 2'). The problem I'm having is that the handle moves the arm around, but in order to move the arm up/down the two sections of arm 2 pivots in 4 places.
I have a bone structure through the upper section, which works. But when I try to put a bone through the lower section as well, the upper link breaks or the handle wont rotate properly.
So effectively I am trying to split the rig like this -=-.
Any clue how I can do this, or is there a better way of doing this?
3DS Max 2014 x 64. Windows 7 Pro 64-Bit, 2 x Intel Xeon 2.93GHz, NVIDIA Quadro 4000, 24GB Ram.
