United3dArtists Archive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGvvuvRl7T0

This is a little rigging experiment I did one Sunday afternoon. I really want to use trueSpace to the most, as I think it's a beautiful little program, and I'd love to use it for some cheap productions here in Colombia.

So I made this experiment. I will try be documenting or making tutorials on how to do what I will be doing.

Maybe development of the program will pick up again one day.... I'd buy it.

A quick 5 minute animation testing bone clips, rigging and anything within trueSpace. They tell me the bone system is buggy, and it can be a bit unpredictable. The thing is if you do something wrong, then the lack of coding restraints makes things unpredictable. So before adding a skin, you need to somehow freeze it (freeze transforms script by Clinton) and then it is also a good idea to default a pose of the rig, save it, reimport it, same with the skin, before you animate. Also always remember to animate within a second clip (after a default clip with one keyframe) with passthrough turned off and additive turned on. Or else you will get unpredictable results.

Also, it is a good idea to build the skelaton fully before you attach a skin, and try keep the SDS down, and subdevide it after it is attached. =) Enjoy. I have yet to do some full animations later.

hang on, a quick 1 second animation!!! =P

Looks pretty cool Draise.
Just be aware of the potential crashes you'll run into.

Yeah, I ran into a few.

I have to document them I spose. I do like it's potential rigging features, true IK and position and rotation locks, etc.


First error I found that caused a system crash was when I was trying to create a new joint branch.

Instead of clicking on a joint, I tried to click on a bone to branch from, then draggin from the bone, added a bone with no joint.

Later, after some use, bone editing, joint editing, animating, it caused the system to crash. Later I figured out how to fix the problem, and it was simple. Simply always branch out from other joint nodes, never the bones. No more crashes.


Second error, which also caused a system crash was when I had a un-freezed mesh, which also included bugs of some random skin deforms.

I found that you had to freeze the mesh's transforms before skinning it. It also helped to somehow freeze the skelaton, either by defaulting a pose or saving it as an object and reimporting it, likewise with exporting and importing the skin mesh before skinning.

So using Clintons Freeze Transforms script and saving the skin mesh and skelaton with defaulting it's pose prior skinning got rid of that problem.


There was one other error/system crash, but that was due to using two clips without additive and/or passthrough disabled, I assume, and probably due to a buggy skelaton (prior freezing everything) as in the second error.


So following all those fixes got me to that multi-clip 1 second animation plus riggin under an hour without any errors or crashes.

I also found rigging errors first try in Softimage, like truespace. Left me there with the only option of rebuilding the whole rig from scratch to fix the bug/s. Wasted a good 3 hours trying to fix the error, and all for chain based IK rig, instead of a true IK skelaton!


As any coder would say: garbage in, garbage out. A good program prevents any garbage going in.

Thus the illusion Mac systems are more stable than Windows. Windows is nearly opensource sometimes. =P lol! But i think that's a touchy subject.


I'll do other small experiments before canning the whole lot. I guess I grew up on this software, so I still put some little delight into it. Annnnnd unlike MachStudio Pro 2, atleast truespace can still be remotely developed by anyone. There has hope for the software yet. =)

The error.

Nice set of tips, thanks. Also be sure to check IKHandel's rigging video tutorials found here:

http://www.truespaceplugins.com/froo/"

Heh yeah! I forgot where those were.
Thanks clinton!

Thanks for the tutorials! Very handy! I'll be mulling them over this week. I have quite a bit of work, and now I'm fighting with a professional software and it's worse bone issues..... =P

Peace!

DOH!
Well good luck with that Draise!
And it's great to know that we have another professional artist
in our ranks!