Wind Mill Defense

[brkurt]

Hello everyone...here is a long-sleeve dress designed with Angela Guedette's principles. That means everything resolves to an edge loop.

I've animated it for a basic martial arts defense, the windmill. The principle is simple: you assume your opponent knows how to fight, and so you have to block (in the first case) a right straight and a left hook. Your right arm sweeps away the straight, your left funny bone stops the hook aimed at your face.



Here is the OpenGL video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsS50MIF4Xg


And here is the model. If you want to the turntable to work in Blender 2.6x, you will need to Parent | Follow Path again.

http://www.geekopolis.ca/blender/windMillDefense1_249b.blend

[brkurt]

Here is the second iteration:

http://youtu.be/1uUz5Uv0AMw

This model is now fully articulated, with hands and facial expressions. Note the blinks.

The model has big problems in the armpit area; I want to solve them, with extensive notes, so that others can see how I did it systematically, rather than pushing vertices.

When that is done, I will share it.

[duststorm]

Did you rig the clothes yourself or did you use maketarget and export it out again?

[brkurt]

I went primitive on this model, nearly a year ago. It is a 5.1 Alpha wavefront .obj export of the base mesh; everything else was done in Blender 2.49b. (I did mention primitive.) I wanted to create a rig that could fight, talk and sing, but would still be simple enough to export to a game.

The only changes I made to the mesh were additional edge loops for the eye sockets, as the mesh has Anime not human eyes,
and the Nose Flair edge cut, which I have displayed elsewhere in this forum.

I also created my own UV map, with much more face detail (and therefore less torso detail).

So to make a long point short, the clothes were designed and rigged by me, using Angela Gueddette's guide for edge loop construction.

That's why this needs a tutorial. There are some major differences in the design of the mesh that need to be discussed somewhere; the amount of distortion in the base mesh is considerably greater than in the tunic.

[brkurt]

Here is the solution; sorry it took so long to figure out. I tried as hard as possible to use the base mesh for the postures, but the level of muscularity would not allow it. I also apologize for the large images. Finally, I've used an older and very stable version of Blender, because not everyone is a Blender-head, and different software will need different solution sets.

First, the creation of a Should Girdle Vertex Group. This is Ready Right, at Frame 25, Front View:



Top View:



and now the Tunic. Note how different the location of the quads are:



So..this is quite problematic! The solution is to Duplicate the base mesh, and store it on another level.
Then, the duplicate has its armature, modifiers and shape keys removed, just to be sure.
Then the Vertex group I called resGuide is created:



And now the solution: edge loops, even on the most difficult planar intersections:

[brkurt]

Problem solved, the old-fashioned way, using precise bone locations and minimal vertex groups.

This animation has no Shape Keys yet, and it's nearly done. I'll simple add Shape Keys that match the Poses, and it's done.

The solution: create Deltoid, Scapula, and Latissimus bones (yes I know lats are muscles not bones) and make especially sure their corresponding vertex groups do not overlap.

This animation is from the OpenGL workspace, so that you can see the bones in motion.

http://youtu.be/wE9prDTaLVk

And here is the model:

http://www.geekopolis.ca/blender/windMillDefense3.blend

Here is the Blender inline render video:

http://youtu.be/YZYKPAjZviM