Dance animation

Works in progress and technical screen shots.

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Re: Dance animation

Postby wolgade » Mon Dec 18, 2017 4:51 pm

Yes, I'm still working on this project. This is what the stage looks like at the moment:
1083.jpg

1332.jpg

Next step is to create / choose individual characters for the performance. Then animation needs to be fixed at some points to prevent arms and hands intersecting the body.

But now I realized a problem: I use CMU-Rig for the characters as it works fine with the animation. CMU-Rig doesn't offer a way to make the character close the eyes which is a show stopper right now. The final result will of course need characters with blinking eyes. They look dead otherwise. Any ideas?
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Re: Dance animation

Postby joepal » Tue Dec 19, 2017 10:51 am

You could implement the eye lid animation via shape keys. This way you would not need to interfere with or change the rigging.

It's a cumbersome workaround, but should work.
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Re: Dance animation

Postby wolgade » Tue Dec 19, 2017 7:55 pm

Thanks for your reply.
joepal wrote:You could implement the eye lid animation via shape keys.

Do you remember the old days of MH Alpha7 and MHX? We had face animation with shape keys, but eyelids were moved by bones. The reason might be, that shape keys move vertices in a linear way. It's translation on a straight line. Imagine a face from side view. Eyelid vertices need to rotate around the eye ball. I decided to try to add the eye bones to the cmu rig. My first experiment is quite promising. I used the helper geometry (joints) to position the bones and found a way to transfer the weights. Took me a while, but I'm quite a noob when it comes to rigging.
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Re: Dance animation

Postby punkduck » Tue Dec 19, 2017 8:41 pm

wolgade wrote: I used the helper geometry (joints) to position the bones and found a way to transfer the weights. Took me a while, but I'm quite a noob when it comes to rigging.


Maybe you can add a few lines how you have done that, when it works in the end. I also tried to copy weights, but it doesn't work for me ... but I'm also a rookie when it comes to rigging.

The reason behind: It would be interresting to have a bunch of extra bones or shape-keys in the end for our characters, which can be copied or adapted from one character to the next one.
Maybe not for a video, but for making the characters more perfect when posing. You remember the problems with knees or shoulders, with thin lower arms etc. :roll:
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Re: Dance animation

Postby wolgade » Wed Dec 20, 2017 11:01 am

punkduck wrote:Maybe you can add a few lines how you have done that, when it works in the end.

I will if it works in the end.
punkduck wrote:I also tried to copy weights, but it doesn't work for me

I found two ways to do it. The old way is to select the object you want to transfer from and then the object you want to transfer to. The later must be in weight paint mode. In the T-Panel you'll find a function called "transfer weights". It's tricky to use and documentation is outdated. It took a lot of trial and error, but finally worked.

The new way is to use a data transfer modifier. I didn't manage to get this working. This is most probably my fault, but again it's hard to find good documentation.
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Re: Dance animation

Postby wolgade » Fri Dec 29, 2017 12:31 am

I finally managed to get my CMU-Enhaced rig working. At the end it wasn't really hard to do, but it involved things I never dealt with. Well, it took it's time. Here's a little demo of eyelid and eye movement. It's just two seconds, but technically it works. There'll be a tutorial once I got my new wisdom sorted and straight.
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