View Full Version : Ludwig: Fully Rigged Character + Walk Cycle Tutorial
---------- THIS IS THE THREAD FOR THE GALLERY ENTRY. TO TALK ABOUT THE TUTORIAL SECTION SEE: ----------
---------- http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=66476 -----------
Hello fellow blenderheads,
Ludwig is a character that I've been working on for the past several months. I originally started Ludwig when I began to get interested in lipsync. It occured to me that the Blender community does not have any free characters and rigs that are quite to the level of characters such as Generi (http://andrewsilke.com/generi_rig/generi_rig.html) (for Maya). Thus, I built Ludwig with the goal of him becoming Blender's "Generi". It is my hope that providing this character to the community will allow Blender users to compete in competitions such as the 10 Second Club (http://www.10secondclub.net/) on an equal footing with those using expensive proprietary software.
To give some credit where credit is due: Ludwig wouldn't be what he is today without the excellent feedback from LGM. He's been testing the Ludwig rig since before Ludwig could move his face ;). Also, I can't claim that everything that went into the rig was my idea. I took alot of inspiration from Nozzy's "Skinny Guy" and Slikdigit's "Mancandy".
So have fun! Lets see some animations!
Known bug: If you turn Ludwig's head or torso so that he is looking backwards, the facial controls become inverted. No big deal really, but something to be aware of.
~sketchy
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Update!!! Walk Cycle Tutorial
LGM has put together a very detailed and indepth tutorial on making Ludwig walk. You can view the tutorial online here:
Learning to Walk (http://www.nathandunlap.brickfilms.com/tutorials/wt01.html)
Or download the entire tutorial here:
Learning to Walk (Download) (http://www.nathandunlap.brickfilms.com/tutorials/Learning_to_Walk.zip)
-----------------------------------------------------------
The following is the official press release for Ludwig:
------------------------------------------------------------
Ludwig is a fully rigged and animation ready character for Blender. His features include IK/FK arms, stretch and squash head and spine, and a lip sync ready face controlled by a custom UI. Ludwig was created to provide the Blender community with a high-quality humanoid rig and to promote Blender as a character animation tool.
The Ludwig rig and model were created by Jason Pierce (http://cs.unm.edu/~sketch/gallery/). Extensive testing and feedback was done by Nathan Dunlap (http://nathandunlap.brickfilms.com/).
Ludwig was not designed with the beginner animator in mind. While every attempt was made to keep the controls as user-friendly as possible, functionality was put ahead of ease of use (personal preference played a role as well). That being said, someone new to animation shouldn't have much trouble getting this rig to do what they want it to do. Most of Ludwig's functions are accessible and intuitive.
Ludwig's rig may be used royalty-free for both commercial and noncommercial applications. The Ludwig character may only be used for noncommercial purposes.
Download Ludwig at http://cs.unm.edu/~sketch/gallery/resource/ludwig/ludwig.html
http://cs.unm.edu/~sketch/gallery/resource/ludwig/ludwig.jpghttp://cs.unm.edu/~sketch/gallery/resource/ludwig/ex1.jpghttp://cs.unm.edu/~sketch/gallery/resource/ludwig/ex3.jpghttp://cs.unm.edu/~sketch/gallery/resource/ludwig/ex4.jpg
Wow! Huge thanks for this sketchy.
If you don't mind, I may add him to the next CJ. That OK with you?
Again, big thanks.
BgDM
Way to go, you guys! :D
I'm currently rendering some stuff... Once that's done I'll give this guy a test.
Oh men, this is great! Mile stone in Blender-animation-learning
Big pleasure for our community, thanks! :)
Jedrzej_s
30-Mar-06, 19:58
:o Great work !!! THX for sharing with us !!!
Thanks a ton. This will help me alot with learning animation. :D
Enriqolonius
30-Mar-06, 20:04
Cool! Can i use him too?!?!?!?
:P
Awwww, you didn't add the puff-cheeks. Oh well. You know what I think about him. I think he's awesome. Next best thing to sliced bread.
I just wanted to point out that the lipsync animation was done with an earlier version of ludwig, so the version for download has a more flexible mouth (notably in the pucker shape). ;)
Here's an animation of his face with the current version.
Razz (http://www.nathandunlap.brickfilms.com/movies/ludwigrazz.mpg) :P
I'm glad you made this character, sketchy, and I'm glad I was able to help. I learned so much just testing him.
LGM
deltawing
30-Mar-06, 23:51
Sketchy - thanks for puttin your time and skills into your posts so others can get a better understanding of animation and your approach to it :)
DarkSeraphim
31-Mar-06, 00:34
This may be a bit much to ask, but is there any chance of you doing a video tut on how you did this. Not even a tutorial really, more just watching you do it as it's done with some narration. I was completely astounded by it, and I would hope I can see it done during the process by which it is done.
Very good work, sketchy - I really like this rig, because I think it is well balanced between diversity and simplicity. Thanks for sharing!
fantastic.. it works wonderfully.. very well done!
superficially, to animate it, it is super simple, I positively LOVE the marionette interfaces for facial expressions and hand gestures.. with that said, underneath in the mechanics of how it works, to me anyway, it feels quite complex as there are many things I don't understand how they have been accomplished.. . I have much to study and learn from this!
thanks for letting us use ludwig and learn with it!
Wonderful. Just wonderful. Many thanks. This really is a great gift to the community!!!! Thanks, thanks, thanks!!!
:D
How is the face done? There are bones, but how can you limit how much they affect the eye, for example? It seems to stop moving it in certain point. And it doesnt have constraints, and I didnt find any actions that would be triggered by the movement of the bone...
BgDM: Thanks and you're welcome! Feel free to put Ludwig in the CJ.
Calvin: Thanks dude. Haven't talked to you in awhile. Hope things are going well for you.
Greg_pl: Milestone is maybe an exaggeration :D. Glad you like it
Jedrzej_s: You're quite welcome. Thanks for replying :)
sh33p: Cool. Best of luck in your animation learning endeavors.
Enriq: Actually, if you look closely at the license, it clearly says "Anyone may download and use this resource except for Enriq766". So sorry bro :D.
LGM: !!! I forgot to add the cheek controls!!! Bleh, they'll be there next version (you know I can't go for too long without changing something). You gotta stop being so down on your lipsync test. I think it looks great (especially considering how fast you put it together, and the fact that you didn't have full lip controls back then).
deltawing: You're welcome. I hope you can get lots of use out of it.
DarkSeraphim: Actually, that is too much to ask. Not because I'm mean or stingy or anything like that. But you have to understand that this took hours to build. It has been my experience that rigging is mostly trial and error (which doesn't translate very well to a tutorial). If you're serious about learning rigging in Blender (or any other app), my advice is to look at any rig you can get your hands on. Take them apart and study them; try to replicate them piece by piece. After awhile you will develope your own bag of tricks.
thoro: Thanks! I tried to make the rig as flexible and reusable as possible.
patrick7: I like that description: "superficially, to animate it, it is super simple ,,, with that said, underneath in the mechanics of how it works, to me anyway, it feels quite complex". I think that is an important aspect of rigging. The animator needs a simple interface, but the rigger may need to deal with alot of complexity to achieve the simplicity. The trick is then to hide the implementation as much as possible. Reminds me very much of object oriented programming in that respect.
Jerri: You're many times welcome :D.
Falgor: The facial controls are IPO drivers. These drivers drive both shapekeys and other bones. If you haven't found it yet, look at the armature that is hidden on layer 11. That will reveal alot.
By the way, I didn't say much about the low poly maquette on layer 3. It is really helpful for the ealier stages of animation, when you don't particularly want to deal with the little details yet.
Thanks everyone for you kind words!
Wow !
Thanks very much Sketchy !
Can you tell me what tools /methods you use for lip sync with this character?
I've got both the Magpie and papagayo demo programs but I'm not sure how to use either of them to 'hook into' your model ... if it's possible ?
Mike
Mike: with a little bit of effort you can use the papagayo import script. What you'd have to do is create a mesh that has vertices located at each of Lud's face controls (we'll call this the control mesh). Then vertex parent each control to its vertex in the control mesh. Now you can setup shape keys for the control mesh and the papagayo script will now work.
-----Edit-----
I tried the above and it didn't work. See my post below.
--------------
The way that LGM did his lipsync test was by manually keying everything. He's pretty good at it, and manual lipsyncing usually looks better anyway.
Ok, thanks for the idea, I'll play around with it.
Mike
This is a pretty cool contribution to the community and much appreciated. I see you had to break free from your outdated fur library. ;) I've checked it out for a few minutes and I noticed some room for improvement. I'm not saying in any way that it's not a great rig, I really appreciate being able to check out top notch work. I'm just making some observations.
There is no floor constraint on the foot. This makes it a little more complicated to control the foot for animating walkcycles. I also noticed that the foot doesn't deform properly when you pull it back, as the toes never bend. This will make for a more unrealistic walkcycle, as the character will be tiptoed during Contact and Recoil stages, or any other that require the bending of the toes for a more realistic walkcycle.
At first I was real curious as to why you did the hand setup like you did, and I see I have a few things to learn from what you setup. I really like that. I wasn't too fond of the curl controls set off to the side like that, but then I got to playing around with it a bit and found it to be extreamly easy to use.
Other then that, I really enjoy having this in my arsenal of .blend's for referance. Thanks a million, and can't wait to see the next version.
LGM: !!! I forgot to add the cheek controls!!! Bleh, they'll be there next version (you know I can't go for too long without changing something). You gotta stop being so down on your lipsync test. I think it looks great (especially considering how fast you put it together, and the fact that you didn't have full lip controls back then).
Cool! Something to look forward too. As to the lipsync, I'm just not happy with the beginning.
BrianH: Floor constraints on the feet bring in other problems. You lose some freedom. Too much automation can be a bad thing. Besides. I can't imagine that adding a floor constraint could be too hard. As for the toes, they do bend. Use the heelrotation bone for walk cycles. It's so much faster. And one can manually bend the toes for any other position. Besides, when animating a walk cycle, for the most part one does the contact point first. So just slide the Foot_Root bone forwards or backwards on its local z-axis, then rotate the Ball_Heel_Rotation bone on it's local x-axis and you're great!
I was making a walkcycle tutorial for Ludwig, then thought maybe no one needs it. But maybe I should go ahead with it.
This rig may have some problems (lack of cheek bones being the only one I can find), but those are definately not some of them. Did you watch the example animations done with Ludwig? Did you see any "tiptoes" in the walks? Nope.
LGM
Enriqolonius
03-Apr-06, 00:10
If I can ask for one small thing.
A way to make his lips whistle or make it look like he is blowing. Like if you were saying the word "too"
Sketchy, LGM..I am using ludwig to learn the basics of animation. Thanks for making him so cool. I ordered a book called "Animatiors Survival Guide", I am waiting for the book store to get it in. I already made a crappy animation with ludwig. Made me laugh, then I deleted it. hehe. I hope to be able to get some simple back ground characters rigged for the coffee shop.
I have been using ludwig to learn about animation and rigging and I made an animation but it aint rendered yet its when ludwigs go bad and he has a knife and attacks the cameraman lol
Hello,
Great model! Thank you!
For lipsynchronisation: http://blenderlipsynchro.blogspot.com/
The blog is not out of date, i simply wait the 2.42 for delvier my new version of the tool!
Cheers,
Dienben
Mike: with a little bit of effort you can use the papagayo import script. What you'd have to do is create a mesh that has vertices located at each of Lud's face controls (we'll call this the control mesh). Then vertex parent each control to its vertex in the control mesh. Now you can setup shape keys for the control mesh and the papagayo script will now work.
Well, I tried this and it didn't work :(. I think the next best way of automating lipsync would be to extend the Papagayo script to be able to assemble different poses (stored as actions) in the NLA editor. Dienbien, what do you think of this idea? Is it possible?
BrianH: Thanks for the feedback. I see we share interests in more areas than just fur :D. Regarding the floor constraint; I agree with LGM. It is not necessary, and to be honest I don't really like using it. I know alot of people do, so I'm glad that blender has it, but you probably won't see it on one of my rigs (of course, as LGM will tell you, I'm prone to change my mind about features very often).
The toe suggestion is a good one though. Actually, I didn't think that the kind of setup was possible. But I was thinking about it, and it actually requires only 1 constraint to be added per foot. I'm going to play with this for awhile and see if I actually like it better, but I think that the next version will most likely have auto heal lifting added to it. But like LGM said, you already have all of the tools you need; it just requires animating 1 extra control.
LGM: Agree with you on all points (I should hope by now that we agree on all functionality issues ;)). Do continue work on your walkcycle tutorial! I think that would help alot of people get started. By the way, check out the new topic for the animation challenge. I think you'll like it.
Enriq766: You can already make a "oo" shape. Look at the control named "MouthPucker". Unfortunately to do whistling you need to be able to expand and deflate the cheeks. You are really going to enjoy animator's survival guide. It is possibly the best book ever. :D
anthony: Great! can't wait to see the animation.
dienben: Great script! Thanks for making papagayo a viable tool for blender. I hope that a solution can be found to make your script work with bones as well as shapes. Shapes alone can be limiting.
I think this .blend should be a sticky post on the forum like your static fur library. I also think BrianH's fur should be on that previous thread.
I want to thank you, sketchy, aswell.
Already had loads of fun playing with the fellah. ^^
though kinda OT: Does anyone know what hardware affects the speed of playback/realtime-feedback the most in blender? I got my Graphics card toasted a while a go and had to fall back to an old ATI. (>_<')
And noticed an annoying drop in responsiveness while modeling.
Would this also cause the slowness in animation, when the mesh layer is visible(no subdivision)? dunno.. deforming n stuff sounds more like a CPU job... since my asking.
anyway, again nice job on the rig. :)
Hello,
I think the next best way of automating lipsync would be to extend the Papagayo script to be able to assemble different poses (stored as actions) in the NLA editor. Dienbien, what do you think of this idea? Is it possible?
I thing it's a very good idea, and i will try to do it!
Next release of BlenderLipSynchro will include support for custom phonems. Basically, you could write you own phonems'set and map it with the export of Papagayo (if you use the same phonems'set in Papagayo). I will experiment your idea too.
Is anyone knows if the orange team use the script to make the lipsync for elephant dream?
Another question, and idea: Papagayo is open source and was written in Python. If we need more functionalities, we could perhaps modify it?
To finish, Just a little word, about automatisation. I think the purpose of a script like Blenderlipsynchro is to help the animator. When all the phonems are imported, the animator must modify the animation to give life.
Again, thanks for your support for blenderlipsynchro and congratulation for your character!
Cheers,
Dienben
Sketchy,
I haven't gotten to the lip-sync thing yet ... off on another tangent ;)
Is there something in this rig that would prevent it from executing *actions* in the game engine?
I just tried it, and nothing happens when I try to trigger an action.
As a test, I created a seperate armature in the same file/scene, (just two bones), and its action *does* work.
Mike
Felix_Kütt
04-Apr-06, 14:21
:o wow... wonder why it aint a sticky?!! or is it and i just didn't notice %| oh yeah and allso, sketchy, thaks alot! ;)
halley: :D actually I think that my fur thread is way overdue for becoming unstickied. But until then I should add a link to Brian's work in that thread.
the_nr: Glad you are enjoying the rig. As for your slow playback problems, could be either the graphics card or the processor or a combination of the two. But since you noticed the slowdown when you put in the ATI card, then probably the graphics card is to blame. Have you seen the low poly ludwig maquette on layer 3? Maybe you can get realtime playback with it.
dienben: Sounds great. Let me know if you need any help with testing or if you need any changes made to the rig to accomodate your script.
mstram: You seem to have a knack for finding things that my rig won't do :D. So, a couple of problems here: First of all, constraints don't work in the game engine. This is not a big deal, because you can bake them. I haven't tried it, but in theory you should be able to animate and bake body actions for the game engine. The face is a different story. It uses IPO drivers rather than constraints. I don't know if these work in the game engine, or if they are bakeable. My gut instinct tells me "probably not".
Felix_Kütt: Thanks! I don't really think this is sticky material. Hopefully blenderartists.org will have a place to collect resources such as this.
How's he skinned btw? The body mesh has no weight paints on it or envelops. There is an underlying structure that has some weight painting, but its selective, and not in the finger area or toes.
Actually the body does use envelopes. You can't see them because the skeleton is in "stick" drawing mode by default. The face uses weight painting.
slikdigit
04-Apr-06, 17:12
looks like he's using evelopes
the rig is really nice sketchy- I played with it just now, and I'm amazed at how many different solutions are there to what I normally do ( and how well it works) :) I've never done a rig so cartoony, really fun stuff.
thanks for sharing :) ,
I really like how you solved the "stretch" IK scaling in all directions... of course, it should be fixed in the constraint, but the workaround is quite fun :) I never used the stretch IK feature because of the uniform scaling, but this is a nice tip. using IK (with rot) nicely solves twist propagation in the spine too...
someday, when I feel like animating again, I gotta do something with this rig
(of course, as LGM will tell you, I'm prone to change my mind about features very often).
Especially if you nag him about it a lot. ;)
I finished the walk tutorial, and I gave it to Enriq to try out. If he can understand it . . . no wait, I already made that joke to him. If he can understand it then I'll post it. Do you want it here so that all ludwig's resources are in one spot?
LGM
Have you seen the low poly ludwig maquette on layer 3? Maybe you can get realtime playback with it.
doh! why didn't I think of that? >_< works like a charm, thx ^_^
Btw, if you drag the eye behind the head, it creates a weird zombie eye effect. The eyes twitch for some reason, and are all white. How did you rig the eyes? I noticed the fingers are action keyed.
Btw, if you drag the eye behind the head, it creates a weird zombie eye effect. The eyes twitch for some reason, and are all white. How did you rig the eyes? I noticed the fingers are action keyed.
Got driven by the cube in the midlde of the face, but also by the eye target. There is an armature for the face on layer 11 btw.
Awesome work, sketchy.
... of course, it should be fixed in the constraint...
I quote you in agreement. The stretch option for IK is nearly useless in its present state. I think I read some where that there will be a copy size constraint in the next version. I think that will also offer some interesting work arounds. But like you said, the best solution would be for IK stretch to really stretch and not scale.
I'm glad you like the rig. I learned all of the driver stuff from looking at your mancandy rig. Also, at one point Ludwig's eyelid setup was identical to Mancandy's. I eventually changed it so that LGM would quit his whining about not having an aim target for the eyes ;).
LGM: You can post it here, but I also want to put it on the official Ludwig webpage.
womball: The eyes are pretty complex. They use a tracking constraint, several copy rotations, and a couple of IPO drivers. You don't really need this much complexity, but I wanted to be able to animate the eyes using the face sliders, and LGM wanted to use a tracking target. So I comprimised. You can actually use both methods at the same time, though I don't recommend it.
Gabio: Oops! I missed you're post. I guess you wrote it while I was replying. Anyways, thanks! You are of course correct in your analysis of how the face works.
Keep in mind sketchy, I'm in school for animation. I do like complex things, if they make animation simpler. My eye setup is getting kind of old, its a real pain to append seperate objects into a scene rather than one mesh. Also using weight paints on the eyes can cause the object centers to act up. I was fighting this yesterday, but I managed to surpass it. I will have to check out layer 11.
btw sketchy did you though about IK/FK switch? from my point of view it is the only thing missing on this character.
womball: Yah, I know you like complex things (you just had to have the squash and stretch on you're fish ;)).
Gabio: It is actually pretty easy to switch from IK to FK. There are instructions on how to do it on my website and also in the blend file. Originally I had wanted to write python scripts to automate IK/FK switching, but unfortunately the Python API does not include constraints yet :(. If you know of an easier way to switch to FK then what I did, I'm all ears!
Btw, you might want to check out this thread here. http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=332411
I going to be working with quadraped rigs this weekend. In maya first, than in blender.
Justice_falls
06-Apr-06, 13:13
The constraints on this were done amazingly. Its physics are crazilly life like. I'm currently working on a 3D design course in school and Ludwig has given me a lot of good ideas.
Okay, this might be a dumb question and either I've seriously missed something or just plain forgotten it - but how have you constrained the controller bones so that they can only move in one direction? (eg. bones controlling the corners of the mouth can move only vertically).
Sketchy, eternal thanx! Great Job, and great tests by LGM too! Felt I've just started learning a whole new world.
Andy D might find this soon http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/PartIX/Driven_Shape_Keys as to some clue as to how you made Ludwig. The documentation is a bit sparse. Hope some-one soon gets the inspiration to give us all a good tut in.
Might add your IPO's go a very different direction than layed out in the documentation ?? But then I've only scratched Ludwigs surface :P
Okay, this might be a dumb question and either I've seriously missed something or just plain forgotten it - but how have you constrained the controller bones so that they can only move in one direction? (eg. bones controlling the corners of the mouth can move only vertically).
Select the bone and hit the n-key. You'll get a pop-up window inside blender with information on the bone's position. You can press the little lock button next to it's x, y, or z motion.
Glad you liked the tests, patdog. Thanks!
LGM
womball: Yah, I know you like complex things (you just had to have the squash and stretch on you're fish ;)).
Gabio: It is actually pretty easy to switch from IK to FK. There are instructions on how to do it on my website and also in the blend file. Originally I had wanted to write python scripts to automate IK/FK switching, but unfortunately the Python API does not include constraints yet :(. If you know of an easier way to switch to FK then what I did, I'm all ears!
Then you did the same thing as ZanQdo and me. The fact is it's very difficult to get seamless switch "in action". Though about a script... but the idea died.
you can easily swicth betwen FK-IF if you use the new Visual Loc/Rot/Size in Insert Key menu :D
Hello fellow blenderheads,
Ludwig is a character that I've been working on for the past several months. I originally started Ludwig when I began to get interested in lipsync. It occured to me that the Blender community does not have any free characters and rigs that are quite to the level of characters such as Generi (http://andrewsilke.com/generi_rig/generi_rig.html) (for Maya). Thus, I built Ludwig with the goal of him becoming Blender's "Generi". It is my hope that providing this character to the community will allow Blender users to compete in competitions such as the 10 Second Club (http://www.10secondclub.net/) on an equal footing with those using expensive proprietary software.
To give some credit where credit is due: Ludwig wouldn't be what he is today without the excellent feedback from LGM. He's been testing the Ludwig rig since before Ludwig could move his face ;). Also, I can't claim that everything that went into the rig was my idea. I took alot of inspiration from Nozzy's "Skinny Guy" and Slikdigit's "Mancandy".
So have fun! Lets see some animations!
Known bug: If you turn Ludwig's head or torso so that he is looking backwards, the facial controls become inverted. No big deal really, but something to be aware of.
~sketchy
The following is the official press release for Ludwig:
------------------------------------------------------------
Ludwig is a fully rigged and animation ready character for Blender. His features include IK/FK arms, stretch and squash head and spine, and a lip sync ready face controlled by a custom UI. Ludwig was created to provide the Blender community with a high-quality humanoid rig and to promote Blender as a character animation tool.
The Ludwig rig and model were created by Jason Pierce (http://cs.unm.edu/~sketch/gallery/). Extensive testing and feedback was done by Nathan Dunlap (http://nathandunlap.brickfilms.com/).
Ludwig was not designed with the beginner animator in mind. While every attempt was made to keep the controls as user-friendly as possible, functionality was put ahead of ease of use (personal preference played a role as well). That being said, someone new to animation shouldn't have much trouble getting this rig to do what they want it to do. Most of Ludwig's functions are accessible and intuitive.
Ludwig's rig may be used royalty-free for both commercial and noncommercial applications. The Ludwig character may only be used for noncommercial purposes.
Download Ludwig at http://cs.unm.edu/~sketch/gallery/resource/ludwig/ludwig.html
http://cs.unm.edu/~sketch/gallery/resource/ludwig/ludwig.jpghttp://cs.unm.edu/~sketch/gallery/resource/ludwig/ex1.jpghttp://cs.unm.edu/~sketch/gallery/resource/ludwig/ex3.jpghttp://cs.unm.edu/~sketch/gallery/resource/ludwig/ex4.jpg
You make me so happy.
this is what blender is all about.. many many thanks, I have been needing to do loads of study in rigging process, this will be a wonderful resource.
Thanks!
womball: Good luck on your rig. I'll check that thread out.
Justice_falls: Thanks! I'm glad you like it
AndyD: LGM answered your question, so I won't repeat but I will confirm that the method LGM explained is indeed what I did.
patdog: You're welcome. You make an interesting comment about how I deviate from the documentation. I think alot of people think that IPO drivers are only useful for driving shape keys, but in fact they are much more generalized and powerful than that.
ZanQdo: I don't quite follow. Are you talking about a different method for FK/IK switching, or are you talking about how to get a nice transition between IK and FK using the method that Ludwig already uses? Or am I completely lost (this is the most likely option :D)?
Streen: Thanks!
LohnC: You're welcome. I hope you get alot of use out of my rig.
All right, I just finished a lengthy, image-intensive tutorial for animating a walk using ludwig. It is actually a more advanced introduction to animating that uses a walk as an example of animation, rather than just a walk-tutorial. To copy the first few paragraphs:
1. There are many ways to animate, and consequently many ways to animate a walk. This is a way that I have found works very well and results in nice animation.
2. This isn't a walk-cycle tutorial. It's how to animate a character walking from point A to point B without cyclic animation or the NLA editor. I have found this to be the easiest way to animate a character walking. It involves a lot more duplicating, but it's easier to have the character react to his surroundings and to keep his feet solid without any sliding.
3. This tutorial assumes a basic knowledge of and a familiarity with Blender. There are some really basic commands which I have put in, while I assume you know how to do the others.
The web version is divided into six pages (since there are around 65 images).
There is also a 10 meg zipfile that includes all the images and a single HTML document form of the tutorial. Sketchy is working on making a PDF which will considerable lower the size of the tutorial, but until then we have these:
Learning to Walk - Web Version (http://www.nathandunlap.brickfilms.com/tutorials/wt01.html)
Learning to Walk - zip file (http://www.nathandunlap.brickfilms.com/tutorials/Learning_to_Walk.zip)
Thanks to sketchy for pointing out the problems, providing ludwig, etc, etc.;)
LGM
hey, sketchy, I´m just talking about the new "Visual" keyframe option, it keyframes actual position and rotation of a bone or object, no matter if they are were they are becouse of constraits or parenting! so you can keyframe all the chain bones and the IK target in the last IK keyframe (using visual), make an FK animation in the next 20 frames and then set another key for staring a new IK section
Gabio, if this "Visual" thingy is available trough python api maybe you can do the IK-FK swicth now? :D
btw sketchy thanks for that awesome rig :o
LGM: Great tutorial! I added links to it in the first post.
ZanQdo: Thanks for the info. After a little searching I found that this is a new feature in the CVS (which explains why I haven't seen it before). Sounds like an interesting feature. I'm not quite sure how this will aid IK switching (other than helping to make a smooth transition). I guess I need to play with it myself and see what all it will do.
Just finished going through the tutorial. Great stuff LGM! Really felt I learned something today. Small typo about duplicating keyframe. "So, delete the new key for Foot_Root.R on frame 11, and duplicate the old keyframe by selecting it and hitting ctrl+D." It should of-course be - shft + D. But we all knew that ;) Looking forward to one on Lipsync now :P
p.s. to anyone following the official documentation - "Global" with Strg L->To scene... ->Global. And 30 mins later finding out Strg is Ctrl on a German keyboard....
Sorry LGM, you made a typo with walk tutorial. Images don't show up in FireFox nor Konqueror. In your walktut folder all Images are in upper case, while in the LGMwalktut.html they are in lower case.
From what I can see so far the Ludwig blend file looks very interesting. At first glance hand and feet rig set up look a lot like Master Lyubomir's rig set up, but on closer inspection very different. Nice work! :D Thanks for sharing.
Sorry LGM, you made a typo with walk tutorial. Images don't show up in FireFox nor Konqueror. In your walktut folder all Images are in upper case, while in the LGMwalktut.html they are in lower case.
Downloaded Zip and that certainly is not the case. Unpacked and watch in Firefox = no problem. Images in folder in lowercase....
Just finished going through the tutorial. Great stuff LGM! Really felt I learned something today. Small typo about duplicating keyframe. "So, delete the new key for Foot_Root.R on frame 11, and duplicate the old keyframe by selecting it and hitting ctrl+D." It should of-course be - shft + D. But we all knew that ;) Looking forward to one on Lipsync now :P
Glad you liked it and learned from it! Well, I knew there'd be at least one typo, at first I was happy that it was only that, but then ozo posted. Ozo, you do have to unzip the file for the images to show up, I forgot to mention that. But also, my fault, in my flurry of setting up the zip I put the wrong html file in. The links have been updated, and the typos are fixed. Everyone should be happy. ;)
A lipsync tutorial? I'll have to think about that. It wouldn't take long to make or follow. I suppose we could make a whole army of tutorials for ludwig.
LGM
Select the bone and hit the n-key. You'll get a pop-up window inside blender with information on the bone's position. You can press the little lock button next to it's x, y, or z motion.
Thank LGM (and sketchy for confirming). I gathered I was missing something simple but after looking for pose constraints, action constraints and messing with driven keys, I gave up and had to ask :)
maccam912
10-Apr-06, 17:14
Love the whole guy! Better than this model
http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=58969&highlight=emotions
easier to pose! This is how the guy feels, now that I have my hands on him!
Super Wu-Man
10-Apr-06, 22:26
hey nice stuff man!
this kind of stuff is a huge help.
i remember being a young blender user and with this kind of stuff i was able to become the super-human, master-animator, deluxe-modeler, erotic-karate-flexing, brilliant-texture-creator, that i am today......and i owe it all to the greats that showed me how to be...........great...........and you knew it!
so thanks!
Love the whole guy! Better than this model
http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=58969&highlight=emotions
easier to pose! This is how the guy feels, now that I have my hands on him!
If so, do you remember the forum/topic for that post (since the links don't work right now .... from the new forum install.
Mike
AndyD: I too was quite suprised to find how easy it was to lock movements on certain axises. I finally stumbled onto it while looking at someone else's rig. Very cool feature. Maybe not very well publicized.
maccam912: Lol! nice pose. Actually, I referred to Bassam's Mancandy rig quite a bit while working on ludwig.
mstram: I don't remember the title of the post, but it was in the news and chat forum. Hope that helps.
Sketchy,
Is there an easy way to resize Ludwig?
I tried resizing the 'root' bone in the ludwigArmature which sorta worked, except the torso-root-foot IK operation doesn't quite work right (moving the torso down to a certain point causes the feet to start moving up).
Resizing the 'faceroot' bone just messes up the face.
Mike
this is the best and most detailed tutorial i have ever seen.... i ..i... i think i'm crying. great work
Is there an easy way to resize Ludwig?
Just resize the armature in object mode :)
Just resize the armature in object mode :)
Duh ! .... thx.
Mike
I know you said writing a tutorial is trial and error and it would be too complex to write one about rigging a charactor, but I have no idea where to begin in trying to even disect your rig! Can anyone direct my attention to any great tutorials explaining all of the principals used in rigging this character? How do you create such complex relationships between the bones? And the face animation controls are amazing!
i think i am having too much fun
Having trouble deleting duplicate message. Sorry for wasted space.
I used 'Ludwig' model & armature for the Elysiun animation contest . . . thanks SKETCHY!
http://sfsierrasingles.8m.net/WtLift.jpg
You may need to right click and download this file if the site says "Forbidden".
It may also work if you copy and paste the link yourself, instead of clicking on the link directly.
http://sfsierrasingles.8m.net/WtLift.avi
Thanks,
__________________
Madness takes its toll.
Pam ;-)
thats truely genius, any chance of a look into how u actualy created the rig? :)
Thank you very much for your efford. Ludwig is amazing!! :)
Sketchy,
I'm trying to use 4 ludwigs in a scene. I can get the body armatures to have separate actions, but the faces all move when I add actions to one. I tried making them single users and also making their actions single users, and also changing an action to an NLA strip. Still they all want to move their faces in unison.
Any suggestions appreciated.
I'm trying to use 4 ludwigs in a scene. I can get the body armatures to have separate actions
When I used multiple Ludwigs, I appended him each time from Sketchy's original file into my new blend file.
Using File....Append
selecting the object folder in the Ludwig.blend file
and selecting the following objects:-
BodyMaquette
Eye.L
eye.R
Facecontrol
FaceMaquette
Ludwig
Ludwig_Face
LudwigArmature
This gave me 3 completely seperate Ludwig Armatures and 3 seperate faceMaquettes.
I didn't seem to have any problems. How did you duplicate yours?
here you go:
http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/9180/ludwigbad4oy.th.jpg (http://img175.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ludwigbad4oy.jpg)
Yay I learnt a lesson from this:D but most is to complex. Have the Root Bone Seperate from the actual bones that control the body. What's a good sit I can upload an animation? Anyone have some space I can use to host my movie for a while because I hate free Hosts Filled with so many popups and ads and I am guessing you guys do too:rolleyes:
Many thanks for this rig Sketchy, and for the tut LGM. I'm using Ludwig for a lipsync test here (http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=65553)and so far it's been great - very easy to use. I know one of the aims of this rig is to provide a character similar to 'generi' for Maya - to use in places like the 'ten second club', which is exactly what I'd like to do. So thanks again!!
When I used multiple Ludwigs, I appended him each time from Sketchy's original file into my new blend file.
Using File....Append
selecting the object folder in the Ludwig.blend file
and selecting the following objects:-
BodyMaquette
Eye.L
eye.R
Facecontrol
FaceMaquette
Ludwig
Ludwig_Face
LudwigArmature
This gave me 3 completely seperate Ludwig Armatures and 3 seperate faceMaquettes.
I didn't seem to have any problems. How did you duplicate yours?
Works for me too, doing the same thing ... the 'BodyMaquette' doesn't seem to be necessary if you just want to animate using the 'mesh'.
Mike
This is excellent!
I'm trying to follow the tutorial, but I seem to be stuck. Maybe I'm just having momentary brain failure here.
From the text on page 2
Whoa! He's starting to walk. A little. Now all you have to do is press the up-arrow key again so we're now on frame 21, and duplicate the orginal keyframes, and move them to frame 21. Easy. Waaiiiit, he's all weird again.
Am I copying keyframes from frame 1 to paste in frame 21? Because he's not just all weird again, that just puts ludwig back at his origin, given all keyframes are locrot..
Heh, calling me on my flippant writing style are you? Yes, you are copying all the keyframes from frame 1 to frame 21. By "all weird" I meant what happens when you play back the animation. He slides backwards and is "all weird." ;)
I hope that helps.
LGM
(3 hour turn-around help time! How's that for service?)
Excellent! Thanks for the quick response. :)
Thread kinda went away...but I am still playing with Ludwig!
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y246/Streen/ludwiglove.jpg
its the best rigg i have ever seen! i wish i could do that... doying any video turtorials??
Sketchy,
How is the rig setup so as to keep the feet on the floor .... and that the feet don't move when the torso bone is moved down towards the floor?
I was looking for a 'floor' constraint in the rig, but didn't see one.
Mike
nokirar: Thanks! I don't have any plans to make any tutorials right now, video or otherwise. I barely have any time for blender as it is :(
mstram: Its just IK, nothing fancy. You won't find the floor constraint on any of my rigs. It is kinda cool, but I find it a bit limiting and not really necessary.
Its just IK, nothing fancy. You won't find the floor constraint on any of my rigs. It is kinda cool, but I find it a bit limiting and not really necessary.
I guess it's "nothing fancy" once you've done it a couple hundred (thousand?) times :)
How do you decide whether or not to use the 'connected' option with a bone?
Mike
bugman_2000
27-May-06, 21:33
Apologies if this has been answered before. I'm trying to look more closely at the rigging of Ludwig, but I can't figure out how to see the weight painting on the Ludwig mesh. I can see it on the low poly maquette, but I can't see anything but blue on Ludwig, no matter which bones I select.
Also, the X-Ray view of the bones is behaving strangely, and I'm not seeing the bones fully, even in X-Ray view... I suspect that this is connected to the weight painting question, but I can't figure out what's going on.
Lastly, how can I unhide bones in pose mode which are currently hidden? I don't know how to select them without seeing them.
Thanks very much.
mstram- mostly I decide whether or not something should be connected simply based on what looks nicer at the time. I think alot of it is just intuition that comes with practice.
bugman- You can't see the weight painting because he uses envelopes. That will most likely not be the case with the next version. I don't know what to tell you about X-ray... it works fine for me. To unhide bones, press alt-h in pose mode. If you are just animating with Lud, you don't need to unhide the bones; I've given you access to everything you need. Only unhide bones if you're trying to figure out how the rig works.
bugman_2000
28-May-06, 02:45
Hi, thanks for the reply. I thought he was using envelopes... well, I mean, I can see the envelopes (and your comments about rigging a new mesh suggested that it was envelopes), but... In the "editing options" for the rig, in pose mode, I see "vertex groups" and not armatures pressed... I guess I'm looking at the wrong thing, but I'm a little confused.
As for the X-Ray, I seem to have that working. Seems I needed to select it in object mode, not just in the other modes.
I think the hiding bones for posing is a great feature I hadn't noticed before, by the way, but yes, in this case I am trying to figure out how it works, and also to rig another mesh to it (it remains to be seen whether I'll be able to get this mesh entirely rigged with envelopes only... but your example of envelope use has been very useful).
I have another question, though, about these doubled-up bones in his spine... For example "SpineStretch.003" and "Spine.3" What's the story with them? Maybe the name should be a hint. But it's not clear why these bones are occupying the same position... One's a deform bone and the other isn't... kind of mysterious to me.
T
I think the hiding bones for posing is a great feature I hadn't noticed before, by the way, but yes, in this case I am trying to figure out how it works, and also to rig another mesh to it (it remains to be seen whether I'll be able to get this mesh entirely rigged with envelopes only... but your example of envelope use has been very useful).
If you're using 2.41, you can only "unhide" bones all at once AFAIK (Alt-h).
With CVS you have much more control using "armature layers".
...As far as being more "stable", IMO, CVS is going to be generally more stable than 2.41 with all the bug fixes that are made daily.
In the "editing options" for the rig, in pose mode, I see "vertex groups" and not armatures pressed... I guess I'm looking at the wrong thing, but I'm a little confused.
I'm not sure how that works either, but the "tool tip" says "not for modifiers", so I assume those options are for the "old way" of parenting the mesh directly to the armature ??
Mike
bugman_2000
29-May-06, 03:44
Hi,
Thanks for the replies.
I have yet another question. I'm very confused about the Spread action constraint. I can see that it works right, but the "Min" and "Max" values have me baffled. The Curl action constraint I get. But if you take for example the left index finger... The Spread action constraint lists "Min:45" and "Max:100". But when I actually rotate that control bone along the Z axis with the tranform properties window open to see the values, I get what looks like a range of about -45 to 10 corresponding to the 1 and 21 frames in the action. Where does the 45 and the 100 come from?
T
Hi, thanks for the reply. I thought he was using envelopes... well, I mean, I can see the envelopes (and your comments about rigging a new mesh suggested that it was envelopes), but... In the "editing options" for the rig, in pose mode, I see "vertex groups" and not armatures pressed... I guess I'm looking at the wrong thing, but I'm a little confused.
Ludwig has 2 armatures: 1 for the body, and 1 for the face. The body uses envelopes and the face uses vertex groups. I'm guessing you're looking at the face armature.
I have another question, though, about these doubled-up bones in his spine... For example "SpineStretch.003" and "Spine.3" What's the story with them? Maybe the name should be a hint. But it's not clear why these bones are occupying the same position... One's a deform bone and the other isn't... kind of mysterious to me.
As you guessed, one set of bones if for deforming and the other is structural. The bones labeled SpineStretch.00x are used to deform the mesh. They have a stretch-to constraint on them, which is what maintain's Lud's volume as he is stretched and squashed. The other set of spine bones is the actual IK chain. This dual bone setup is necessary because stretchy IK won't maintain volume (it simply scales on all 3 axises.)
Where does the 45 and the 100 come from?
To be honest I haven't been able to figure that one out myself. In some axises, it behaves like you'd expect, but in others the behavior seems arbitrary. In this particular case I just used trial-and-error until I got the results I was after. If you can't get the results you want, consider using a driven IPO instead.
Enriqolonius
29-May-06, 22:30
I barely have any time for blender as it is :(
Aint that the truth....:D:D:D:D:D
bugman_2000
03-Jun-06, 02:20
Hi,
I have another question about the drivers. I am rigging a new mesh to the armature and it's going well, but the eyebrows have decided to behave differently for some reason, so I'm trying to reconstruct the drivers from scratch. In order to do this, I'm trying to figure out what's going on in the original Ludwig and I've gotten a bit confused. It seems that the BrowPosition driver bone is driving the LocY and LocX IPOs, but the actual resulting driven motion is along the LocZ axis. Am I missing something? What's going on with this?
Thanks,
T
Aint that the truth...
Ugh... don't remind me. I don't think I got even a full hour of blender in this week :(. working full-time sucks. maybe I'll go back to school :D.
bugman: You got me dude! I don't remember why I set it up that way. I think they are moving along the local X and local Y axises, which results in a behavior that looks like moving in the global Z. Does that make sense?
bugman_2000
03-Jun-06, 02:47
bugman: You got me dude! I don't remember why I set it up that way. I think they are moving along the local X and local Y axises, which results in a behavior that looks like moving in the global Z. Does that make sense?
Yeah... maybe somehow my bones got rotated at some point. This makes sense. Thanks for the replies by the way. Sorry to be such a pain in the neck with all these little questions. It's a really nice rig.
<edit>
I hate realizing I asked a dumb question five minutes after somebody's told me the answer. Global Z. Duh.
Hey all, I've been asked a couple of times for the original blend file of this animation I did, and since it was only possible in the first place due to the kind donation of the model, I couldn't possibly say no..
here (http://www.filelime.com/cgi-bin/filechucker.cgi?action=uploadcomplete&serial=1d7809f5df80dfc875ed597befa7071768dcabb9&numfiles=1&elapsedsecs=9&totalsize=1245762&somefileswereblocked=&f1name=project_-_ludwig_talk.rar&f1urlpath=%2f&f1size=1245274&) is the blend file, hope it's of use.
Hi, I´m a sub-newbie and I have downloaded Ludwig and started investigating its parameters. I should be happy enough for having such a great rigged character to play with (I made mine following BSOD: Introduction...) but I´ve GOT to know how it works (this is Blenderartists, isn´t). The fact is that I can´t find a relationship between (i.e.) facecontrol´s bones and face_arm bones; I mean, ok, I move EyesDirection and both left and right eyes´ bones rotate upside down but, which ones exactly?: I can´t find parenting or constraining among them. I´ve searched the forums for a response (I always do that before posting, of course ) but I couldn´t find it. Sorry If I reopen this thread since...uh...03-Sep-07. Thanks in advance.
EDIT: Maybe my question is too noob but, any clue?
The ludwig "fac-deform" armature (ludwig_face) as well as the facial shape keys are linked to the "control-armature" (FaceControl), via "IPO drivers".
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/PartIX/Driven_Shape_Keys
E.g. select the Ludwig_face - Eye.L bone, then open an IPO window, change to Pose curves, and open the transform properties box ("N")
For the facial keys, select the ludwig mesh, open an IPO window, and change to Shape curves, then select one of the channels, and open the transform properties box
Thanks for replying, Mike_S. (It seems mine was a stupid question after all :( ) I´ve got to be more learned on all aspects of animation via Blender´s documentation before asking...
This rig is incredible. I appreciate the effort put into it.
I really want to use it, but I need to replace the mesh. And I don't have a clue how to do that safely. I see the body uses envelopes but I'm not sure what is essential and what is not. I'm a real newbie at character rigs. I'm also afraid that if I move anything in edit to match the dimensions of another mesh, the rig will no longer work. Bones (plus contraints) are not my friend, based on previous mechanical rigs I've built.
Anybody got a few words on how to put this into an arbitrary human mesh? Taller, longer arms. Different posture. If I can get this done, I need a low polly human for a commercial animation and I'm very willing to make the rig and character available to anyone else as a contribution to pay back the effort. I can't find any suitable human characters (blend) ready to be animated on the Internet. All of them are cartoons and I need somewhat "real" humans even if at low polly.
Here are my concerns, maybe not all the ones I should have:
1) Changing body proportions without screwing up the rig's behavior. What is possible, what is dangerous.
2) Using vertex groups AND envelopes on a new body mesh => not sure which bones actually have mesh assigned to them and which are control bones.
3) Do I have to use IPO drivers? Can the main body run off constaints only?
Maybe a less complex rig would be better, but if this really nice rig can actually be transplanted, I'd like to do that.
Thanks,
John
bugman_2000
18-Jun-08, 19:39
I really want to use it, but I need to replace the mesh. And I don't have a clue how to do that safely.
If you don't mind rebuilding the rig from scratch, you can read about how I did it in the book in my signature. The armature I used for the Captain Blender character is based on Ludwig, with a few modifications.
If you want to use the rig as is, that's possible too, but it's not necessarily trivial. You can adjust the sizes of bones in edit mode, but some care needs to be taken to recalculate the stretch bones (at least, that's one thing that occurs to me off the top of my head). Depending on the shape of your mesh, envelopes might not be suitable and some extra shape keys may be warranted to fix deformations (that's all covered in the book). You will of course need to make you own shape keys on your own mesh regardless, but the Ludwig set of shape keys is a good guideline to know which shape keys you want to build.
Here are my concerns, maybe not all the ones I should have:
1) Changing body proportions without screwing up the rig's behavior. What is possible, what is dangerous.
2) Using vertex groups AND envelopes on a new body mesh => not sure which bones actually have mesh assigned to them and which are control bones.
3) Do I have to use IPO drivers? Can the main body run off constaints only?
Maybe a less complex rig would be better, but if this really nice rig can actually be transplanted, I'd like to do that.
Thanks,
John
Since you mentioned a "realistic" look, do you really need the "stretchy" bones of this rig ? If not, you could disable / delete them, and keep the "standard" ones.
After doing that, you should be able to scale, position the "normal" bones without any problem.
I haven't done a lot of rigging, but the little I've done, I've had more success with vertex groups / weight painting, than with envelopes, your mileage may vary :) And now there is the new "bone heat" binding that gives you a head start with vertex groups.
How "realistic" a character do you need?
Calvin's "AJ", is somewhat cartoony but more realistic than Ludwig / Mancandy (see attached pics).
thelowlander
19-Jun-08, 02:53
For me, weight painting/vertex groups works way better and more reliable than envelopes. The bone heat you keep hearing about (i haven't really dug into that one yet [shame]) I thought kind of automates the weight painting, it evenly distributes the weight between the bones available, without doing stuff like assigning parts of the arm to a bone that controls the spine for instance.
Now for your points:
1. What is possible:
you can change, reposition etc every bone. And if you have constraints there is a big chance you may need to reset something, be it the length of constraints such as "limit distance" and the "stretch to". These two constraints also make it harder to have the ability to have one master bone, and scale the entire character up or down in pose mode. Because those values are set and they don't appear to be local. (Anyone correct me if I am wrong)
Other constraints you may need to look at for are copy and/or limit loc/rot/scale constraints. They were put there with specific values to add certain functionality, so if you move some bones out of context, their values may no longer have any use in the adjusted rig. I suppose that's also true for an action modifier, but I'm not certain since I never used that one. Ludwig does use it though, in the feet for instance.
Another thing to keep in mind is that changing bones will change the roll of the bones, so you may have to reset them for certain bones, again most likely if constrained bones depend on it, like the IK/trackto/locked track constraints. You can recalculate the (average) roll by selecting a number of bone you want to reset the roll for, and press ctrl+n, as in 2.46, you can choose two options. z axis up, or ?average? You can also set the roll for a bone manually in the transform property window/popup (press N in 3d view) which is what I tend to do in things like arms and legs.
2. You can use both envelopes and vertex groups. I think you mean it in the context of which bones drive a mesh by using vertex groups. There's an easy way to find out. Just select the mesh, and look through it's vertex groups. In the editing button panel (F9) it's a dropdown list in the link and materials panel. If you want to know which objects are used to display as control bones, go into pose mode, and in the armature bones tab, there is a field with OB (short for object) in it. Look at the name of the object that is filled in there.
Voila.
3.You don't have to use ipo drivers at all. They are usefull to create sliders and such to toggle the strength (value) of certain constraints. A typical example would be to switch IK constraints on and off, to achieve an FK/IK switch. Or in case you are using shapekeys, to have the movement of a bone control the value of a shape, like for instance in the face area. My Little_fellaX rig for instance uses IPO driven shapekeys for the face.
Non of these things are showstoppers if you want to use a pre-existing rig and readjust it, so long as you remember to check all of these things and
play with their values to get it to work as you expect it to.
ps. Take caution when using shapekeys, they are buggy as hell to organise them in the action window, and it kinda means you "lock" the mesh, as is making changes in the mesh like adding or removing geometry may (and likely will if it's in the area where the shapekey is supposed to change the shape) bork up the other shapekeys you have set. There are plenty of ways to get better deformation without using them, thus allowing you to keep changing your mesh as you see fit, or even replace the mesh altogether without worrying about lost shapekeys. Use extra (stretchy) bones for deformation, or a lowpoly cage or a bunch of lattices etc.
Wow, I really appreciate you guys taking the time.
bugman_2000, thanks, I'll see if I can simplify it and still be usable.
Mike_S, this is for a legal animation so it needs to not look cartoony. Calvin is great, but I think that is a bit too much for this one. No Steatchy bones needed either. But simple features are fine and I'll look into that bone heat.
FreakyDude, Thanks for the details man. That is the sort of thing I need. Yeah, bone roll is the thing that screws me up the most. The app I came from had a roll handle sticking out of every bone and that made it obvious if a bone was rolled wrong. Here, it's like a surpise party everytime I try to make bones work. Pain is a great teacher. I assume I want to keep the roll the same before and after I change bone size or position. I'm afraid of the complexity because it's almost impossible to recover once I wreck a rig. I probably better back off and try a more simple rig. Will see how far I get :-)
Thanks again,
John
Thanks!!! This is a nice Rig!!! Now i can realy learn how to rig face!!! Thank you !!!
thelowlander
01-Jul-08, 06:29
he app I came from had a roll handle sticking out of every bone and that made it obvious if a bone was rolled wrong. Here, it's like a surpise party everytime I try to make bones work. Pain is a great teacher. I assume I want to keep the roll the same before and after I change bone size or position. I'm afraid of the complexity because it's almost impossible to recover once I wreck a rig. I probably better back off and try a more simple rig. Will see how far I get :-)
John
Second best thing to that, you can enable the axes so the bones display with their axes showing, which should also tell you where the poles are oriented. And if you have octahedron as the drawtype for bones, that's also easier to orient.
The ludwig "fac-deform" armature (ludwig_face) as well as the facial shape keys are linked to the "control-armature" (FaceControl), via "IPO drivers".
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/PartIX/Driven_Shape_Keys
E.g. select the Ludwig_face - Eye.L bone, then open an IPO window, change to Pose curves, and open the transform properties box ("N")
For the facial keys, select the ludwig mesh, open an IPO window, and change to Shape curves, then select one of the channels, and open the transform properties box
Sweet link, thx Mike_S
afro.thunda
14-Jul-09, 02:54
very nice i can nevr get the walk cycle
brent_reel
26-Apr-10, 22:48
wow this is great and so easy to learn from. all i no about animation is keyframes and im already able to make him walk, jump, give peace signs and etc! amazing and thx so much for ludwig!
kill4metal
23-May-10, 14:37
Just finished going through the tutorial. Great stuff LGM! Really felt I learned something today. Small typo about duplicating keyframe. "So, delete the new key for Foot_Root.R on frame 11, and duplicate the old keyframe by selecting it and hitting ctrl+D." It should of-course be - shft + D. But we all knew that ;) Looking forward to one on Lipsync now :P
p.s. to anyone following the official documentation - "Global" with Strg L->To scene... ->Global. And 30 mins later finding out Strg is Ctrl on a German keyboard....
what is the technique for making a maquette object for your characters?
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