Rigify problems

Hi guys Merry Christmas
As i have said i am new to blender so forgive my stupidity.

DanPro as been helping me out a lot and i decided to start practicing on a base mesh model that i edited to get the shape i wanted. I have been practicing with the rigify add on and positioned it a little but when i clicked the generate button the new rigify rig comes in as the original size before i resized it to fit my mesh. Have i missed something or have i done something wrong to make it come in too small, all my tutorials dont say anything about resizing the new rig. The videos i am using the new rig comes in at the right size.

Many thanks

You may have a scale problem. Check to make sure your model has had scale applied so the scale factors are all 1.000.

After I add the metarig to the scene, I generally scale my character model to fit the size of the metarig before entering edit mode. This gives me a good indication of the models real size. Like Orinoco suggested, you then apply the scale to the mesh. (CTRL-A will give you the menu. Or Look for the Objects menu/Apply. I also apply the location and rotation for good measure.)

Then select the metarig and enter edit mode. Adjust your bones to fit the mesh. Here is a link to a good rigify tut.

Pay special attention to the bone rolls. Fingers are especially finicky. When I am doing quick tests, I often delete the finger bones and just use the main hand to control all of hand, palm and fingers.

DanPro your a superstar. I have been looking at a character build on youtube from David Ward who creates a Tim Burton style character from scratch. To be perfectly honest his tutorials are pretty brilliant and really detailed but was wondering if i really need to be so detailed on my model. He talks about the shape keys to create phonemes and then seems to change his tune by creating pose librarys which seem to me to be a duplication of the shape keys. I am unsure wether to go all out with my model straight up and put all the detail he uses and then learn to animte as he shows in his lessons or start off with a basic model and do what i can to animate and see where i go. What do you suggest. I dont want to get so bogged down that i lose my focus which is to create a model i can use, that looks like a cartoon avatar of myself that my grandson will recognise but i do admit this Tim Burton character is pretty amazing even though I think I am losing my way by trying to follow the instruction using a model that doesnt match the original ideas.

I think this post is not really asking for help but advise on my direction, if you see what i mean.

I value your input more than you could imagine and think it is nice to have someone to confide in. My character seems a little messy and seems to be difficult to be able to move in the future and although this is my third attempt from scratch to re model I dont mind starting again if need be to get it right.

Many thanks

Woody

Definitely start with a simple character. Trying to be perfect and complex will only slow you down, IMHO.

Just think what Jim Henson was able to do with simple puppets. He only had open or closed for mouth shapes, yet he was great at giving a good performance. You can do the same with your “beginner” model and rig.

David Ward also has some tutorials on CGCookie.com. ( I think you would enjoy his advanced face rig and alien tuts.) I believe most of his are free to watch, but I would recommend a membership there. I certainly have gotten my moneys worth from that site. If that’s out of the budget, it’s no big deal. They have a lot of free tuts that will help get you started.

The most important thing is just to try. When I get stuck, I usually come to these forums for a nudge in the right direction.

Thanks for the compliment. I am just trying to pay it forward. I have received a lot of help from the folks here.

Good Luck!

Shape keys can give you very sophisticated lip sync. For simple, cartoon style animation, all you really need is mouth open and closed, along with mouth wide and narrow. Facial animation is an advanced topic. You can go very far with just eye movements, simple eyebrow movements, and simple mouth movements. Unless you are intent on creating a talking head, focus on just animating the body and the eyes. You’ll be surprised how expressive that can be.

Great advice yet again. Thanks guys and Happy New Year

Right… I have been playing about with rigify to help me with my rig. I have ‘dumbed’ down my model a little and have rigified my model but its not reacting the way the tutorials say it should.

I rigified it and some controller bones come up but are small so i scaled them up. But underneath them is another set that dont select when i rescaled it and so stays small between his legs. Neither of them control anything as expected but even when ive skinned it they dont do anything. In the tutorials the widgets etc are under one item in the properties menu but in mine they are just a massive list of controller widgets etc. I dont know if that would make a difference. I am using Blender 2.72 not the tutorials 2.6 version and dont know if that is the reason they are different or wether its a bug. But the final conclusion is that the rigify doesnt work the way i was expecting it too and the controllers dont work.

Am i missing something?

Yes, some screen shots or a blend file to help explain what problem you are having. :slight_smile:

I agree a blend file would help. I am going to guess that the reason the bones do not move is you are trying to move controls that are not “On”. You have two choices on how you want rigify to move your deformation bones. IK (Inverse Kinematics) or FK (Forward Kinematics). I’ll explain the difference in you have not heard those terms.

In the N panel (hotkey N in the 3d view), you should have two menus, Rig Layers and Rig Main Properties. Rig Layers will turn controllers on or off, Rig Main Properties will give you options based on the bone you have selected. For example, if you have the IK foot bone selected, you should see a FK/IK slider. (Plus several more.) Sliding it to 0 will put your leg into FK, and 1 will be IK. You will then need to use the correct foot controller to bone your mesh.

If you hit the hotkey A to select all of your bones, you will see a ton of options available for all bones in the rig. Most should be self explainatory, but don’t be afraid to ask if you need more info on what an option does.

I’ll give you a hint on one. If you see an option to isolate rotation, turn it on. It’s a great feature and will really help you in your animations.

I have tried to add the file to upload it to you at the exact point at which i am having the problem but it seems to fail at the last moment. would i be able to send it to you as IM. not sure how but i can give it a go

nah cant send it via IM perhaps i could email it to you

Use pasteall.org. there is a special tab for uploading blend files.

Upload and paste the link for us.

This is the http for the download hope it works…an dont laugh at my attempt LOL

http://www.pasteall.org/blend/33623

Having a look now. I’ll be back in an hour or so. Your model looks great. There are a few topology issues, but nothing major.

Having a few issues of my own. The rig arms want to rotate out of alignment after generating the rig. I just DL’ed 2.72b. I’ll see if that was the issue.

thanks for the time and help bud! I noticed it too plus i also pulled it to pieces and noticed there was two sets of controllers, dont know if you noticed that. DOnt nknow where you are from but I am in England and its after midnight here. I have added you as a friend, hope you dont mind. Will take a look at it first thing in morning so dont knock yourself out or anything, im sure you are busy doing other things.

Thanks again for everything

I think the main problem had something to do with scale, but it was not showing up as not applied. Anyhoo…

I deleted your metarig and rig because I suspected something was odd with that. When I added a new metarig to the scene, I noticed your meshes were still quite large. I scaled them and applied the Loc,Rot,and Scale to be sure everything was fine.

I positioned the bones, generated the rig and had no issues. I was able to parent with Automatic Weights and had good results. I did do some minor weight painting cleanup, but it’s far from perfect.

The clothes, on the other hand, gave me fits. The exception was the pants. I copied the weights from the body mesh to the pants and they worked perfectly. (with a little poke though.) I had to paint the other shirts by hand to get them to work.

Your basemesh is on layer one with the rig on the layer below it. You can change out clothing by shift clicking the next two layers for the ones of your choice.

I added two mask modifiers and two vertex groups to your basemesh for switching clothing. Turn the eye icons on/off for either set to hide the body mesh below the clothing. (Look under the wrench icon, modifiers with your basemesh selected.) This will keep your body mesh from poking through as it hides the vertices under the cloth.

That’s the good news. Here is the bad. You may want to redo your main body mesh. It’s very dense in the center and that will complicate weight painting and shapekey making. Also, you should research face topology. Putting proper loops of faces around the eyes, mouth, lips and laugh lines will greatly help your deformations down the road, especially when it comes to making you facial rig.

http://www.pasteall.org/blend/33628

Have fun!

That was brilliant advice. Thank you so much. I am following your instructions as we speak and will keep you advised of my progress. Deleted some faces on the bodymesh and now looking up about masks and facial topology to adjust the face. thanks again for your time. I will learn so much from your advice.

Hi DanPro.

Restarted my model again with new topology and new rig etc as you suggested. I did cheat a little with a free download for my base mesh called MakeHuman. Its seems to be pretty useful and imports directly into blender. You may find it useful (http://www.makehuman.org/) take a look, its pretty good.

Now I have used masks to stop poke through on certain sections and am trying all my rotations etc but am having problems with seeing the finger control bones. When i go into edit mode to resize them they disappear so i cant resize them. Any Ideas?

Next step once i have sorted this is my facial rig…wish me luck

Thanks again

Make sure you are editing the WGT objects not the finger bones themselves. You can turn on x-ray in the armature panel. It’s what I normally do instead of re-sizing them. You may want to turn on wire and x-ray for the WGT objects as well if you do need to edit them.

Good Luck!