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Refining cage deformation
March 23rd, 2016
info License: CC-BY
Juan Pablo Bouza
Publisher
REFINING CAGE DEFORMATION
Learn various techniques for fine tuning the deformation of the Mesh Deform Cage. Also learn how to add drivers to the models in order to control the Subdivision level from one single property in the BlenRig Panel.
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21 comments
Why do you set up drivers for subsurf when you can control the subsurf of the whole scene from Scene/Simplify? Is there a practical difference between the two?
Hi @stephen thomas:
Just to have more individual control. If you have many objects with subsurf in a scene and you just want to check the facial expressions of one character with subsurf on, it is the way to do it. Otherwise all objects in the scene would have subsurf on and playback speed would become impossible.
I don't know, you could also put different objects in different layers to solve this, it's up to you actually ;)
You are free not to do it this way anyway!! :D
This rig is really cool Juan Pablo.
Can you use DeltaMush with BlendRig to improve deformation and volume preservation?
Cheers and congrats.
Hi @juangea!
Yes, of course you can, although I wouldn't recommend to just throw the corrective smooth modifier to the model, as it gives jumpy results if the original deformation is too bad and intersecting. So, what I usually do is to create a vertex group for the corrective smooth, and apply it only in specific areas.
With BlenRIg, the body deformation is very good in most cases, so I usually use a little bit of corrective smooth just in the face.
I'll cover a bit about that in the face chapters! See you!
@Juan Pablo Bouza: Awesome :)
Thanks!
When I select the IK Hand bone, I am only able to rotate on the x-axis. When I try to move with "g", nothing happens. Do I need to switch the arm between IK and FK? How can I do this?
Hi @Ben Muensterman:
You sure you turned off the reporportion mode??
@Juan Pablo Bouza: Thank you for replying so quickly. I did have reporportion mode turned off. If I turn it on and back off again, the hands will move freely. However, the shoulders are then given a new default position that is not what I intended. Maybe a mistake I made somewhere earlier in the process?
@Ben Muensterman:
Mmmmmm, I should see the file... wanna send it to jpbouza gmail?
@Ben Muensterman:
So, you turned repoportion mode on, fit the rig and then baked the mdef cage and the armature? After baking the armature, did you go into Edit mode and run the fix joints and calc roll operators?
@Juan Pablo Bouza: I sent an email with the .blend file. Yes, I have been following the videos, and I am pretty sure I ran both operators.
@Ben Muensterman:
File corrected and mailed! :)
@Juan Pablo Bouza: BlenRig is wonderful so far, and you have really gone above and beyond with helping me out. Thanks so much!
@Ben Muensterman:
No problem! :) Let me know if you find yourself in trouble again!
hi, sorry for my english in advance, I have a problem with the fk controlers, they don't work at all, only ik work, i switch to IK/FK mode in the T menu but nothing change, even if i open a new file with no character rigging. It seems to me that i process like you. can you help me please?
it seems that's a problem with "copy transform constraints" when i switch off the bones that i want to move in fk, that work... maybe It miss a drivers to control that.
Hi @kevin ferrand:
Check if you have the option called "Auto run python scripts" in the blender preferences - file
@Juan Pablo Bouza: thank you very much, it was the problem, that's work. and thank for this very good addons.
Hi, not sure if you are still active here, but in my case I want to use automatic weighting for (at least) the fingers. I cannot figure out how and what bones I have to select. I got the error message all the time "Bone Heat Weighting: failed to find solution for one or more bones" while the bones in beautifully in the fingers.
Update: Ahh, I found out that I had to delete doubles, and remove mesh not connected.
Hi Juan,
First thanks a lot, this plugin is really great. I do have a question though.
I made a rig using the plugin and following your tutorial, overall everything works great except for the neck of my character. When I try to rotate 'neck_fk_ctrl' (just like you do in the video) nothing happens. It seems like the neck controls on my character are locked or not being considered. Am I missing something? Any tip for me?
Thanks. Pascal
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