A little test: Muscle soft to rigid rig in LW.

[Dodgy]

He's something I came up while I was dozing this morning. SoftFX is used for the drooping/wobbling. The rigidity is completely dependent on the wrist rotation, but other joints can control rigidity within the same muscle object, so you don't have lots of muscle objects cluttering the scene. The drooping is over-emphasized for clarity.

[erikals]

erik has subscribed to this thread...

[UnCommonGrafx]

That's cool.

Someone shared a woman flexing over on youtube. You have a very similar action going on.

Nice.

[RebelHill]

very nice. clever stuff.

[littlewaves]

further explanation would be great for simpletons such as I!

what causes the drooping? Gravity? But soft FX has no gravity?

colour me confused

[Dodgy]

Well basically it's this.

I added a muscle bone within the bicep. This is to purely do the contraction and bulging of the muscle, and is driven by the rotation of the elbow.
I did a quick weightmap for the bicep which controls the SoftFX wobble effect.
You simulate the SoftFX, and save that as an Mdd.
Load that into DPont's mdd pointer node, and use his tension node to scale the deformation.

This means you can simulate a bunch of muscles in one object together, and only the wobble on the relaxed muscles will be used. It also means it's easy to re-simulate and toggle on and off.

SoftFX has a value called Force direction which can be used to simulate gravity.

[Dodgy]

S'funny, I thought there'd be more interest in this... Oh well...

[pooby]

I often noticed the same tumbleweediness when I posted stuff in the animation/rigging and deformation areas.
I just dont think theres many people left who have the desire to do that kind of stuff in Lightwave anymore.

[RebelHill]

I often noticed the same tumbleweediness when I posted stuff in the animation/rigging and deformation areas.
I just dont think theres many people left who have the desire to do that kind of stuff in Lightwave anymore.

From putting out my own rigging training this past year, and the level of interest and feedback Id be tempted to disagree to some extent... certainly its no super massive demand, but its certainly there.

What I do think though is that folks are after simpler, more easily applied solutions for doing such stuff, and whilst this trick is nice, and I like it a lot... I dont think many have the patience, or requirement to spend the time nailing it down.

And since Im convinced simpler approaches to higher end results are whats wanted... Ive taken it upon myself to cook a lil something up to fit just that ideal, so I guess we'll see. (btw... smells good!! lol)

[archijam]

Nice work Dodgy btw :)

[pooby]

The problem (usually) with doing these types of effects in lightwave, is that you can kind of cobble something together to work once in one place on a mesh, but to use it as a practical solution for a character in multiple body areas is impractical if not impossible due to lightwaves lack of a deform stack.

[Dodgy]

That's the best part of the rig, it doesn't need a lot of time to set up, and it works across the entire character. I can't see how it could get much simpler. There's only 3 nodes in the setup. The most time consuming part is painting one weight map for softfx, and most of that is just using the weight tool with a radial falloff.

[littlewaves]

That's the best part of the rig, it doesn't need a lot of time to set up, and it works across the entire character. I can't see how it could get much simpler. There's only 3 nodes in the setup. The most time consuming part is painting one weight map for softfx, and most of that is just using the weight tool with a radial falloff.

got to say once you explained it it does actually seem pretty straight forward to me and definitely worth a go if you are going to rig and animate in LW.

[jasonwestmas]

There are a few things in lightwave I enjoy setting up. Skinning a complex character isn't one of them though. But hey whatever works. Now if NT can nail the skinning part I might be more excited about getting more complex deformations going in lightwave.

[RebelHill]

That's the best part of the rig, it doesn't need a lot of time to set up, and it works across the entire character. I can't see how it could get much simpler. There's only 3 nodes in the setup. The most time consuming part is painting one weight map for softfx, and most of that is just using the weight tool with a radial falloff.

The whole softFX/MDD part is very simple yes... it is infact a great lil idea so simple that its no surprise its taken this long for someone to come up with it (;

The issue for a lot of folks though I think is that its yet another thing to add on top of the whole rigging business that many find so long winded or complicated... Cos really, thats what character rigging is... an awful lot of very simple, easy things. Its the volume that creates the complexity, not the individual tricks themselves.

To my own mind, there are also issues here... the muscle bone that gives the drive to the tension node for starters... thats gonna be time consuming to setup all those bones... plus theres the matter of getting those bones to interact well with the main bones of the rig, and get all the deforms working nicely together... something that in my experince isnt that easy at all. An area like the bicep is a great example of that difficulty. Whilst setting up the bone to drive from the elbow is pretty straightforward... getting that bicep bone to play nicely with the deforms going on at the shoulder, and especially the twisting of the upper arm isnt so straightforward at all.

[erikals]

There are a few things in lightwave I enjoy setting up.
Skinning a complex character isn't one of them though...

i tested some skinning using EditFX in this video,
is it really not possible to save an endomorph in LW96/Layout ?
when i 'save' the endomorph in Layout, nothing happens, it does not save :/
(edit: ok, i was told by a bird that i also had to save the lwo itself in Layout in order to make it work)

the work-around is to save out a transformed object,
and then convert it to an endomorph (using BkgToMorph) in Modeler

(sorry 'bout the Mickey Mouse voice)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC0yhHOoFcw

[erikals]

an easier approach to skinning,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxVJKTsBwTc

[Dodgy]

You can use editfx to generate the morphs, but as soon as say the elbow bends, but the shoulder also bends, the elbow morph doesn't make sense any more.
That is one thing I'd like to see NT or someone do, a joint morph tool which has a dragnet/magnet tool built in in layout. It can be done I guess, since we have editfx able to edit the mesh, the trickier part is figuring out the transforms for the points.

[Dodgy]

The bone muscle setup to me is about as long as setting up a fake muscle in say maya. You still have to position those and tweak their settings too. In a lot of areas though you can get away with just using the deformation of the mesh without setting up a bone for them, for example the shoulders, stomach and back areas. The main places needing muscle bones are the longer larger single muscle masses.

As I say, the main thing I think is an obstacle to better CA is the joint morph problem.

[RebelHill]

when i 'save' the endomorph in Layout, nothing happens, it does not save :/

It does save... but its only saved in some sorta "cache" in layout... to save it to the actual object you then need to "save object/all objects"... then reload the mesh/scene to update the morfmixer.

[RebelHill]

as say the elbow bends, but the shoulder also bends, the elbow morph doesn't make sense any more.

Im not quite sure Im getting this...

If theres a corrective morf for the elbow applied... you can swing the shoulder, or any other part of the rig around just fine and that morf holds, relative to the elbow itself no problem.

The issue that I have always found is corrective morfing at areas like shoulders and hips themselves... 3D joints, where you get crossover of different axis, or rather, you can have the same character pose, achieved through different combinations of the controller axis pose... its allowing morfs to work with things like gimbal fixes thats an issue.

The 2 bone target based system that I use for my deform rigs helps to get around this for the most part, as it gives predictable axis combinations for a given pose, but theres still the issue of getting these rotations "seen" in the right place to drive the morfs without baking, and of course the pain of sculpting the morfs themselves... either the back and forth modeller<>layout process, or trying to do it all in layout with stuff like editFX, and without the help of stuff like magnet, edgeslide, smooth, etc, etc.

[silviotoledo]

Hey Mike! I'd like to invite you to join us on this thread!

http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1047688#post1047688

May you also borrow your arm or a little part of it for doing tests?

[silviotoledo]

Video - click to view displacement muscles driven by bones
http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a293/silviotoledo/th_MUSCLEee.jpg (http://s13.photobucket.com/albums/a293/silviotoledo/?action=view&current=MUSCLEee.mp4)

[pooby]

It doesn't really look like muscle, as You need some sliding to get a realistic effect.
For the effect of skin, The displacement needs to be independent of the geometry as I did in this 2004 test.

http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28601


However, it's a pain doing this in lw.

[probiner]

Hey guys, hope something doable comes out of this thread, good initiatives Dodgy and Silvio.

Pooby, as for sliding...
What if the Textures slide and not the actual mesh?
Say you use the UV Morph trick so that the displacements and all texturing slides?

spirosa's thread and image http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?t=85719
http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s202/animatics/Lightwave/UV-morph.gif


It's probably not accurate for the skin slidding, say... in the neck, but maybe one could be focused on getting the mophs for relaxed and strecthed, and getting the UVs to morph so that the textures slide between both. Mesh distribution is the same, only the shape is different.

Cheers

Edit: ok if the slided area has hair... forget about texture trick no? :p You had to slide the hair guides too right?

[erikals]

if the area has hair you can use this morph trick...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVMsQ4DV6WA

[Julez4001]

I didn't know this thread was here and so I think some folks who was ignorant of its existence have added tot he tumbleweedness but hats off to all you guys for doing and fighting the fight.

I hope we can get displacement map driven by mdd files....