GYM Project

[Albertdup]

Hi all

I am currently busy with some animations for a friend of mine. They have a gym and wants some animations to show people how to do exercises. I’m not a pro and have taught myself all I know of Lightwave. I live in South Africa and I could only find one school who teach Lightwave as part of their 3d course but they are horribly expensive $ 24 000 (R 125 000) for a year evening course.

The following shots is very basic, so please mind the texturing and stuff I am not going for photo real, I got carried away playing with the camera and need to clean it up a bit. Their logo is a golden man and woman that’s why the character is gold. With different muscles working in colour. I have been able to parent a dumbbell to a hand and it faithfully moves along. I am using a follower on the left hand side bones to copy the right hand side.

I animated a shoulder press on a machine. The weights and the Bar are linked with expressions. The character and machine animation are separately done. You will see that the hands/arms move around. I don’t know how to get it to "stuck".

My problem is getting a Barbell and bar to interact correctly with my character. If I parent it to a bone in the one hand and move the arm it will no longer be in the other hand.

Here is a link to a file with some of the animations and the stuff that go’s wrong. Its short to keep the file size small, 45sec.

Http://www.multimicro.za.net/gym.wmv 2.5MB 320x288
You will need windows media player to play the file.

Http://www.multimicro.za.net/gym.mov 2.75Mb 720x576
or in Quicktime 7 H.264 better quality

I do believe there must be a way of getting these things to work I just don’t have the know how. The Lightwave manual is great in explaining each tool. But it ain’t very helpful. Its like explaining to someone how to use a hammer and nails but it does not teach you how to build a cupboard.

Any help or suggestions will greatly be appreciated a tutorial on some tools that might help will come in real handy.

Thanks.
Albert Du Plessis

[shaol]

why don't you parent the hands to the bar so that you move the bar and the hands follow.

Also I fint the lighting too bright. use a softer and less spot like light. you may need to use more than one light other wise they look good.

[prospector]

put 1 null on Barbell called main, parented to barbell
then put a null on each end where hands go and name them Left and Right null parented to the main.

then use the Left and right null to drive the IK of the arms.
move the main and arms will follow. so now you can rotate the main a bit and hands will follow the tilt too.

also use for that other mach that has the weights as I see the hands sliding on handles, they will stay locked in 1 place.

[Silkrooster]

Very cool, I like how this is coming along.
Silk

[Albertdup]

Hi

I did as you sugested but I am getting some unexpected results.

here is a sample file. Look at the hands.

http://www.multimicro.za.net/ik.wmv

Thanks for all the help.

[prospector]

Do you have the 'match goal orientation' or 'keep goal in reach' checked?
shouldn't
it looks like some form of gimble lock going on.

[Albertdup]

I am steadily moving forward with the GYM animations. Your help with this project is greatly appreciated. I am having some difficulty understanding collisions. I think collisions is the right tool to use for the problem I am facing, yet I may be mistaken. I am using goals to drive the IK in the legs and arms as you have suggested. This works ok. The problem is preventing the body from moving through other objects during animation. I have created new bones to the rig. Found out I needed a wrist bone for the hands to bend properly on the bar. ( Funny how modeler change the orientation of the skelegons when you edit /split them. Still need to figure out how to fix that.) I would like to prevent the hands from moving through the walls/ bars and the feet from moving through the step etc. At this stage I need to create a bunch of intermediate keyframes and FK the bones in the toes and fingers for it to look remotely decent. This takes considerable time and I would prefer cutting down on wasting time, if it is the only way, oh well then I have no choice. Any suggestions on how to fix this will be appreciated. Help on getting those shoulders to look better will also be appreciated. I am having difficulty finding books or other material focussing on the effective use of collisions. Quite a bit of stuff available for hard and soft effects. Though I don’t think they will work on this, again I may be wrong.

I am attaching movie files of the problems I am facing as well as screen shots of my skeleton rig. You should also be able to see the null goals. The QuickTime files are much more true to original.

http://www.multimicro.za.net/calve.mov Quicktime 7 h.264 (720x576) 427KB
http://www.multimicro.za.net/calve.wmv Windows Media 9 (720x576) 430KB

http://www.multimicro.za.net/hand.mov Quicktime 7 h.264 (720x576) 263 KB
http://www.multimicro.za.net/hand.wmv Windows Media 9 (720x576) 273KB

http://www.multimicro.za.net/bar.mov Quicktime 7 h.264 (720x576) 329 KB
http://www.multimicro.za.net/bar.wmv Windows Media 9 (720x576) 364 KB

[Albertdup]

Hi all
Hi all

Over 300 views and no reply could someone please just tell me whether I should keyframe all the bones to fix it. Or if there is another way. I need to finish these things, There are 100 of these exercises and I don’t have time to waste.

Thanks.

[prospector]

First one, calf move...I would do 1 of 2 things
1, put an IK bone on knees and use a L/R knee null to slightly pull knees foreward when foot comes in contact with edge of step.
2, make machine slightly taller so he doesn't go so lo.

[prospector]

second one, hand move

this one you'll have to make a keyframe for the wristbone while the hand is at it's fullest penetration. rotate wrist till hand is where you want it and set key.
You may also look at graph editor to see there isn't any movement in the channels that are contributing to the movement, you may have to set tension for those keys to linear

[prospector]

Same thing on 3, bar
set wristbone at fullest penitration and check graphs

[Albertdup]

Thanks I will give it a go

[Silkrooster]

I wish I could help, but I don't have enough, experience with bones yet. But... it looks like you are in good hands with prospector.
Silk

[Albertdup]

I have done with the hand as you sugested, There is still a slight movement, but thats ok. Just a question, is it posable to change the sensitivity of the mouse movement in Lightwave. I am unable to move small increments and need to play around with numerics until it is right? Thanks again for all the help

[Albertdup]

Thought Ill give you guys a bit of an update on my progress.

[iggy21]

i like it alot... but, the image from the side of the guy sitting down looks a little distorted around the back of the knees.

[Albertdup]

I believe you were refering to the legg press here is an animation (requires Quicktime 7) . Its the best I could get it, feel free to make suggestions on how to fix it.

[shaol]

not that its a big deal but the feet seem to be moving when at the full extention of the legs. loog great nice job