skelegons ... animating

[Rook]

ok ... I got a character modeled, basic but it is modeled! ^_^ I'll post it sometiem, first one, yay! Anyhow, now I am wanting to animate him ... i looked at the ACS system but it is for version 7.5 ... i have version 7 ... unfortuantly I don't have another thousand dollars to upgrade, bought this version off of a friend anyhow.....

I am trying to use the skelegons. but Edit Skelegons is always nonclickable ... I have no idea how to put skelegons on the model!... I was gonna try this tutorial today

http://3dtoday.com/Tutorials/2003/February/Rigging1/default.asp

but the link to the plug in doesn't work and the site is in japanese which I don't understand ... anyhelp?

[WCameron]

Basically you draw a spline, weld the points all together where
bone chains begin - for instance you draw the spine first, then branch off a lfet arm chain, right arm chain - etc - from one of the points of the spine spline.
then run the Make Skelegons plugin over them - then delete
the original spline by selecting it wit hthe statistics requester.

draw the splines on a seperate layer, btw.

theres a spline draw tool as well, but I think there was something weird about it setting up bone rotations oddly, depending on which viewport you drew the skelegon in...

the way I do it is I'll be looking front on onto my figure, draw out the splines, weld the join points, then go in and move the spline
points so the splines align inside the figure properly.

hope that makes sense. havent slept in awhile and its starting to catch up to me :-)


- Will.

[Rook]

yep it makes sense, thanks for the reply ... What plug-in am I running t hought ... don't have one ... eh I'll mess with the spline tool supplied I suppose. Some give me a working link to a plug-in for this?

[meatycheesyboy]

it is for version 7.5 ... i have version 7 ... unfortuantly I don't have another thousand dollars to upgrade

The upgrade from 7 to 7.5c is free, you should really get it.

[WCameron]

now that I've slept I can (hopefully) give you a better answer :-)

(note also I'm using 7.5c)

In the above note from me I said DRAW SPLINES tool, I actually ment the Draw Skelegons tool - in 7.5c its the SKELEGONS button on the CREATE tab.
you activate it then you draw skelegons by clicking the mouse
button in a view port (its basicaly as tyhough you were laying down points, each click will drop the end of the next bone from
the one you did before, or drop the start of the first bone).

from here - oddly enough - you have to go into Polygon Mode and highlight one of the bones for the Edit Skelegons option to be active on the DETAIL tab. once activated it puts movement handels around each point in the skelegon chains so you can move them around, etc. (I really done see much of a diferance
to just moving the points themselves around in point mode - but then again I dont really use the Skelegon Draw tool too much...)

the Spline to Skelegon tool is "Make Skelegons" on the CONSTRUCT tab, BTW.

i should also mention that I've really only boned one or two characters like this and quite frankly its a bit foggy upstairs as to what problems I may have run into at the time, so for all I know
Drawing the Skelegons properly is the best method.

I really like Skelegons for things like making Axels for wheels or
Knobs on geometry thats ad a weird angle that it would take too much trouble to try and orient properly to stick a bone in it. I was thinking of doing a quick little tutorial on that but for all I know theres far easier ways to do that stuff :-)

- Will.