An alternative to rigging in blender?

[jjws888]

Hey there folks, so, very recently a lot of my friends want me to rig things for them but i keep turning them down because theyre all requests for clothes.

Ya'see, I can rig... but only in maya. And anyone who uses maya can tell you that the results are not always... grand.

The way maya binds the bones to a model is much different than blender's, in maya you can only smooth bind it which, can cause a lot of problems like noodle arms and TERRIBLE face shearing if your doing a model with a head.

PLUS, for some reason, i cant rig clothes because whenever i try to import a rig that isn't touching every bone on the skeleton, it just won't recognize it in SL.

Blah.

I started blender before maya actually, and anything of higher quality than a nintendo 64 model would give me an error, plus, getting the hang of blender's interface coming from 3dsMax is torture.

 

In short: I can rig in maya but it really isnt all that great and ive tried to rig in blender countless times following every tutorial I could but nothing worked because i would always get a DAE parsing error. Is there another program that can offer blender-quality rigging that isn't blender?

 

Thanks :manvery-happy:

[Dora Gustafson]

If it is a while since you tried Blender you should consider trying ver.2.63
It has got a new special collada exporter for SL

Also Gaia Clary made some plugins and tutorials it is hard to live without:)
Visit machinimatrix for more info

[Gaia Clary]

just to clarify: I did not make these addons, Kudos for this need to go to "Domino Marama" and "Magus Freston". But i am part of the team, mainly responsible for making the docs and the tutorials and telling the devs about what the users complain... Well, juggling with 5 sharp knives is easier

 

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[Gaia Clary]

I can not tell much about Maya, that's Chosen Few's domain. But i can tell you a few hints which might help also outside of Blender:

 

1. Each Object must contain the "21 essential bones" of the SL Avatar. This is a constraint introduced by Linden labs. Don't aks why. In Blender the easy workaround is: Add empty vertex groups for all "missing bones". I used this trick to make avatar.blend compatible with the SL importer (it was missing the mFootLeft and mFootRight bones)
2. Take care to weight no more than 4 bones to any vertex. That's another constraint introduced by LL. It is unclear what happens when a vertex has more than 4 weights. I believe that can (but not necessarily !) result in spikes. BTW: I don't know how i can tell Blender to follow this constraint. However i rarely have issues with that, so maybe its irrelevant.
3. Take care to remove duplicate vertices. In some cases these duplicates make the Importer fail and even crash the Viewer. Some very insane behaviour could be fixed by removing doubles.
4. Take care to not make extremely small faces. As a matter of fact sometimes meshes with high density faces make the SL viewer crash. I believe that has to do with how the physics mesh is auto generated (but that is just a guess)
5. Take care that all vertices are weighted to at least one bone. otherwise the SL Importer will reject the mesh
6. Take care (bah!) that your character looks towards the positive X axis (well that might be a constraint coming from the Blender exporter, i am not sure if that is equaly critical with Maya)
7. Do not add extra bones. That results in a big mess in general (but ok, if you know what you do, go ahead..). You can create fancy results with that. You even can trick the SL Importer into importing meshes which appear like they have holes at unexpected locations.

Maybe that helps a bit.

[Nalates Urriah]

As Dora suggests, try Blender. The recent 2.6x releases have BMesh and Cycles. Check out the new features in the videos at CG Cookie.

Maya, 3DS, and Blender are about the best tools availalbe. Of those, the Lab puts more effort into supporting Blender, they figure more of their users are using Blender.

[Chosen Few]

JJ, from what you wrote, you seem to be under the impression that the problems you've been having are program-specific.  They're not.   You'll face the exact same challenges in whatever program you use.  Please don't take this the wrong way, but it's YOU that needs to change a little on this.  Your software is just fine.

Human nature is so funny sometimes, isn't it?  Everyone wants to own their successes, but very few are willing to own their mistakes.   When things go right, nobody ever says, "Look what Maya made!" or "Look what Blender made!"  They always say, "Look what I made!"  But when something goes wrong, it's all too often, "Maya is just so unpredictable," or, "Blender is retarded!" or even, "Anyone who uses Maya user can tell you the results aren't always grand."

If you'd been getting the results you wanted all along, JJ, would you give Maya credit for YOUR work?  I suspect not.  So what's the use in blaming it for YOUR troubles?

 

Quick disclaimer, before I go any further.  This post is not designed to be a sale pitch for Maya.  If you happen to enjoy using Blender, or any other program, more than you enjoy using Maya, that's great!  Use whatever program you like best, be happy, and do great works.  The fact that Maya happens to be MY favorite (and a lot of people's favorite) isn't what I'm here to talk about.  My purpose is simply to try to dispel the unfortunate mistaken impressions you seem to be under, about how it works, and what it can do.

Let me respond to each of the things you said about the program, and see if we can't clear this up.  

 

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jjws888 wrote:

anyone who uses maya can tell you that the results are not always... grand.

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You KNOW I have to disagree with that, pretty emphatically! 

No, most Maya users won't tell you that.  I've been using Maya every day for the better part of the past decade, and I certainly won't tell you that.  I can promise you, Maya works just great.

As with most things in life, this is what's known as "garbage in, garbage out".  The results you get are going to the be the results you set the program to produce.  You'll get those grand results you're looking for, when and if you set things grandly.  If you set it poorly, the results will be just as poor.  There is not, and can never be, any sort of magical "Make it look good" button.

If YOU personally have not been able to make it do the things you want, that's not a failing of the program.  It just means you haven't yet learned how.  There's no shame in that.  There may be some in refusing to own up to it, though, so I hope you won't go that direction.

I invite you to consider that it would be much more effective for you to ask for pointers, instead of simply declaring that Maya doesn't work.  There are plenty of us here, as well as on the Autodesk forums, and elsewhere, who would be happy to help you along.

 

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jjws888 wrote:

The way maya binds the bones to a model is much different than blender's

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At the end of the day, a bind is a bind, is a bind.  It's just an assignment of mathematical relationships between vertices and bones, nothing more, nothing less.  In that respect, a bind created in Maya is no different than one created in Blender.  The ony difference is the manner in which each program presents various approaches to the user for creating and managing those assignments.

Maya has a ton of options for this that Blender does not have, and Blender also has some that Maya doesn't have.  When you add it all up, Maya arguably has more options, but both have more than enough "switches, lights, and knobs" to provide plenty of opportunity for the user to screw things up.  If you know what you're doing in either program, you'll do fine.  If you don't, then you're going to make a lot of mistakes.

 

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jjws888 wrote:

in maya you can only smooth bind it which, can cause a lot of problems like noodle arms and TERRIBLE face shearing if your doing a model with a head.

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I hate to break it to you, but in Blender, you're still doing a smooth bind.  Blender just doesn't happen to call it that is all.  Whether we call it a "smooth bind", or a "blended bind", or an "envelope bind", or whatever the designation, it just means that each vertex can be influenced by more than just one bone.

You seem to be implying there's something inherently wrong with this, in principle.  I'm not sure why you would think that.  Smooth binding is the basis behind virtually all organic animation.

What Maya calls "rigid binds" only allow the influence of a single bone on any one vertex.  In more general terms, these are called a "non-blended" binds, and they are of little to no use for things like clothing or organic bodies.  If you're only interested in making robots or suits of armor, then rigid binds would be for you.  But since SL isn't set up to accept rigid binds, and since you can achieve exactly the same effect, just by zeroing out some values in Maya's component editor, it's totally a moot point.

Bottom line:  Whatever program you use for your rigging, you're going to have to create blended binds.  This isn't a Maya-specific thing.  It's a general, overlying principle of animation and rigging, as well as a specific requirement of SL.

 

In any case, the problems you described are ALWAYS the result of user error.  They're not indicative of any inherent failing of smooth binds.  From your description, either the models you've been working with don't have the proper topology to animate well, or the bone weights you've assigned haven't been done very well, or both. Ether way, it's on you, not on Maya.

Simply switching programs won't solve it.  As I said above, whatever program you use, you're going to encounter the exact same challenges.  YOU need to embrace that, so YOU can learn how to solve YOUR problems. 

We can certainly help, if you're willing to ask.  If you'd care to post some pictures, and detailed descriptions of the problems you've encountered, I'm sure we can advise you on how to fix it.

 

 

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jjws888 wrote:

PLUS, for some reason, i cant rig clothes because whenever i try to import a rig that isn't touching every bone on the skeleton, it just won't recognize it in SL.

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I'm really glad you mentioned this, because it's a perfect example of user error, with a really easy fix.  Make sure "Remove Unused Influences" is unchecked in your bind options.  SL requires that the full set of bones be referenced in influence list, even if the values for some of the influences happen to be zero. 

By default, "Remove Unused Influences" is turned on in the settings, for efficiency.  I'm sure you'd agree that as a matter of general policy, it's best for any program not to create extraneous data, unless the user specifically wants it to.

The only reason this is an issue at all is simply because SL's uploader isn't clever enough to know that if a joint isn't listed, then the values for that joint should just be zeroed out.  It requires us to physically list the zeroes for it.  Maya, fortunately, is VERY clever, and is happy to put all those otherwise useless zeroes in there, as long as YOU actually tell it that that really is what YOU want it to do.

If YOU did not know that you were supposed to turn off "Remove Unused Influences", that's not a failing of Maya in any way.  It just means that YOU didn't know how to use Maya properly for this particular purpose.  Now that you do know, it should no longer be a problem.

The same can likely be said in regard to every other problem you've had with it.  So, once again, I invite you to stop decalring that the program just doesn't work, and instead start asking for help toward learning the things you don't yet know how to make it do.  It's all good.

 

 

ETA:  If you want a little inspration,

.  Notice every character has a head.

[Poenald Palen]

This is an interesting question, regardless of the why part.

What software exports mesh that is rigged for SL?

So far, we have blender and maya known. I am not sure if 3DS can do this, maybe cheatah 3D? Who knows! What else works OR may work with a little bit of a change.

As far as I can remember the collada files are text, right? So, basic parsing and math may work to correct some of the differences in exports and Sl's standards...no?

softimage xsi..this does game bits, right? So....anyone tried it?

Does Shade rig stuff? I can't remember..uh, maybe not. It does .dae though!

Doesn't Lightwave do animation?

CInima 4d does animation rigging stuff....but for SL?

I suspect not many will make a plug-in or stand alone parser. eople need money, SL has little to offer compared to what a programmer may get paid. Maybe someone will. Stand alone is even possible, it could convert the stuff over from a few softwares....maybe. It all depends on the tools, what they output and if that is easily converted and also able to work with the mesh. I mean, I am NOT a software engineer! Just saying that it MIGHT be possible because the .dae is a text file and readable via a stand alone program. It is al text parsing and math to figure stuff out....very very easy to say and not so easy to figure out!

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Poenald Palen wrote:

 

What software exports mesh that is rigged for SL?

So far, we have blender and maya known. I am not sure if 3DS can do this, maybe cheatah 3D? Who knows! What else works OR may work with a little bit of a change.

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3ds max is very usable for SL rigging, the only issue that seems to be a real max one is the fact you have to add the unused bones manually to the dae file. Other than that it works just fine.