Avatar rig issue & request

[Krokheimer]

Greetings everyone,

 

and thank you for the time.

I have been working to prepare a new avatar of mine, my latest and I have rigged up and made a lot of avatars before so while I am not a professional user of Blender, i am familiar with it and in making mesh avatars for Second Life. This time, i have decided to prepare something non-human where the shape I have i made it hunched a bit, however with bi-pedal legs and a hunched stature it makes aligning and working out the template armature really advanced for me. Too advanced so far, I have tried a lot of things but in vain.

After sweating with this for a while, now I would like to turn to anyone experienced in rigging avatars where I have not managed to succeed and request support if anyone wishes to rig up my non-human model for me and turn it into an avatar. I would also like to be sent the file and work as an educational means so that I can study and learn how all of this works out with non-human models. It would mean so much if I could have support with this. I would offer lindens for the trouble if this is preferred, though it should be discussed first.

Feel free to drop me a message under the username Krokheimer in Second Life, too.

 

Hope to hear from you soon,

Krokheimer

Edited July 4, 2018 by Krokheimer

[OptimoMaximo]

1 hour ago, Krokheimer said:

Greetings everyone,

 

and thank you for the time.

Hi!

It's not really difficult with Avastar

You have two ways to approach this.

EDIT: Always begin from the Female Avatar in Neutral shape!

First method: scale down your creature to match the avastar character in height. Adjust the shape sliders to try and match the head and limbs as much as possible. If necessary, use Proportional editing on your character to adjust the slight differences between the joints positions and your character's joints. SL avatar is not that well proportioned in its limbs lengths. When done, bind the character to armature. Do your weighting. After the weighting, take the Avastar in Object mode and scale it up accordingly to the size you initially wanted your character to be. Around in the interface provided by Avastar, there should be a button labeled "Apply Armature Scale" (not the one in the animation export though). Alternatively, you may want to go to Pose Mode, select all bones and hit CTRL+A Apply pose as Rest pose. This method is to make your character fully compatible with existing animations.

Second method: Go to Edit mode on the Avastar armature. Reposition the joints accordingly to your avatar. Make sure that all Bone Roll values on each bone is set to zero. When done, in the Avastar tool set you can find a button labeled "snap deform rig to animation rig" or something similar, i can't remember the label exactly. When done, in pose mode, hit CTRL+A Apply pose as Rest pose. This method may give some trouble with existing animations and works best if you make your own.

The Machinimatrix website also has a tutorial i wrote a few years ago on NonHumanCharacter Rigging. It's a paid tutorial, but it should work.

Hope this helps

Edited July 4, 2018 by OptimoMaximo

[Krokheimer]

Optimo Maximo thank you for the response and support so far. I will check this out shortly and keep you posted.

[Krokheimer]

I think this is what I have been trying to do all along, but weighting this is an absolute nightmare and when you snap the base to the rig, it becomes an anomaly of deformed body parts the "slight joint differences" are pretty big on some parts on my model

this is the result so far after i used automatic weights

is it best to weight each node and bone manually, or is it best to automatically make weights and then do the weighting manually?

 

Edited July 4, 2018 by Krokheimer

[OptimoMaximo]

26 minutes ago, Krokheimer said:

I think this is what I have been trying to do all along, but weighting this is an absolute nightmare and when you snap the base to the rig, it becomes an anomaly of deformed body parts the "slight joint differences" are pretty big on some parts on my model

Please re-read the procedure: you do the adjustments BEFORE weighting. If you do the reverse, what you're reporting is indeed what to expect

28 minutes ago, Krokheimer said:

is it best to weight each node and bone manually, or is it best to automatically make weights and then do the weighting manually?

do it as you find it more comfortable in your workflow. The issue doesn't come from this part

If your avatar is that different from the Human you get from the default avatar, then the second method should do better. Try to not angle the bones too much in order to keep compatibility for animations as much as possible.

[OptimoMaximo]

Furthermore, the two methods should be mutually exclusive. Using the second method, start from the base female in neutral shape and do NOT touch the sliders, as you'd be moving the bones around to make them fit to your character.

Edited July 4, 2018 by OptimoMaximo

[Krokheimer]

Thank you so much for the pointers, OptimoMaximo.

I have made a lot of progress on short time now and currently working on the weighting of the avatar. Only issue I have is a few of the limbs become compressed though and I have tried a variety of weightings but the results remain the same. It occurs at the kneepads, the wrists and elbows. 

 

 

[OptimoMaximo]

Alright, it seems to me that you need to upload with "joint positions" check box turned on, in the uploader window, if you haven't done so yet. I hope you're doing your tests on the Beta grid (Aditi, where uploads are paid with a free pool of Lindens you don't have to pay for). This checkbox is available in the third tab, "Upload Options", just underneath the "Import skin weights" checkbox

[Krokheimer]

I usually try the beta grid for test uploads, only recently all it ever tells me on the login is "Login failed. Unable to connect to a simulator." no matter what i do.

Edited July 5, 2018 by Krokheimer

[Krokheimer]

Joint positions seem to have done the trick! My avatar now looks like it is holding up appropriately, I do however have some polishing of weights left to do.

I want to thank you for all the guidance, OptimoMaximo with your help I have also managed to learn more on rigging and in turn I can better help others out.

[OptimoMaximo]

well then PIC-TURE! PIC-TURE! PIC-TURE!  

Glad you sorted it out

 

[Krokheimer]