Ranting about bones in C4.... 2004-02-28 - By Ken Wronkiewicz
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I've been spending most of my time lurking because I've been busy, so I
haven't even had much of a chance to contribute lately. Some threads got my
dander up, so I'll rant instead.
People are confusing what *you* can do with a set of tools with what can be
done by *anybody* with a set of tools.
When they teach welding, you get to use a oxy-acetelyne torch. They are, at
most, a few hundered bucks. You learn how to make a proper weld this way.
It's the most primitive way to do things, but you will *learn* how the metal
is supposed to look while you are melting it and welding it. It's very
unforgiving, slow down while you are welding and you'll burn a hole in the
piece you are welding. I have a collection of metal plates with a variety
of holes in them from when I was learning.
There are welders that will do things for you, like a Mig welder. They
squirt molten metal into the gap. They are about as hard to use as a hot
glue gun.
The very best in welding isn't done with those sort of welders because you
get barely enough control. You can only weld a few types of metal.
The beginner views the Mig welder as superior because he can lay down a good
bead easily. But, if you are welding up an aircraft, where, if you mess up,
people can get killed, you use the good old oxy-acetalyne torch and learn to
like it.
Where am I going with this? Just because *you* need a character animation
system like Character Studio or Poser, where it tries to make things easy on
you, doesn't mean that somebody else can get good results without such
tools. When they teach you character animation in school, they teach you
how to set up systems of bones like Carrara, not like Poser. In fact, I can
take the book I learned character animation for Maya from and there's only
one or two things that Carrara doesn't have, and none of them are the sort
of things that I can't work around if I wanted to spend the time on it.
It's better for you to be forced to just use bones, without anything making
your life easy, because then you learn observation. You notice how people
hold their head, if it's tilted or straight up and down. You see the
individual quirks of how people move their legs throughout the entire walk
cycle. You see how some people have more range of motion in some areas so
you can set the constraints properly. Poser and Character Studio and the
like try to make it easier for you, but, by not having things done for you,
you will learn so much more and be able to achieve a much higher level of
reality.
In fact, you can do pretty damn good humans in Ray Dream Studio 4.1, before
it had Bones or the vertex modeler. My copy of the Ray Dream Handbook has a
tutorial on exactly how to do it.
Artistry takes time, creativity, and persistance. It generally requires
working around the properties of the tools you have at hand, no matter
weather it's Maya or SoftImage or 3DS Max or Carrara. Did Van Gough gripe
because he had to mix his own oil paints? Did Alfred Hitchcock gripe
because he had to film on black and white, or maybe with color film that
made all of the colors look strange? Did the Beatles despair that they were
recording with equipment that was crap compared to most American recording
artists and surgically clipped off the high and low ends of their sound,
only to be further butchered as it was transmitted over AM radio into a
single speaker that clipped off the rest of the high and low end of the
signal? No, they put up with it and produced wonderful creations.
My point is, Bones are already good enough for many uses. If you are having
problems with them, maybe the problem isn't entirely on Carrara's end, no?
Ken "Wirehead" Wronkiewicz \ \ \/
http://www.wirewd.com/wh/ \ \
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