 | | | New Carrara book and rigging info | New Carrara book and rigging info 2005-05-28 - By Jeff Wiley
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I'm not exactly a newbie as I've had Carrara since Raydream, but I am new
at seriously working at character animation within carrara. I have many
other mid-range apps, many with better character tools than CS4 but I am
determined to learn and make char. anim. within Carrara and to grow in
abilities along with the program.
I say this because perhaps I could contribute some of what I'm learning to
the new Carrara book or at least to the knowledge base in the community.
My progress is slow as I have only a little time each day to work with
Carrara, but lately I've been building a rig and experimenting and learning
a few things as I go along. What I'm learning is perhaps nothing new to
experienced users, but maybe useful to new users.
So I'm wondering about submissions for the book, I glossed over previous
posts about this, can I be invited to submit some info? How should I do
that? Anything I submit or share is free to use by anybody.
Here is a sample of some of the things I'm discovering:
1. The bones in Carrara are different that most apps I've tried. In that
they are really only joints with nothing extending out (bone like) into the
"territory" of the vertices that they influence. They do have a bone like
extension that extends back to the joint of the parent bone. Although they
function the same as bones in other apps, visually they are represented
differently. Other apps like TrueSpace or AM have bones that are drawn to
look like a bone that extends from the pivot point out to the end of the
region they influence. This is no big deal but is something I had to
figure out on my own.
EXAMPLE: If you are rigging a char. with a hand but no boned fingers, in
other apps., to bone the hand you would draw a bone out from the end of the
forearm bone at the wrist to the end of the fingers. This bone would pivot
at the wrist. In Carrara the you simply place a bone at the wrist joint
and it controls all the vertices of the hand. There is no bone like object
extending into the hand. Likewise the entire head is controlled by a
single joint/bone at the top of the neck. The jaw bone is visually only a
joint/bone at the pivot point of the jaw (close to and below the ear). Of
course then you have to carefully select which vertices the jaw joint/bone
will influence and the placement of the joint/bone is very important as all
the vertices will move in a radius around this point.
2. Correct placement of the bones/joints is a very important part of
rigging. And I've found it difficult to find much detailed info about
this. Self discovery through experimentation seems to be the best. I've
finding the human body itself is the best resource for this and now I'm
having my wife pose and move for me so I can determine where the body
pivots and how the skin moves.
When figuring placement it is important to note that the vertices
influenced by a bone will move in circle around that bone, and the
sharpness of the curvature of their movement will depend on the distance
they are from the bone. The further away from the bone/joint the flatter
of a curve the movement will be. This is important when placing the bones
of the jaw or the collar.
In my experiments I've discovered that to get the proper movement of the
top of the shoulder I need to place the collar bone fairly close to the
spine and at just the right height to get the radius of the movement of
vertices just right. To find the right placement of the bone/joint for the
head to rotate at the top of the neck, I had my wife move her head back and
forward. I noticed that a point at the tip of her chin when she tilted her
head back moved up and back and when she tilted forward the same point
moved down and back. This tells me that the center of rotation for her
head must be exactly level with the tip of her chin. So this is where I
placed the bone.
I know all this may be second nature to many people, but for me it has
been useful things to discover to teach myself to rig a human. There is
much more too of course, about bone weighting and morphing, but this post
is getting too long, (and maybe boring). I will continue to share things
as I learn and discover them. I welcome all comments or criticisms
regarding my input.
Thanks... -Jeff
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