Hi All,
I have a client who isn't happy with the amount of elasticity in my G3 characters arms, wanting more rigid bends rather than the softer curves at the elbow joints.
This request came in 'after' I had finished creating, lip-syncing, and animating the character.
Short of re-creating and re-animating everything from scratch as a 2G character to achieve this, is there a way to control the bone strength  - not sure what else to name it, but my 3D software uses bone strength (among other things) to adhere the geometry tighter or looser to bones - I am hoping CTA can do this too, but I cannot find if and/or how this can be done.
Hoping someone can help me find the answer.

The reason the arms and legs bend rather that rotate is that the character is constructed that way.
You would have to modify (or recreate) the character so that it has additional sprites for the arms and legs.

Ex:
Rather than the one sprite for the LArm and LForearm bones that bends, you would have to have a separate LArm and LForearm sprites.
To see what will bend rather than rotate, take your character into Composer Mode and look at the Bones.
You will notice that there are no red "Pins" between the LArm and LForearm.
Rotation occurs around the red "Pins" otherwise there is "bending".

Export your character to a PSD editor. Look at the LArm layer under the RL_Image layer.
Note that it is a single sprite going between the shoulder pivot and the hand pivot.
You need to modify the character to have a separate sprite for the LArm and the LForearm rather than just one sprite from the shoulder to the hand.

The good thing is that once you modify/change your character you can just replace the existing one with your new one.
Most of the movements should be fine but some tweaking might be in order.



For the G3 character on the left (Red top) I modified it to have two (2) sprites for the left arm.
The character on the right (Blue top) is an unmodified G3 character.
Using the G3 elastic folks perform "Hi" motion for both you can see the difference in the left arm.
Where the one on the left (with 2 sprites for the arm) rotates, the one on the right with a single arm sprite bends.

Jeff



Get my Plugin Manager and TaskNotes plugins for iClone.
Check out EZColors and Other products for CTA/CA. EZColors: the easy way to change Render Styled (RS) colors!
See my CTA Tutorials on the YouTube channel CTAStepByStep

Thank you Jeff,
for your well explained answer, and one that saved me hours of work.
As well as your speedy response. Very much appreciate you help.

In the event this helps someone else:
In Photoshop I separated the arm in to LArm and LForearm layers and then created a new Group for the LForearm layer.
Initially I had the LForearm layer sitting inside the LArm Group in Photoshop, but CTA3 didn't detect this when I Imported PSD Assets leaving the forearms empty.
I guess CTA3 would treat LForearm as an alternate sprite to the LArm - as it does with multiple hand layers in the LHand Group.
Creating the LForearm Group resolved this problem.



Jason

Not true!
You are creating a LForearm sprite and assigning it to the LForearm bone my naming the "Layer" the same as the "Bone".
It is not an alternate sprite as the hand sprites.

Jeff


Get my Plugin Manager and TaskNotes plugins for iClone.
Check out EZColors and Other products for CTA/CA. EZColors: the easy way to change Render Styled (RS) colors!
See my CTA Tutorials on the YouTube channel CTAStepByStep