Hi everyone,

I'm pretty new to all of this, as I am mainly a compositor - but one who has dabbled with 3ds Max for some years, but mostly for creating my own environments and props, and recently started using UE5, so I'm not completely alien to the world of 3D.

I only recently picked up CC4 and iClone 8 (on release), but due to my main job, haven't had a lot of time with these yet (except with Character Creator and Headshot 2 - amazing!), so please be gentle if the answer to my problem is obvious!

My problem is this:  I'm trying to create a Viking scene - a boat at sea in a thunderstorm. I already have the characters that I need, the environment is done (bar some minor tweaks), and I have a Viking boat from Sketchfab.  I even have the mocap for the characters (thank you Rokoko Vision!)!

BUT - I decided to have rowers in there, doing their thing...got the mocap for the action. I've got the oar attached to the hands, no problem - but I cannot get the oar to sit in the hole in the side of the hull intended for it.  Because of that, it flies about all over the shop...!

All I need is to figure out HOW to attach it in such a way that it stays where it should. I've tried parenting it to the ship - it does weird things with the ship. I've tried using a physics constraint - but that's not much better either. Especially when I tried to add the mesh of the ship as a collision object in the physics tab - it just crashed iClone! I'm now trying different combos of these, together with the Reach tool, and maybe a null/ dummy object, but not having much luck so far. 

The pivot point is currently in the middle of the oar, which comes close to where it should sit - but that oar just will not stay put! And I have a total of 26 of these to do... 

There MUST be a way to get it to sit on that section of the boat, but so far, it has eluded me. I suspect that the answer is gonna be something really obvious and simple...!

This is not for a professional piece of work, just a personal project, and we're most likely never gonna see them this close up - but for the wider shots, it would be great to see them moving, to get some overall motion in there...!

I've attached a couple of screen grabs so that you can see what I mean about where it should sit, seen from the outside of the boat, and next to the rower.

Any help in solving this would be greatly appreciated!
Many thanks!

 

A quick answer, because it's late, but in general, you would have the oar move the hands.

You wouldprepare the oar animation and then apply Reach Effectors to the hands. Each Reach Effector is linked to the oar and the hands will follow the movement.

The mechanism is explained here: https://manual.reallusion.com/iClone-8/Content/ENU/8.0/50-Animation/Reach_Target/Creating_Body_Motions_with_Effector.htm

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I have not yet tried to use the Reach Effector, but I'm curious: Would the Reach Effector also move the upper body of the rower? An animation with the hands following the oar but the torso being static would probably not look very realistic.


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I actually tried this last night - so I guess we're on the same wavelength for solving such issues! But the problem with that is, it doesn't move the torso, only the hands.  I tried animating the torso to go with the hands - but as I am not an animator, the result looked terrible!  Plus, the oar animation looked bad too - that's on me, as I most definitely am not an animator,...! LOL

I really need the mocap to drive the oar, or this just won't work. I may just ditch the rowers altogether and just have the captain on the deck, as this is a 15 seconds gag short (maybe 30 seconds with some nice cut screens, and around 50 seconds with titles!)  

Thanks for the input though!

Yeah, I tried this approach - the oar stuck to the hands quite nicely, but my problem was with the anchor point, where the oar contacts with the boat.  I just couldn't figure it out - but I ran some other test yesterday evening, and now have some ideas and thoughts on that, that I will try later.

As for animating the oar, as I said in my reply to Animagic, animating the oar works  OK - but as I am not an animator, the end result looked pants! LOL

I think the answer lies in which options to use for which part: we have around 3 options for parenting objects to other objects, including the "look at" function - and I *almost* got it working last night!  Once I uss it out I'll post my results here...IF I suss it out!! Hopefully, someone else will provide the answer...although if I can't make it work today, then I will have to ditch the rowers altogether, which would be a shame. But I really need a finished result by the end of this week, as I have other more pressing matters to deal with next week - like actual paid work, haha...!!  Otherwise, it'll just end up being another unfinished personal project...

BTW, I subscribed to your YouTube channel as there are a few things on there that might come in useful later on down the line!  Your Ocean tests are very similar to what I am doing with this project - except that my scene is done in UE5 with Ultra Dynamic Sky and Waterline Pro, with thunderstorms and a rough sea! I like what you did with your flags - that'll be my next step un UE5, once I have the character animation resolved and completed, and then imported into UE5...  :-)

Maybe the oar's pivot point needs to be at the location of the opening in the boat.



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I thought that too.  The original 3D model (not mine ), the bounding box was not aligned properly with the model.  I corrected this today with an XForm,  and then repositioned the anchor point,  in line with the hull. 

It did improve matters  - but not right away.  I had to get the right order of parenting objects,  the look at function,  and a path with a null/ dummy attached before the motion was correct. 

But guess what?? Now the the motion and anchor point are spot on,  the oar itself is now SCALING DOWN in size throughout the sequence  - and I have no idea why! 😳

I fiddled with it for another couple of hours before claiming defeat.  I'm gonna do all of the object animation in 3DS Max  - and leave the character animation for iClone and Accuface (with Acculips).

I had hoped to do the majority of work in iClone,  but it now seems more trouble than it's worth. 😔

So, far,  this is the only failing that I have found with this app  - but to be fair,  it's pretty specific. 

I'd really like to see Reallusion themselves do a tutorial covering this,  and the problems it can cause,  cos I found pretty much nothing online that helped me this time around...which is rare!

But I've learned a LOT in the last few days,about this app,  so this was NOT a waste of time! I learned more in a week,  than I would normally learn in a month! 😊

I'm loving this app the more I learn  - and I  feel I'm only scratching the surface of what it can do.

I will post results when I have something more positive  - and tomorrow,  I should probably post my settings,  in case the scale issue is something caused by my set up. 

Thanks for the suggestions  - everything is welcome!! 😊

That's really cool!! Thank you!! I will try that tomorrow  - but if I still run into issues,  I will let 3ds max do the object animation,  and iClone can handle the rest. 

In retrospect,  I shoulda started that way! But I've learned a lot about iClone these last few days,  so no regrets at my end. 

I *would* rather do the main bulk of this in one package,  so I will test out your method tomorrow  - Thank you!! Very helpful set of instructions! 😊