Rampa's Corner

Rampa's Corner

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By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

To be filled in with my tutorials, and such.

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Tutorial:
No pace in place. This is my solution for editing out any "pace-in-place" you might get at the beginning or end of an avatar's walk along a path when using the right-click-walk method.

By planetstardragon - 12 Years Ago

awesome idea for a thread topic! I love it, thank you for the Tut's Rampa! :cool:

By Alley - 12 Years Ago

Thank you Rampa, wonderful idea. :)

By toonarama - 12 Years Ago

Excellent tutorial and having them all under one post will make them easier to find - thank you

By Peter Blood - 12 Years Ago

Nicely done rampa. :)

Clears up a lot of questions I had.

:cool: pete

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Here is a new tutorial that I call "Motion Bending". What it really is going on is that the iMotion is being re-oriented at specific timeframes.

By Colonel_Klink - 12 Years Ago

Excellent tutorials, rampa. Thank you very much.

By toonarama - 12 Years Ago

Thank you Rampa

These tutorials are well paced and very clear and paths are one of the things that I really needed help with

all the best

Mick

By rampart - 12 Years Ago

Very good rampa.

Turns can really be a pain.

You could probably use your method without paths and accomplish the same ends.

Thanks for this

By mark - 12 Years Ago

Excellent tip!!!!!:D

By prabhatM - 12 Years Ago

Thanks for the tutorial. It's actually pretty useful !

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

prabhatM (3/3/2014)

Thanks for the tutorial. It's actually pretty useful !

Rampart, it is without paths. That's the whole point.:) With the helpers deleted at the end, the motion goes back to not re-oriented. I used a Right-Click/Move command.

By Peter Blood - 12 Years Ago

Nicely done. Turn and walk simplified. :D Two thumbs up.

:cool: pete

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

It's non-walking motions that will benefit more from this method. I just used a walk because it's very clear what is going on.

Try having your character turn during a dance or guitar playing motion.;)

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Here is a dance clip. First is straight as applied, and second is with a few turns (re-orientations) applied. I left the props in so you can get an idea of where they need to be for each turn.

This is a much more useful application of this method, as a walk can just move along a path.

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Facial Posing

Here is a way to save facial poses to your content library, so you can add them to your timeline whenever you want.
)

By Peter Blood - 12 Years Ago

Rampa: :)

Helpful? Both of these tutes went way passed helpful for me. They have already become essential to my ability to make my characters do what I want them to do. I can't thank you enough for being so generous with your knowledge. :D

:cool: pete

By toonarama - 12 Years Ago

These are great tutorials illustrating how to really use the iclone tools - thank you for taking the time to do them.

By mark - 12 Years Ago

Once again rampa moves to the head of the class!!!!:P:P:P:P:P Great tute!

Keep 'em coming!! :D:D

By rampart - 12 Years Ago

Rampa

It is very good you are taking some of the simplest problem areas for us and clarifying them.

I have already created a number of little tweaky files to cleanup things, resulting from your tutorials.

Really, excellent...

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Using the grass planter for background trees. Part 1

By Colonel_Klink - 12 Years Ago

Hey Rampa. Great tutorial, and great idea to hide the hard edge of the terrain. Thank you for sharing. Just ticked off two things I learnt today: 1. Trees as grass, and changing the fog colour to suit the daytime mood. :D
Cheers
Bob

By theschemer - 12 Years Ago

Great tutorial Rampa. I was in need of some tricks with trees for a future project and this will help a great deal. ;)
Thanks,
theschemer

By Peter Blood - 12 Years Ago

A great idea! Also a very nice tute. super job man.

:cool: pete

By animagic - 12 Years Ago

That was cool, Rampa! And, very well explained. So many tricks to discover...

By richinri - 12 Years Ago

Really helpful stuff, thanks!

By thebiz.movies - 12 Years Ago

Good stuff Rampa.

By mark - 12 Years Ago

Great tute! I used this technique awhile back to create a distant army of zombies...the films in limbo now though :P:P:P:P

There's always something to learn...THANKS!

By rampart - 12 Years Ago

Rampa

I am building a project with 6 to 12 G5 avatars in each scene.

The path has been a particular difficult tool to use. It seems the avatars will follow the path of another avatar as well as the one I define. It seems to be intermittent actions as far as I can tell. I am not saying it is intermittent, because there may be something I am doing that causes these "anomalies".

Yesterday, I spent several hours working with 3 avatars. It was amazing how difficult it was to get thing working correctly.

One Chuck avatar had 4 waypoints on the path and followed the path when I right clicked the persona and selected "walk forward". The finish was sloppy of course. The next action after completing the walk along the path was for the avatar to turn right 120 degress to face the other avatars. I built a simple motion file using key frames to turn the avatar and saved the motion file. The avatar turned the proper direction and it looked like a go. Then I applied a simple idle motion to the avatar from the motions library. The avatar immediately turned back the direction facing as it was walking on the path. I finally got this dog to hunt by creating key frames along timeline using the rotate tool as I best recall.

I experienced this action with other avatars as well. I also tried mix moves and got the same result. The avatar would not retain the turned position I needed. It would revert to the direction it was going along the path. I can probably say... I am missing something in the way I am doing this.

I do know I cannot just apply the idle motion to the avatar after I turned it, and expect it to continue to face in the direction of the turn.

When you get a minute maybe you can think on this and provide an answer.

I haven't studied the iclone documents to try to find a fix. I usually find the docs don't have enough explanations for problems like this. The docs deal with how things are done for a specific action and don't usually work with transitions and problems using multiple or combined other actions.

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Hi Rampart.

How fortuitous. I am slowly putting together a tutorial on keeping the avatar aligned. In a nutshell: think of 3 nested levels of movement. Innermost is moving the avatar's bones (Motion Layer), next are the translate/rotate buttons, and on the outside is the "meta" move. My "motion bending" tutorial was an example of "meta" move. The outer layers of movement effects layers further inward.

Also, take note of the avatar's orientation to there gizmo. If the actor is facing away from the green arrow (-Y), then they will align properly with a new motion that starts with the proper orientation (-Y).

One option. Maybe trickier than it needs to be. By combining the tools when animating a re-orientation of your avatar, use the rotate gizmo, and THEN use motion layer to move the bones to correspond with the avatar's rotation.

Hope this helps:)

By wires - 12 Years Ago

I would like to add an additional point to the excellent tree planting tutorial.

The PNG files required for the diffuse can be created directly from within iClone, therefore saving time searching for images.

Just place one of the default trees on the stage, set the camera to front view and make the tree frame filling. In Export select 32 bit PNG and a screen resolution of PAL (or NTSC). Save the image for use as a diffuse map. Set up a Grass(Tree) planter as described by Rampa and then save it as a custom Grass. If you do this using several tree diffuse maps it is then possible to plant a mixed forest if needed.:)

By DELETED2 - 12 Years Ago

The tree v. grass idea is very good. :) The horizon line is something I battle with on many occasions. This is good for covering those corners.

By animagic - 12 Years Ago

One additional setting I made with good effect is changing the begin and end color to two shades of green. It improves the edges of the trees.

By theschemer - 12 Years Ago

animagic (3/21/2014)

One additional setting I made with good effect is changing the begin and end color to two shades of green. It improves the edges of the trees.

Great tip. That makes a world of difference. :)
Thanks,
theschemer

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

This tutorial gives a couple hints for managing camera movement and jump shots.

By wires - 12 Years Ago

Another excellent tutorial, demonstrating once again that EZ buttons aren't always the best things to use. :cool::)

Thank you,

By colour - 12 Years Ago

Nicely-done, quick, clear & easy to follow, Rampa.

Thanks :)

By justaviking - 12 Years Ago

@Rampa,

Thanks for another wonderful tutorial.

The key things I learned today:

Convert to path...

I tried it just a few days ago, but did not take the next step of attaching the camera to the path. I assumed that would happen automatically. No wonder it didn't seem to work. Duh!
I've done "cameras on paths" before, but I manually created the path first. This makes more sense, especially now that I know I can't skip the "attach" step.

The STEP function...

I wondered why a person would want that. Now it is so obvious. Much easier than setting multiple cameras.

Setting "key frame points" on the path timeline...

I liked the way you described how can can pause the movement on the path. That should make it easier to move my dummy target more smoothly.

So I've "camera on path" before, but your tips should make it easier. I was using too much brute force.

I can't wait to get home a re-do a camera motion I did recently. Hopefully I'll be get better results, and with less effort. It's the "Alrua in the cell" clip I posted in the Pinhead thread recently. In addition to moving the camera, I need to change the target point. I'll point it at a dummy object, and I think your "pause on the path" method will be a great technique for the target object.

Thanks again. I'll post back when I have some results to share.

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Looking forward to seeing it JVK!:)

By theschemer - 12 Years Ago

Great tutorial, lots of good tips and tricks.
Thanks,
theschemer

By justaviking - 12 Years Ago

rampa (3/25/2014)

Looking forward to seeing it JVK!:)

Here it is. :)

Converting the rough camera motion to a path (and then attaching the camera to the start and end path points :blush: ) worked like a charm.

I did the "convert to path" technique with a dummy object, and had the camera LOOK AT the dummy object.

As I said before, I've used this method before, but your tips showed me how to do it more easily.

I'll also be sure to remember the value of the STEP FUNCTION for changing between static camera positions.

Pinhead - The Measure of a Man - WIP from justaviking on Vimeo.

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

That looks superb. Thanks for the two paths in conjunction as well. Makes it very clear how it works.:)

By mark - 12 Years Ago

Another excellent tute! Thanks! ;)

The only variation I like to do, similar to Vik's, is to add a dummy object as a target for the camera to look at instead of the avatar. This way I can refine where the camera is pointing...and by smoothing the keyframes for that dummy I can re-direct the camera's "look-at" a bit. Vik's path for the dummy works great too! :D:D

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Here is dirt path prop that can be easily posed on a flat terrain. It is built from segments rather than one strip of polygons. This insures that there will be no texture distortion where it bends. This is especially important for sharp bends.

The video explains how to use it. Ummm, I guess, um, I, umm, needed more, um, coffee!:P

If you see shimmering, raise the entire prop up "0.1" on the Z axis. The segments will not shimmer against one another, as every other one is offset slightly up or down.

Free natch! Download and enjoy!

By animagic - 12 Years Ago

That, um, was a very useful idea! Thanks also for the freebie.

By wires - 12 Years Ago

Thank you, um, very much for, um, sharing. :):hehe:

By theschemer - 12 Years Ago

Neeeow, that is useful. :) I can see using that a lot. Although you said it would not be good for water, could you suggest a way to make a puddle or two on the road or path?
Thanks,
theschemer

By mark - 12 Years Ago

Always good stuff from Master rampa!!! Thanks!!!:D:D:D

By rampart - 12 Years Ago

Rampa the trail road thing is good, but you explanation about how you created it to start is not shown. You might think to start square one and work through it for newbs.

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

rampart (4/1/2014)

Rampa the trail road thing is good, but you explanation about how you created it to start is not shown. You might think to start square one and work through it for newbs.

I'll see what I can do.:cool:

By justaviking - 12 Years Ago

@Rampa,

Thanks for the tutorial.

I may have a need for a path like that in the very near future.

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

As requested, here is a tutorial on actually creating a foot path, or road, from segments.

I did mention that I thought it was not ideal for water in my previous tutorial. It does work, but the video bump maps sometimes look a little odd where the segments blend together when they are rotated.

By The Mythical Dragon - 12 Years Ago

Excellent tutorial rampa. Very informative and useful.

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

I take it back about the water! You need to be really careful with the specular, and avoid refraction. On the plus side, it's possible to create very sophisticated water flow. Think flowing around rocks.

Armstrong, You'll be very interested in my next tutorial on this!:D

By Colonel_Klink - 12 Years Ago

Very cool, Rampa. Bendy Thing is very impressed :)

By rampart - 12 Years Ago

It is very good you made this last video. I was playing with this and was not using the opacity tool for rounding the corners. I ended up using circular primitive. I like your way better because I better visualize the structure of the path on turn angles.

This is a very good tutorial and you explained it well.

You have me hooked, each time I open the forums I look first for this thread for new ideas.

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Colonel_Klink (4/2/2014)

Very cool, Rampa. Bendy Thing is very impressed :)

Bendy Thing. Meet Segmenty Thing. Segmenty Thing. Meet Bendy Thing.

To answer your PM here:

I had initially merged the structure, and found it to be helpful to pose a series of bones. The segments overlap enough that you can only select every other one in the preview window. I forget why I released it un-merged. Probably because the IK was awkward. But I think your idea to merge everything is a good one, and encourage people to do so if it helps in the posing.:)

I suppose having them un-merged allows for further editing of each segment as well. Although, you can still apply materials to each segment with the paint bucket when the prop is merged.

By Colonel_Klink - 12 Years Ago

rampa (4/2/2014)

Bendy Thing. Meet Segmenty Thing. Segmenty Thing. Meet Bendy Thing.

Bendy Thing says "howdy" :)

To answer your PM here:

I had initially merged the structure, and found it to be helpful to pose a series of bones. The segments overlap enough that you can only select every other one in the preview window. I forget why I released it un-merged. Probably because the IK was awkward. But I think your idea to merge everything is a good one, and encourage people to do so if it helps in the posing.:)

I suppose having them un-merged allows for further editing of each segment as well. Although, you can still apply materials to each segment with the paint bucket when the prop is merged.

I've been adapting Bendy Thing as a road tool, and so far it works quite well using the bone structure. Of course Bendy Thing is just a single mesh and may not have the same flexibility as Segmented Thing. One reason I have not released Bendy Thing atm is that when in use the ends of Bendy Thing get distorted in Iclone, although this doesn't happen in Max or a couple of other 3D apps I have tried it in. The distortion may be an Iclone fault, I'm guessing. In much the same way when animating cubes etc in Iclone. Still, the drawing board is still at work and I'm sure there is a work around for it.

By theschemer - 12 Years Ago

Great tutorial on how to make the prop from step one to finish. Make more like this when possible. :D
Thanks,
theschemer

By theschemer - 12 Years Ago

Hey Rampa,
I was trying to put some water on top of the road and you are correct, water does not work on top of the road as the circles from the design start to interfere and show through when the water is scaled. I wanted to make some puddles. I can just create a section of square or rectangle and use it in between I think or just put the water puddle on the terrain. Not a big deal though as the road is great as a road. :)
Thanks,
theschemer

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

So, I am working on a river/creek builder that allows for flow around rocks, and whorls. Here's a brief example using just the basic water path. I'm working on a few pre-built elements to make it quicker to set up.

By Colonel_Klink - 12 Years Ago

That looks cool, Rampa. I can see that working in with Bendy Thing Rover, espcially for eddys and current swirls.
Well done.

By rampart - 12 Years Ago

Your water bending is good stuff.

In most cases all we need to do is get the water to flow in the defined channel in one direction *like water flows

So, your careful attention to detail makes it good for those of us that just need a river to flow along it's channel, and the addition of water swirls and passing around obstructions are a bonus.

By The Mythical Dragon - 12 Years Ago

Looking good rampa, you're making great progress

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Here is my water builder kit and a tutorial video. Watch the tut, and download the zip file below.

By The Mythical Dragon - 12 Years Ago

Very amazing rampa and thank you tremendously for being so generous. I tried it out in iClone and it works awesome. You did a terrific job.

By mark - 12 Years Ago

Super cool and very wet!!!!:P:P:P:P:P Thanks!

By theschemer - 12 Years Ago

Great job Rampa. How do you add bones to the tiles? I never got that far yet. :D
Thanks,
theschemer

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

theschemer (4/5/2014)

Great job Rampa. How do you add bones to the tiles? I never got that far yet. :D
Thanks,
theschemer

Hi theschemer,

To add bones, attach your tiles (or whatever) hierarchically. Then select the parent and look in the modify panel at the bottom of the "Attach" tab. You will see a button that says "Merge". There can be many children connected to a single parent, or a simple linear hierarchy. You can get as complex as you want, as long as you have parent-child relationships.

Then you r ready to use the "edit animation layer".

By theschemer - 12 Years Ago

Thanks Rampa. The extra lessons that go with your props are much appreciated by me and I am sure others as well. Keep up the great work and thanks. ;)
theschemer

By lynn3d - 12 Years Ago

Great job and a very nice solution, Rampa, thank you very much :D

By The Mythical Dragon - 12 Years Ago

I did not know it added bones when you merged props. Learn something new all the time. Cool
Thanks rampa!

By wires - 12 Years Ago

Totally awesome!!! Thank you very much for investing so much time and effort to help other users. :):cool::hehe:

By rampart - 12 Years Ago

Rampa

The really good part about your tutors

You are taking fundamental things that aren't readily understood or explained in the documents. This is all very good, and should be good example for all tutorials. You start with the little pieces and make the big pieces. Very impressive :)

Thanks for sure!

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Glad the water is helpful!:)

Hint. I CAN'T REPLICATE THIS:blush:, so I take back the hint. feel free to experiment. If all your water is on the same level, you can use the default (built in) water just under it to get reflections. Just lower the opacity of the water path a bit.

By Paulillman - 12 Years Ago

Thanks Rampa, as a relative newbie I learned so much from these videos. Keep up the good work, you are easy to follow. I look forward to your next offering.

By sjonesdc - 12 Years Ago

Thank you!!!!

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

I've figured out a couple of things that help me build better heads. So here is a tutorial sharing them. Enjoy!:)

By planetstardragon - 12 Years Ago

excellent tutorial, thank you. I've done tons of heads, but i love your protocol and detail - great stuff!

By TopOneTone - 12 Years Ago

Hi Rampa,

Another great tute. Have a couple of things I'd like to raise :

1. This might seem a little obvious but it suddenly dawned on me as I'm watching what you are doing - I have a large screen attached to my pc. As you were making adjustments to the forehead I'm thinking that you have made it too wide, then I glance over to my pc screen and realise that the large screen has actually distorted the image width and the skin colours are not the same. I must remember to always use the pc screen when doing such fine adjustments.

2. After I have created my head I go into the HEAD TEXTURE editor to make adjustments to skin blemishes, distortions etc , but mainly to adjust the colouring of the scalp and neck as I quite often find these create major problems when adding hair and clothes. If I rely on the SKIN editor I often find it difficult to adjust the skin tones for the Face and the Upper, so that they blend together without ruining the overall look of the character or ending up with obvious join lines, so I use the HEAD TEXTURE editor to compensate. Its pretty tricky because its like adding paint to the face, so it can cause more problems, but I find the kneck join lines and skull colour major problems for my characters. Any thoughts?

Cheers,

Tony

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

"Touching up" your face texture is a very good idea. This tut was just to show how to get a decent looking head relatively quickly.

I felt that head shaping was giving people the most problems.

Usually pictures of faces need a bunch of work before they even get to iClone. Skin shine needs to be removed (unless someone wants their specularity "baked"), shadows need to be removed. Starting with awesome front and side photos results in awesome heads.

There are other head builders out there that people like a lot, but the iClone one is quite powerful, especially if you consider the head adjustment sliders and detail panel, as part of it. And the texture option you mentioned.:)

By Emerald Animation (formerly reelcheapfilms) - 12 Years Ago

Bravo!

I was just posting that the manual's guide for making faces was deficient. This tutorial taught the things I needed to know. Thanks!

By Colonel_Klink - 12 Years Ago

Hi rampa
Thanks a heap for the tutorial. Making faces (sic) was in my plan of things to do. Here is my first attempt. The head is a bit long, but haven't figured out how to squash the proportions yet.

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Hey CK,

That is recognizable as the same person, which can be hard to do iClone!:D

You could try shortening the head in the "Avatar Proportion" panel. Try redoing the head, but pull the side (midline) dots a bit wider. That crucial first step needs to be right because it effects overall head proportioning. Stuff in the later steps should be more "detailing". Think of it like starting from a block of clay.

Let me find a short, wide face to practice on.

By Colonel_Klink - 12 Years Ago

2nd attempt. Managed to get the proportions a lot better, although the colouring needs to be tweaked.

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Superb! Is that one of your pilots?

By Colonel_Klink - 12 Years Ago

rampa (4/15/2014)

Superb! Is that one of your pilots?

I might as well use him.. Can cross one off the list. I was going to model individual actors, but this is a lot quicker. It's actually quite fun. :)

By wires - 12 Years Ago

Another excellent, easy to follow, tutorial. Thank you for taking the time to demonstrate the steps. :):cool:

By theschemer - 12 Years Ago

Great tutorial Rampa,
Although I thought I knew how to work the image editor I learned some valuable tips to make it even easier and faster. ;)
Thanks,
theschemer

By sjonesdc - 12 Years Ago

rampa,

Thank you for the tutorial on making faces. I was having trouble with one and now I'll go back and redo using your tutorial. Thanks again!!!

By mark - 12 Years Ago

Super tute! Great info as usual! Thanks!!!!:D:D:D

By planetstardragon - 12 Years Ago

one trick i learned recently - on the blend texture - use a rust texture, a small subtle amount - it gives the impression of skin blemishes, freckles, imperfections and adds realism to the detail ^.^ #dragonsauce :P

By mtakerkart - 12 Years Ago

Hi Rampa , as usual , it is a very very usefull tutorial . Face is primordial to express emotion.
By the way, I love asymetric face !! ;)

Marc

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

planetstardragon (4/15/2014)

An excellent suggestion!

I actually talked Bigboss into making dual-layer heads a couple years ago. It takes more work to set them up, but allows for eyebrows on the top layer (separate from the skin), and other goodies. Skin can be one layer, and features the other. That way you won't get the noise on the lips if you don't want it. They're high resolution too!

They do not work with the head builder, but the UV's are the same. I build a face with the builder, and transfer the texture. The adjustment sliders allow me to tune the face.

The high resolution is good for bald heads.

http://city.reallusion.com/ContentPreview.aspx?i=JIC8aed783fac7aa69a5

By Peter Blood - 12 Years Ago

Excellent tute Rampa. :)

I always check the side view after adjusting the nostrils to make sure they are aligned and not showing a double line where the nostril meets the cheek. Something else I do to make the face appear more real is to darken the teeth and the whites of the eyes slightly. This will set them back into the head and not make them look painted on. (The Egyptian mummy look :P )

:cool: pete

By The Mythical Dragon - 12 Years Ago

Great tutorial. Very informative. Thank you

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

peterblood (4/15/2014)

Excellent tute Rampa. :)

I always check the side view after adjusting the nostrils to make sure they are aligned and not showing a double line where the nostril meets the cheek. Something else I do to make the face appear more real is to darken the teeth and the whites of the eyes slightly. This will set them back into the head and not make them look painted on. (The Egyptian mummy look :P )

:cool: pete

Good call on the nostrils, and brightness. It can also be very helpful to open the face texture in image editor and simply remove the nose. Just paint over it with skin from the cheek. Same goes for eye sockets, actually. The only features you actually need are the mouth, the eyebrows, and any wrinkles you want.

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Another useful hint for better face creation:

The face creator's default lighting is to bright, at least for my taste. It's actually very easy to change. If you go to this folder"C:\Program Files (x86)\Reallusion\iClone 5\Template\CreateFace", and replace the file called "CreateFaceLight.iLight" with your own light template of the same name, you can make the head preview more natural looking. The defaults tend to blow out a bit and turn yellow on hot areas.

Just set your lighting to a good neutral in iClone and save a template. Name it "CreateFaceLight.iLight".

You can drag the original "CreateFaceLight.iLight" template onto your iclone scene if you want to see what the settings actually are.

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Here are some free jungle vines that have skeletons for posing with the animation layer.

Enjoy the tutorial for how to use them!

By SchachMatt - 12 Years Ago

thanks for the wonderfull vines and the tutorial!

By Grimhilda - 12 Years Ago

Excellent props for embellishing scenes.

Moreover, the tutorial is well-paced and relaxed in mood. It shows someone like me, in passing, the use of controls and functions I hadn't really used before.

Many thanks.

By TopOneTone - 12 Years Ago

Another really great tutorial and very useful freebie prop. I find your stuff so interesting and your presentations are so easy to follow. Thanks Rampa.

By The Mythical Dragon - 12 Years Ago

Thanks Rampa, you're very generous.

By tq.linux - 12 Years Ago

Thank you for very interesting Freebie Prop.

Although I also sometimes converted this type of Prop from Poser/DS4, it was very regrettable that a form is crushed, when bent.
In iClone5, Prop for iClone will be the best.

By wires - 12 Years Ago

@Rampa,

Sir, you are a very generous genius - Thank you very much. :)

By RobertoColombo - 12 Years Ago

Great gifts (vines and tutorial)!!
Thank you very much :)

By Peter Blood - 12 Years Ago

Rampa: :)

You're a very generous as well as talented artist. Thank you very much for this excellent and useful (in more ways than one) prop. Another great tute for my tutorials folder.

:cool: pete

By theschemer - 12 Years Ago

Thanks Rampa. Another great tutorial. :)

By mark - 12 Years Ago

Super cool !!!! I know my Jungle Girl will love 'em!!!!:P:P:P THANKS!!!!:D:D

By Peter Blood - 12 Years Ago

Rampa: :)

Was thinking you might like to see a different use for your wonderful vine prop. How about a hauser draped over a cathead? (Okay a rope hanging over the end of a stick but you get the idea.) I even tied a knot in the end. :w00t:

The difficult made easy thanks to your generosity and talent. :w00t: Thanks man.

:cool: pete

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Nice one there, Pete!

Glad to see the "vine" found a good use.:)

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

WIP

By wires - 12 Years Ago

WOW! :w00t:

This cave has great potential. :cool:

By Peter Blood - 12 Years Ago

The cave prop looks awesome. :w00t: You are certainly breaking new ground with your props.

:cool: pete

By mark - 12 Years Ago

That is sheer spelunkin' goodness!!!!!!:P:P:P

By rampart - 12 Years Ago

This is an awesome project now. Stay with it.. it has huge potential for other things as well.

Many of us have bought cave and tubular passageways. We have spent hours trying to get them joined and configured properly. So yes, this looks like unique breakthrough content.

By toonarama - 12 Years Ago

Brilliant - could have so many uses!

By The Mythical Dragon - 12 Years Ago

Looks Awesome!

By Colonel_Klink - 12 Years Ago

Utterly fantastic, Rampa... I'm impressed.

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Here it is! In the edit animation layer, just rotate/translate any bone. Even the little diamonds are bones. When you are done posing, close the animation layer and save the tunnel as terrain to make it navigable. Make sure your terrain is not set to "use bounding box".

I think it's an interesting alternative for a particular kind of cave, but certainly not a replacement.

Part of what I was after was to make tunnels that did not require careful UV mapping. A more "traditional" approach with the UV mapping would allow for forks and intersections, but I was after just being able to apply a "cylinder" UV. That meant the model needed to be a cylinder.

Keeping it simple to meet some specific needs of a project of mine.

By rampart - 12 Years Ago

Said it before.. Every time I log into forums I look for your thread first.

By justaviking - 12 Years Ago

Great job, Rampa.

Another multi-talented prop from a multi-talented master.

Your generosity is also greatly appreciated.

By RobertoColombo - 12 Years Ago

Thanks a lot!!!! :)

By action_2009 - 12 Years Ago

Thank you for the prop-freebie.
New UV and texture.

Greetings from Germany
action_2009

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Golly, looks like you you've got some big birds roosting in the middle of your tunnel!:D
Or bats!

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Here is a tutorial on how to make your avatars climb stairs more beautifully.

By wires - 12 Years Ago

Brilliant as usual. Thank you for taking the time to put this together and share it. :)

By theschemer - 12 Years Ago

Another useful tutorial. :) Thanks Rampa! :cool:
TS

By mark - 12 Years Ago

AWESOME as usual! Such good info. ;)
I used to use a "Dummy" ramp, as you mentioned, and then just try to adjust the steps to make it work but this is sooooo much better!!!:D:D:D:D

By justaviking - 12 Years Ago

@Rampa - Thank you for another nice, clear tutorial.

@Reallusion - This tutorial illustrates one of my biggest frustrations with iClone; seemingly simple and mundane things are much more difficult than you'd expect them to be.

"Walk up the stairs." That should be so simple.

People all over the world go up and down stairs. It shouldn't take 20 minutes to get moderately acceptable results (no offense to Rampa), especially for a nice, uniform stairway that is not unusually scaled. It's not even a curved or spiral staircase.

It's not like we're creating a bizarre flying spinning Kung Fu kick/chop action. Gwynn isn't going up a rock-climbing wall with randomly placed hand-holds. It's a stairway.

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

JVK, I totally agree!:D

I used to play with this in Moviestorm as well. Some of the same issues there too. Seeing markers of the actual foot-falls was very helpful, though. Some kind of "smart" steps that only allowed proper foot placement would help, with automatic stride adjustment.

I have my customized step saved as a prop, and that helps (a lot). Still a bit fiddly, though.

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Here is a tutorial on stringing motions together. It is quite effective, but requires not using "align actor motion". Actually, it makes stringing motions easier in many ways, to not use it!

And here is the final result.

So let me know if you guys like my rambling style. I am intentionally leaving in my blunders and fixes because I think you can learn from them.:)

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Some additional info:

You really only need one keyframe at the transitions, if you set it to "transition curve/step". Put one at the beginning frame of each clip. Set them to "step" as you go along to avoid confusion.

This has the advantage of not causing any unexpected "blend" glitches, like I had in the tutorial. This is good because, firstly, you needn't take them out (less editing), and secondly, because you can re-save your entire motion again for an un-edited animation.

By Peter Blood - 12 Years Ago

Another great tute. :D I spend alot of time on this but now I'll spend less. :)
Thanks Rampa.

:cool: pete

By theschemer - 12 Years Ago

Rampa,
Your rambling style works for me. I will watch this again in the morning with some coffee to let it sink in but it was very well paced and informative. Now if you could do a quick ramble on making your mud I would be in heaven. :D
Thanks,
TS

By mark - 12 Years Ago

More brilliance on display!!!!:P:P:P:P Super tute!!!!!!:D:D:D:D

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Here is an important follow-up to the "Motion Stringing" tutorial. It shows you how to get the gizmo back under your avatar, and in the proper orientation to use iClone's built-in walk engine.

Think of your avatar as being in a sphere that can rotate freely in any direction. That sphere is the motion layer. Now think of that sphere being inside another sphere that can also freely rotate. That outer sphere is the transform gizmo. When the outer sphere rotates, it rotates the inner sphere with it. So, by counter-rotating the inner sphere, we can have it "hold still".

Both spheres can translate as well, with the same hierarchical rule applying.

By The Mythical Dragon - 12 Years Ago

Great addition to your previous tutorial rampa. Thanks for sharing.

By wires - 12 Years Ago

Rampa, your tutorials are just amazing. :cool: Thank you! :)

By theschemer - 12 Years Ago

Rampa,
Good followup video. And you raised the timeline for clarity on what you were clicking on.
Thanks,
TS

p.s. I heard somebody sneeze in the background. :P

By RobertoColombo - 12 Years Ago

Great tutorials Rampa!!

Thanks a lot for the time spent to make them and to broadcast your know-how.

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Thanks for the support everyone! Much appreciated.

Funny thing is, I usually only figure these things out about a day before I make a tutorial. We do build on past experiences.

It's finally starting to really make sense as a work flow. I can't tell you how frustrating it has been before trying to align motions only to have the blend snap the figure back to the old position. I was trying to the counter-rotation thing on the blends, and having very limited success.

Maybe I'll be able to create an story-animation I feel is worth sharing soon.:)

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Download some "turn" animations.

These are "indicated" left and right turns. The animation does not actually turn, so a rotation with the gizmo in the desired direction is required. This keeps your avatar aligned properly for walking.

They are an answer to a request for such turns that were available in iClone 4.

By mark - 12 Years Ago

Very helpful as always!!!! Thanks rampa!!!!:D:D:D:D

By justaviking - 12 Years Ago

Thanks.

Even though I pretty much figured out most the things you explained, it's really nice to have it clearly shown in one video like that. It made everything much more clear. Great job.

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

And, if you prefer the original ones, here they are. I made a slight height correction.

By Peter Blood - 12 Years Ago

You're awesome Rampa. I'm looking forward to what an animator of your skill can accomplish. I'm sure it will be as ground-breaking as your tutorials. :D

:cool: pete

By mr_vidius - 12 Years Ago

Thank You Rampa! that helps out a lot! I grabbed them motions you did. and they look like they will work fine. and i want to thank you for dangling that...:w00t: oops! sorry.. wrong choice of words.. I mean putting up the video. helps out a lot!

again.. thanks Rampa! you really are awesome!

vidius

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

The video in the other thread?

That was sw00000p.

Glad they worked!

By rampart - 12 Years Ago

Rampa, you mentioned on a posting to me at some point about the similarity in our nicknames.

I was watching an old re-run tv show.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency!

The hospital contact call sign was rampart.

When I signed on I did not look at members list.

So, there you have it...no reason just thought it would work.

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Oh Yeah. My last name is Tinling, so there's the "T". I mentioned because another poster had obviously been skimming a bit to quickly in the posts and gotten us confused. :)

My parents had read a book by an author named "Lobsang Rampa" about the time I was born. It's a Tibetan name, and and I looked very Tibetan when I came out. But I am not actually. My avatar is a real picture of me.

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Well I've been knotting my brain up with 3DXchange for some hours now, and I have fruits of my labors for everyone!

I downloaded the free BVH library from this site, "http://accad.osu.edu/research/mocap/mocap_data.htm", and managed to convert it all into useful iMotions. It's nicer than the trailers park stuff for a couple reasons.

one: I actually fixed the rigs to not be rediculously distorted when converted for iClone. Quite a chore actually, but 3DX pulled through!

Two: The files have descriptive names instead of just numbers.
There are both male and female motions in this collection, but they can be interchanged of course.

There are 250 motions in a big ZIP file. Download them here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3nsNVGroEz6dkE5S0RXOGdRenc/edit?usp=sharing

By colour - 12 Years Ago

rampa (8/24/2014)

This is amazing, Rampa :)

Just tested some random Motions & they work ok with Pinhead G3 Character.

All for free. Can't thank you enough :)

A darned-sight more useful than some very expensive Motions recently advertised in the Marketplace. :ermm:

By RobertoColombo - 12 Years Ago

Rampa, you are simply amazing!
Not only producing and sharing high quality tutorials, but now you also provide this fantastic content for free.
I wish to say a big T H A N K Y O U to you!!

Cheers

Roberto

By Peter Blood - 12 Years Ago

It seems like I'm always thanking you for your creations. I'm happy to do so again.

Thanks man.

:cool: pete

By wires - 12 Years Ago

Awesome as ever Rampa. Thank you very much. :)

By mark - 12 Years Ago

TOO AWESOME!!!!! THANKS for the hard work Rampa!!! :D:D:D:D

My Jungle Girl had better start working out she's got some new moves to do!!!!:P:P:P

By theschemer - 12 Years Ago

rampa (8/24/2014)

Thanks Rampa. :) I thought I had all the motions I needed but that was not the case. I have just started to learn how to modify the motions. This will help a bunch. ;)

By RB3006 - 12 Years Ago

Thanks rampa ..... awesome :D :D :D

Robert

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Here's a quick hint on getting a lot of files into iClone really quickly. Motions, in this case.

By tripfreak - 12 Years Ago

Thank you very much for your really helpful tutorials and your wonderful downloads ! :cool:

By Postfrosch - 12 Years Ago

Hey Rampa
thanks for your good work.

Greets from Germany
Postfrosch (Werner)

By toonarama - 12 Years Ago

Rampa

Having tried similar myself before I really appreciate the time, effort and skill involved. Thank you very much.

By animagic - 12 Years Ago

Very effective tip, Rampa. Thanks!

By wires - 12 Years Ago

Can anyone here figure out the connection between sw00000ps' last post and the general content of this thread? :ermm::Whistling::unsure:

By Emerald Animation (formerly reelcheapfilms) - 12 Years Ago

rampa (8/24/2014)

You, sir, are a god among men. Can't wait to take these babies for a spin! And I see I will need to sift through this thread for all the nuggets.

By animagic - 12 Years Ago

wires (8/26/2014)

Can anyone here figure out the connection between sw00000ps' last post and the general content of this thread? :ermm::Whistling::unsure:

I wondered about that myself, as it is not in the least related... Perhaps sw00000p knows? :blink:

By animagic - 12 Years Ago

Also, let me add my thanks for the motions. That must indeed have been a humongous task. I've downloaded the Trailerpark motions in the past and they do have problems. So, thanks again! :cool:

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

These were fairly clean motions to begin with. Not a bunch of distortions.

because they are libraries, I assumed there would be commonality between all the different files. Yes, male and female were radically different, despite having the same number of bones.

Sometimes I had to rotate bones opposite of the apparent proper way, which looked more distorted, but resulted in proper orientation. Good old bone orientation issues. 3DXchange is awesome, in that it can work with, and correct, that.

The female was floating a foot above the ground for the entire library. I found I had to correct that with the imported BVH before "characterizing". It was then a universal fix that automatically applied to the rest.

So basically, I was able to fuss about with just one of each gender, and then add the rest to be bulk converted by 3DX.

A good learning experience, for sure.

By The Mythical Dragon - 12 Years Ago

Very generous of you rampa, thank you.

By TopOneTone - 12 Years Ago

Wow Rampa you are amazing!
Every time I see your name on a post its a must read.
There is so much really good stuff in your thread, but its now starting to get hard to revisit things with all the pages...maybe Reallusion need to give you your own Directory!
Keep 'em coming Champ!

By Christy0 - 12 Years Ago

Thanks rampa, Just found this now. Great Prop. I love Tunnels :)

rampa (5/22/2014)

PS Thanks for the extra motions too, you always need lots of motions to choose from :)

By Galfridus - 12 Years Ago

Thanks Rampa for the excellent motion conversion files.

Very much appreciated.

Geoff.:)

By thebiz.movies - 12 Years Ago

rampa (4/5/2014)

theschemer (4/5/2014)

Great job Rampa. How do you add bones to the tiles? I never got that far yet. :D
Thanks,
theschemer

Whoa. This is kinda a big deal (at least to me). I didnt know you could do this internally in iclone but how much control do you have over the bone creation? Are you creating all these boned props in Iclone? Another question if you would be so kind...or have the time. Im trying to set up a garage door as 4 connected (boned) rectangles that can be bent and positioned as the door opens and closes. Thoughts? I started messing about in Blender to get this accomplished but in theory I could do this in Iclone.

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

You should take a look at this about merging bones.

http://www.reallusion.com/iclone/help/3dxchange5/pro/03_Pipelines/From_iClone.htm

You might want to do a garage door by hinged physics constraints. It would probably work better. You'll have to look that up though.

By thebiz.movies - 12 Years Ago

Thanks for the link. I had no idea we could do this in Iclone. Good stuff. And great tutes and freebies! I particularly like the tip to use step transition keyframes with a singular camera instead of the multicamera approach. Creative thinking rules the day!

By warlord720 - 12 Years Ago

You DA MAN rampa!!!! Many thanks!:cool:

By justaviking - 12 Years Ago

thebiz.movies (8/28/2014)

I particularly like the tip to use step transition keyframes with a singular camera instead of the multicamera approach. Creative thinking rules the day!

Agreed. I also learned about that while watching a tutorial about other topic. The use of the Step Function for the camera was just a little side comment. That greatly simplified the process I use for my camera work.

That reminds me, I have a couple of tutorials I've been meaning to make. Maybe this weekend will be a good time for me to do that.

By rampart - 12 Years Ago

Making tutors -

Try the open broadcaster

https://obsproject.com/

You will be amazed what you can do with it and it is free.

Also, check out all the youtube videos - search on ( OBS or Open Broadcaster)

You can use it just like a fraps, camstudio, or camtasia for making tutors.

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

So here is my very first complete (nekkid, hee hee) iClone avatar. All visemes and facial motion works. Boobies jiggle too!

The textures are fairly large, hence the file size of the avatar. They can be converted in your favorite editor to something smaller (and more JPEGy) if you wish. There PNGs.

By Galfridus - 12 Years Ago

Excellent Rampa. Thank you.

Geoff. :)

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Hmmm.....

3DXchange and iClone do not display bone nubs, and that can occasionally be confusing.

Case in point:

That female avatar has some awkward heal motion when she bends her toes. The fanciest MakeHuman skeleton puts the heel bone and toe bones in the same place.

It's somewhat subtle. I'm settling on a simpler skeleton for future stuff. We don't need heel bones in iClone.

By animagic - 12 Years Ago

Nice, Rampa, thanks. I just loaded this. Need some clothes for the EULA...:P

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Thanks Anamagic!

I do like the different "look" that I get from Makehuman. The mesh seems like a pretty good resolution also. Of course it'll be wicked high-rez. next year with iC6.

That one has facial bones so she can have her visemes and what not adjusted by anyone with 3DXchange. Makehuman has decided to go the bone-morph route instead of the mesh-morph route.

By animagic - 12 Years Ago

I installed MakeHuman 1.0.2 and it really looks nice compared to what it was years ago. I created a character for which I used the MayaIK rig, which is recognized in 3DXchange.

It's a pity that the character doesn't come with a T-pose, though. You can do this in Blender apparently, but I'm not well-versed in Blender. The T-pose for Maya provided in 3DX has a strange effect an the MH character...:unsure:

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

The HumanIK is the best one to use. You'll get much less distortion in the shoulders if you assign the bones just after the collar bones to be collar bones in the characterization panel.

I'm getting better at rotating them into a t-pose. It requires a lot of back and forth with those upper arm bones. I "counter rolled" the upper (shoulder) one first so it was square with world. Then I could pivot it up in a single dimension. Then I rolled it back. Very tedious!

By animagic - 12 Years Ago

That's what I meant actually; in 3DX it's called the Maya Human-IK (not MayaIK).

I guess with practice it gets easier to do a T-pose. It would be nice if 3DX had a mirror option when you adjust the bones.

By thedirector1974 - 12 Years Ago

Many thanx for your fantastic tutorials. I really learned some things in the "stringing motions" tutorial. Very good. Thank you ver much ...

Direx

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

So here is my latest avatar creation. Bit of a forest sprite of some sort.

There are two skin layers. That green, stringy stuff is on the outside layer right now, but can be replaced with any image or video. You get all texture channels on each layer.

She walks, talks, emotes! I made the visemes extreme, but anyone with 3DX can edit them. They are bone based, so it's pretty to move the bones around. Note that only the last bone in the chain is weighted. The others are for posing, apparently. That's the Makehuman facial bone rig.

So..... Go ahead and give me feedback.

By mark - 12 Years Ago

Love the new Avatar. You may have already noticed the lower leg distortions especially when doing a dance-move...

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Ouch! That's gotta smart!

Thanks for finding that one Mark. I must say, I am not totally impressed with this Makehuman Workflow yet. I know that Bigboss completely re-weights his Makehuman models.

The original heel distortion was a heel bone that wiggled with the toes. But the skeleton does not have those bones. Weird.

I found a bone-roll issue with the eyes as well. Try having her look at the camera. I wonder if the calf distortion could be a roll issue as well.

This process is getting me to learn Blender. :)

Edit:
OK, it's just a few poorly weighted verts. Calf to foot bone.

By mark - 12 Years Ago

I knew you would get 'er figured out. It's got great possibilities for sure!!!:D:D:D

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

And here I was assuming the Makehuman team had weighted things really carefully. Certainly not the only mis-weighting I've seen so far.

By bluemidget666 - 12 Years Ago

She looks AWSOME .. Weights off but you know that loll..

You've done a excellent job on her face, lots of character ...

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

So here is my first attempt at a semi-cartoon Makehuman avatar.

He is very expressive, but tends to be the silent type. ;)

By Sifr - 12 Years Ago

rampa (9/8/2014)

So here is my first attempt at a semi-cartoon Makehuman avatar.

He is very expressive, but tends to be the silent type. ;)

Great work Rampa, you did that totally in Makehuman? I may want to re-investigate this program.

By mark - 12 Years Ago

This guy is way cool and seems to making all the "right moves" as well!!!;)

By mtakerkart - 12 Years Ago

Hi Rampa ,

Did you fix the rolling eyes problem ?
I have the same problem with the autodesk avatar generator , when I select "look at" the eyes
roll to brain-side !!

Thank's

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

mtakerkart (9/8/2014)

Hi Rampa ,

Did you fix the rolling eyes problem ?
I have the same problem with the autodesk avatar generator , when I select "look at" the eyes
roll to brain-side !!

Thank's

I'm trying different bone-roll corrections, but have not hit on just the right one yet. I'll have to take a closer look at an RL avatar's eyes. So, not yet!

I kind of love and hate the face rig that is going into Makehuman. Obviously, I was able to make a very emotive character, but the lower lips are part of the jaw which gets made unavailable because it's reserved for jaw-only morphs in 3DX. :crying:

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

OK. This confirms what we are seeing with "eyes-looking-at-brains", and maybe a fix.

Makehuman uses Blender bone orientations. No idea if their FBX changes that. I'll have to play with these other options.

From the net.

"Blender is famous for switching it's Z axis for what is usually another 3D apps Y axis. It took me some time to get used to this, but it's second nature now that I use blender more than most any other 3D package now.

That being said, I would recommend you export your rigged object/mesh via FBX. In the FBX export settings, select the "Rot x90" button, and see if that fixes your problem.

Here is my other trick for exporting rigs from blender to other 3d apps: I learned in Blender some time ago, to create character rigs with the character's head bone pointing towards the +Y axis, so the character is "lying on the floor" in the Blender 3D view. This allows for better export of constraints and rigs to most-other 3d packages, not sure how known this trick is. I then parent the rig to an empty in Blender, and rotate it 90degrees on the x so the rig then appears to be standing upright while I work on it in Blender."

Reach targets work as expected, so the eyes may be a special case in the iCloneverse?

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Sooooo........ If I skip the Blender step, The "look-at" still doesn't work right. Head does, but eyes do not. As soon as I assign them as eyes, and use "Look At" kablooey!

By mtakerkart - 12 Years Ago

Thank you very much Rampa,

But it is too much tricky for me because I don't know Blender, it's an autistic tool for geek people ;)

I can manage the "look at" with the old fashion....

By rampart - 12 Years Ago

Hi Rampa

Just going back over some of your videos, refreshing my memory.

Those videos you do working with the motions are very good. You explain things very carefully and patiently. Newbs have got to love you.

One big problem, some may have missed.
iclone motions have some anomalies that are frustratiing. Example, if you use a motion and then the motion completes...when you resume with another motion the character turns around of does some other action, but doesn't proceed along the previous line of motion.

I realize the use of dummy props and the subsequent movement of the prop does the trick. You have a real good communication ability, and you work through the most trivial of actions the user must take.

I was watching one of your videos and you were mentioning applying a keyframe to the motions layer, and then keyframing the transform in the timeline for editing motions. You did speak of it, and since I am abit more experienced with the timeline I picked up on your mentions. I wonder, if less experienced people might be similar inclinded.

Maybe, at some point you could develop a couple of videos where you carefully explain how you visualize and use the keyframing in the timeline. The timeline explanations do pretty well stink from all I have ever seen. I am still amazed that RL just lets things go indefinitely and misses some of the more important things to new users.

After working with the timeline for the past couple years. I realize by keyframing and placement of my keyframes properly I can do things with Iclone I never imagined.

Eventually you do learn there is only one way to competently edit your videos... - timeline keyframing is the key to understanding and working with iclone.

Character bones and the 1K thing has it's problems as well, and the explanations available are not very well done. My gosh just editing motions with the iclone tools can drive you nuts when you first start with iclone. Simple motions can become so difficult to concept in your mind you can end up with totally distortions of the character. :w00t:

A final thought.. dummy props can be a difficult thing for people to understand. Especially, in some of the more complex applications. I only mention dummy props, because you have done a pretty good job of working dummy props and motions in some of your videos.

Anyway, thanks for your videos I think they help everyone. :)

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

Thanks Rampart!

I do look for things to base my tutorials on that are tricky to understand, and are really neccessary to understand. When those two converge, it is something very key to basic iClone operation. There are a lot of good tutorials out there, that usually don't need repeating. My idea is to expand out those tricky little "niche" techniques so that they become big and broad and easy to see and understand. Often times that is just getting the steps of the procedure in the right order, like the face-fitting. When I thought of it as steps from course to fine, it improved the faces I made by several hundred percent. So, starting with basic face-layout, and progressing to detail is what made it work. The eyes in step one were the most important part to having success.

Motions are the same way. The biggest hurdle was not the "motion" of the motion, but the placement of the motion in space. It needed to be simplified! When it finally dawned on me that I could separate the two (by un-ticking the alignment boxes), it then became 2 steps, and made a lot more sense. Thus my "motion stringing" tutorial.

I suspect the whole thing of there being a "root", and the actual avatar base in the hips is a difficult concept. The "dummy" prop is sort-of akin to making a new root. It gives a visible anchor to manipulate the avatar from, as if the avatar were in a little compartment.

I've been a iClone user sense version 4, and must admit that for the first year, I had a lot of confusion. Granted, I was busier with real-life at the time, and also was still a major Moviestorm user. Moviestorm solved the motion issue by using a "closed" system that was made so that all motions were already at the proper location and rotation. Made motions easier, but less flexible.

A lot of iClone motions (in the packs) are in proper location and orientation, but "suffer" from things like foot stance variation. The masking feature in the Motion Puppet was a huge step in solving this. We could finally mask out parts of motions. The problem though, is that it is INSIDE the Motion Puppet, and really should be available for any timeline motion applied to an avatar by double-click from the motion library.

There is the Motion Modify, that can also help in this situation, and I may create a tutorial on stance correction using it.

I'm really hoping that the Reallusion team implements a sophisticated locomotion system like that one we were discussing in the other thread. With the big push for pre-viz, it would go a long ways in making iClone a better tool for. A good pre-viz tool should be as easy or easier than a game for having the avatars move around the set.

By rampart - 12 Years Ago

Interesting you mentioned the previz thing. IMO, all the emphasis by RL for iclone previz solutions is not there. I just can't see movie producers trying to do a previz without a very competent iclone dev working for them. There are so many things that have to be addressed (beyond animated characters and props). Just picking up props and grasping them isn't easily done in iclone. I use some workarounds and tricks to accomplish these actions.

Facilitating the movements of characters around the set, walking, turning,etc. are things we have discussed previously. I'm not sure RL would have to reinvent the wheel for these motions. These kinds of motions could probably best be accomplished with a simplifier tool of some sort that would accomodate less experienced users.

Even when Previz was first introduced all I could think of... where are they going to get the kind of iclone expert that can do the things movie producers need. Time is critical and tolerance for someone trying to tweak an avatar for possible changes in a scene (on the fly)...IMO would not be tolerated.

I respect the fact I can do more with iclone over other animated video tools. That is good, but just like some of the other more famous comprehensive software there should be some tools that don't fully address the competency of the software. This may sound rough and not good reasoning, but when time and efficiency are important not having the Holy Grail of video content quality might not be considered a fail.

This might be thought of as a hard saying. I think all the emphasis and effort being made to promote the previz is a waste of time, effort and resources for using a product like iclone unless efficiency and speed of production for respectable content production is greatly improved. Iclone just doesn't hit the mark, and I am not comparing to any other software.

The idea is good, maybe some people will buy into it. Sadly, after working with the iclone and some of the inordinately tedious methods for doing things less experienced persons will split. :crying:

By Rampa - 12 Years Ago

This is a tutorial on stance correction between motions to minimize foot sliding. I was looking for an effective way that would be simpler and cleaner than keyframing.

By Lamias - 12 Years Ago

Rampa that was great!! It's like you said, you can use key framing to adjust the feet, but it's much cleaner to use the way you are showing!!

Way to go!!

By wires - 12 Years Ago

The God of motion strikes again. :cool: :)

Excellent as always. Thank you.

By rampart - 12 Years Ago

This is good. Working with the keyframes requires more work.

By animagic - 11 Years Ago

rampa (8/5/2014)

Here is a tutorial on how to make your avatars climb stairs more beautifully.

I was interested in viewing this tutorial again, but it's no longer available. The same with several others. Are they hosted elsewhere?

By Rampa - 11 Years Ago

animagic (10/21/2015)

rampa (8/5/2014)

Here is a tutorial on how to make your avatars climb stairs more beautifully.

I was interested in viewing this tutorial again, but it's no longer available. The same with several others. Are they hosted elsewhere?

I got rid of almost everything iClone 5 related a while back. That one probably could use a redo soon for iC6. They're not anywhere else. Sorry, I just didn't want anybody asking me about UI differences in the comments, because I generally don't get around to checking them. So decided to toss older stuff.

By animagic - 11 Years Ago

rampa (10/21/2015)

That's a pity, really. I hope you will find the time to redo them, because they were very valuable. And there is still no easy way to walk up and down the stairs...:crying: I hope RL will seriously work on the locomotion part of iClone because that's really lacking. I mean, who needs more dance motions...:unsure:

Seriously though, there are other iClone 5 tutorials out there and you would hope people have the intelligence to know that there are differences and how to work around them.

By mark - 11 Years Ago

...there's a difference between iC5 & iC6 ??!!! :P:P:P:P:P:P:P

By Rampa - 11 Years Ago

Give me a day or so, and I can get something up on the stairs.

I'm pretty sure RL is still working on the new locomotion system. Knowing how cool thir recent new tools have been, I think they'll hit another home run.