|
By GreedyPeopleSuck - 8 Years Ago
|
I was playing with golf swing mocap data, and I followed this tutorial, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eha1cLjALcE but it absolutely does not work for a golf motion. The IK is broken at the wrists with reach targeting. I got the grip to be more or less good enough, but there is no possible way to do a golf swing because the wrists are impossible to put in the right place once you use a reach target.
It would work perfectly if you could attach each hand to the same object. Does anyone know of a work around? I tried daisy chaining dummies, but I get the error message that something cannot attach to itself.
Close enough for now. A good test would be interlocking fingers.
Off balance, but wrists are normal.
If addressing ball, then it's broken. No way around it. I also tried gripping in this setup, but then it just breaks elsewhere. It's limitation of the reach target. The IK is pretty good for hip and body rotation. The wrists are just FUBAR.
The iClone house tutorials always depict the program in the best light. The situations where iClone struggles are never chosen. :-)
|
|
By GreedyPeopleSuck - 8 Years Ago
|
sw00000p (1/22/2017)
nadiak (1/22/2017)
I was playing with golf swing mocap data, and I followed this tutorial, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eha1cLjALcE but it absolutely does not work for a golf motion. The IK is broken at the wrists with reach targeting. I got the grip to be more or less good enough, but there is no possible way to do a golf swing because the wrists are impossible to put in the right place once you use a reach target. It would work perfectly if you could attach each hand to the same object. Does anyone know of a work around? I tried daisy chaining dummies, but I get the error message that something cannot attach to itself. Yeah, there is that. :crying:
BigDaddy RL.... Dis where day needs... "List Controller"
...for the "Orientation Constraint" = Reach Target
or add the ability to add (2) objects (when using Reach Target).. and "Weight" the values between the to objects.
Very Accurate. :Wow:
I'm sure it is all possible in blender, but I think gripping objects is a big part of what makes humans, human. Golf is the hardest motion you can throw at it I think. It's very easy to tell in sports who has a clue and who doesn't instinctively from small details. This is where 3D is hard. Too much uncanniness.
I played around with a real club. The hands are very malleable. They can contort in weird ways.
|
|
By Rampa - 8 Years Ago
|
The reach target IK chain stops at the wrist (the beginning of the hand bone). So there where you are locked. Attaching the dummies to the grip gets you half-way there, but it will take some careful animation of the hands to get them realistic in their motion.
As sw00000p has noted, our hands are extremely pliable. They are also responding to "wiggle" in the real world that can distort their shape. That can't happen in iClone. There is no physics acting on the avatar bodies.
I have always considered it a bug that the wrists are locked. I think the IK chain need to end at the first bone of the middle finger or thumb.
|
|
By GreedyPeopleSuck - 8 Years Ago
|
|
rampa (1/22/2017)
The reach target IK chain stops at the wrist (the beginning of the hand bone). So there where you are locked. Attaching the dummies to the grip gets you half-way there, but it will take some careful animation of the hands to get them realistic in their motion.
As sw00000p has noted, our hands are extremely pliable. They are also responding to "wiggle" in the real world that can distort their shape. That can't happen in iClone. There is no physics acting on the avatar bodies.
I have always considered it a bug that the wrists are locked. I think the IK chain need to end at the first bone of the middle finger or thumb.
Thanks for the explanation. I am still working on a solution. The animation looks perfectly fine when the club is in one hand attached, it just sucks that reach target makes it behave so weirdly.
I will share in this thread if I find a solution.
|
|
By Rampa - 8 Years Ago
|
Well. I have to take that back. The wrists are rotating. Guess it's been a while since I used the reach targets. :blush:
EDIT
Make sure you have rotation enabled for the targets, and pose the hands really carefully. The pictures you showed are holding the club very straight, but it should be angled across the fingers. I would call your picture a 90 degree grip, and it needs to be 45 degrees. Also set the pivot of the club at the wrist of the back hand.
|
|
By GreedyPeopleSuck - 8 Years Ago
|
|
rampa (1/22/2017)
Well. I have to take that back. The wrists are rotating. Guess it's been a while since I used the reach targets. :blush:
EDIT
Make sure you have rotation enabled for the targets, and pose the hands really carefully. The pictures you showed are holding the club very straight, but it should be angled across the fingers. I would call your picture a 90 degree grip, and it needs to be 45 degrees. Also set the pivot of the club at the wrist of the back hand.
The photos are with reach target. It's normal not using reach target before lowering and rotating the club, but then I can't attach two hands. The wrist rotates but it's very strange. The position IK wants it to be in is not humanly possible unless your wrist is broken.
Progress, maybe the solution: I'm fairly certain the rig is just wrong for the thumb in the way it moves. This is quite a bit of work and will make this a non-standard character. I challenge RL to make a natural looking golf swing. This will solve a lot of issues.
|
|
By GreedyPeopleSuck - 8 Years Ago
|
I can't find a way to edit pivot point from high in wrist lower when using a reach target. It would work too as well if there is some way to change the pivot point of the wrist. As mentioned earlier, the club is connecting to the wrist, which makes no sense.
I am going to put this one off for a future free day. I got it to grip ok finally, not sure how, but the IK is wonky. 
Tedious editing as you must twist the finger quit a bit, but it looks good enough for the medium.
|
|
By GreedyPeopleSuck - 8 Years Ago
|
The arms were penetrating the body on my model with a perfect setup, and I plugged it in with the stock CC Christian. The problem still exists. I think some of these problems arise from the people doing it not understanding anatomy. Christian has cartoonish proportions and a very bad case of lordosis.
The golf swing puts arms squished against the body, but I don't think it goes through...
I also think that the CG is thrown off with the reach target. Christian is going to fall over himself after he hits the shot.
|
|
By Rampa - 8 Years Ago
|
@Nadiak. That is looking pretty good. :)
What I meant by changing the pivot was for the club, not the character. The fulcrum of the club (lever) is at the back hand, so that is wher you would want the rotation to happen. Since your using a reach target, the club determines the rotation. The reach target makes it the end of the IK chain.
Select the club, and find the "Edit Pivot" in the modify panel. It's a toggle button. When pressed, you can then use the gizmo to move or rotate the pivot. Move it to the position of the rear hand, then un-toggle the button. Now when you rotate the club, it rotates at the point of the rear hand.
|
|
By urbanlamb - 8 Years Ago
|
When i do things sometimes I use the little "ball" 3d primitives say if you want someone to grab something complicated I attach those balls and then make the hands etc grab there. Then I can move the balls err sphere i guess one should say .. nevermind i wont go back and correct it my terminology works for me. I usually put 1 ball for each hand where i want the hands to go and then put the hands there.
Sometimes changing the pivot or the main object has unintended side effects err although the golf club is pretty simple as an object.
(i swear i am sober and that was serious but now that i read it LOL oh well anyhow yeah goes back to my set building)
|
|
By urbanlamb - 8 Years Ago
|
|
swoop you can get precise with the pivot its just i find it often doesn't work (depends on how the object is made) if he is using something he purchased or whatever sometimes you need to make do. So sometimes you need to work around that so just use spheres (or balls) i like spheres and move things around by the spheres. It works its not pretty but it works i guess this would be the same as using some sort of external rig in your software same idea.. .
|
|
By urbanlamb - 8 Years Ago
|
I wasn't talking about blender I was talking about fixing it in iclone.
I dont even know (i can't remember cause i pretty much own all my own stuff and make it myself now so can do whatever i want with it) if he could export an object intact to do that without paying for an export license. I am also assuming he isn't using blender....
|
|
By GreedyPeopleSuck - 8 Years Ago
|
rampa (1/22/2017)
@Nadiak. That is looking pretty good. :) What I meant by changing the pivot was for the club, not the character. The fulcrum of the club (lever) is at the back hand, so that is wher you would want the rotation to happen. Since your using a reach target, the club determines the rotation. The reach target makes it the end of the IK chain. Select the club, and find the "Edit Pivot" in the modify panel. It's a toggle button. When pressed, you can then use the gizmo to move or rotate the pivot. Move it to the position of the rear hand, then un-toggle the button. Now when you rotate the club, it rotates at the point of the rear hand.
Oh yes, this was first thing I did. :-)
What is weird is in iClone real time Mocap , it is impossible when attached (not a reach target) to have the club not be in the air, even rotating the club to compensate. The IK doesn't behave normally in the arms no matter what. There are some issues with this motion. Keyframing does work, but it's very difficult to do well.
I'm really not sure how I got the wrists to stay a bit more natural, perhaps it was the order of operations. One thing is for sure, that bringing the club to the top it still becomes a clusterf--k.
I wish there was a way to do Mocap with reach targeting. If reach targeting made the object reach for the hands, instead of the other way around it might make more sense.
|
|
By Rampa - 8 Years Ago
|
|
Might be a better idea to attach the club to the back hand then, and have only the forward hand using a reach target. That way the swing is guided by the avatar's hand, but the other will follow nicely.
|
|
By GreedyPeopleSuck - 8 Years Ago
|
|
urbanlamb (1/22/2017)
I wasn't talking about blender I was talking about fixing it in iclone.
I dont even know (i can't remember cause i pretty much own all my own stuff and make it myself now so can do whatever i want with it) if he could export an object intact to do that without paying for an export license. I am also assuming he isn't using blender....
I can do it in blender, but then it is a non-standard character. The interchangeable nature of iClone is a huge plus because once I make an asset it is there. Unfortunately, the allembic import/export doesn't work very well in iClone or Blender, and you can't wrap up an entire scene from iClone. Blender is a time suck, but everything is possible.
I personally never liked 3D animation in particular because I can express the same ideas in less time 2D. Any long running project needs 3D these days however, because you can scale up with other animators. In 2D you will not get very good results because there are exceptionally few capable artists, and even fewer that can match a style easily. Dealing with artists is also a lot worse than dealing with procedural minded staff who can place assets around and follow rules. It's why a lot of animation has gone to Korean and Filipino houses.
iClone won't render anything feature film like, but youtube currently is about fast turnaround and medium quality. The attention spans are so short that volume is far more important than maximum quality for most projects. I'm definitely not worried that the golf swing looks exact, but I would like to do it as quickly as possible if I know my best result is medium quality anyway.
|
|
By GreedyPeopleSuck - 8 Years Ago
|
|
rampa (1/23/2017)
Might be a better idea to attach the club to the back hand then, and have only the forward hand using a reach target. That way the swing is guided by the avatar's hand, but the other will follow nicely.
I tried that last night, but got distracted with another method. I am going to try this now. I think this is a good strategy. The question is which hand would be better? In golf, the right hand does almost nothing like shooting a basketball. You can hit the ball nearly as well with just the left hand if right handed.
|
|
By GreedyPeopleSuck - 8 Years Ago
|
|
sw00000p (1/23/2017)
[quote]nadiak (1/23/2017)
...I can do it in blender,.
Do you know what bone-based animation is?
Can you animate a character (swinging a golf club) using bone-based animation?
...shouldn't take more than one minute. :w00t:
but then it is a non-standard character. The interchangeable nature of iClone is a huge plus because once I make an asset it is there.
Does this mean you can not apply Blender's (Bone-Based Animation) to your character.
Yes, this works, but then you still have to link objects to have them behave normally in iclone when they collide. Any idea why reach targets hate motions so much?
I can unfortunately report that mixing reach target and linkage/attach doesn't work for this particular problem. Reach target just behaves so weird.
One thing that works well with just linking and mocap is clubbing someone to death like Michael Skakel. IK seems to work much better if it's just one arm.
|
|
By GreedyPeopleSuck - 8 Years Ago
|
sw00000p (1/23/2017)
nadiak (1/23/2017)
Any idea why reach targets hate motions so much?I think you should do some Reallusion tutorials... But... Start from the beginning.... so you thoroughly understand what's occurring.
That's the problem, the tutorials are wrong. Your explanation makes sense though, thank you.
I saw no reason why FK isn't possible with a reach target as explained, but they conveniently leave things out in the documentation and the tutorials. They only want to show the easiest example of how to do things.
Just exporting to CC from Blender is not documented anywhere for example. There are 10 different things you must learn by trial and error to go to the ZBrush>Blender>Substance>CC. Blender renames materials, substance to Blender to CC screws up UVs, Blender fbx export randomly corrupts files, you have to use a specific version of blender, and specific plugins to unwrap UVs. I think there needs to be a wiki documenting these processes in addition to the documentation. I'm happy to add to it. I probably will forget next week how to do it myself.
Blender with prop in hand seems to be the best way to do this. It's pretty annoying. I tried everything,
|
|
By GreedyPeopleSuck - 8 Years Ago
|
|
sw00000p (1/23/2017)
nadiak,
You've got to remember... This is a money game.
You really can't blame Reallusion for not telling you how to do the advanced steps.
How could they make money telling everything.
TRUTH..... NO software does that.
These steps are reserved for their training DVD.
Not many will use your software without proper documentation. Tutorials are nice sometimes, but nobody will make paid tutorials unless there is a user base. I don't really need tutorials as much as I need the documentation to be accurate, complete, and up to date.
Reallusion's tutorial pack is not any better than the free, I've seen a few already randomly on youtube. There isn't much out there at all. CGCookie doesn't cover iClone.
|
|
By GreedyPeopleSuck - 8 Years Ago
|
Solution is the following:
1) Put golf club/tennis racket/baseball bat in the position you want to start swing.
2) Link one arm to the grip after posing hand.
3) Detach first arm, and link the other arm to grip after posting.
4) Duplicate the golf club/tennis racket/baseball bat and put it in the exact same position at the start.
5) Link each hand to their own clone of the golf club/tennis racket/baseball bat.
6) Keyframe to the apex of the swing the arm remaining the straightest. i.e. If right handed use the the left hand.
7) Now place other hand gripping other. The second golf club/tennis racket/baseball bat is to help align things. You will set the opacity to zero after the process is complete to make it invisible. Make sure to select "Move Body Part" or else IK will make it impossible to move the second hand into position.
8) Tediously keyframe every frame to make sure grip is exactly where you want it. The longer you attempt the first animation, the more it will be a bit off.
Should take a few hours to get right.
|