I have made a proposal on how to improve armatures visually, and make them slightly easier to approach. It's no huge overhaul, but merely something small that will improve them quite a bit. Here it is:

http://www.shadeless.dk/ui/armatures.htm


Tell me what you think!


-William
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That looks like a good idea. Personally I have never used constraints or IK because I can't quite figure out how to set it up. Your method would at least give me an idea of where to start.



Sorry I'm not a coder, so I have no idea how hard it would be to do.

hm, actually why not. anyway i'd rather like NLA implemented for ALL objects. right now i don't use the "common" technique for using bones as ik constraints, simply because of the unsexy visual representation and because of too much ctrl-tab switching when animating NOT only armatures. instead i have custom made controlling objects, which are not rendered in the final render.

speaking of visual representation - how about transform handles? i remeber this idea popping up somewhere in the forum. i appreciate blenders simplicity and straight-forward interface, but transform handles would be a great help.

In tuhopuu1 (in my local copy that I never committed),
I created what I called 'bone glyphs':

http://bebop.cns.ualberta.ca/~cwant/glyphs.jpg

There were controls for altering color and for
style/shape (polygon/stars/asterisks, each
with a 'number of sides' setting). The shapes
would always face the camera so they were
easy to see. In the example, I have color
coded by finger and used similar shapes to
indicate similar knuckles. Auto-IK was set up to
create glyphs for the automatically generated
control bones.

They're ugly, but I think they give some helpful
visual cues. One day when I'm bored I'll revisit
this again ...

Chris

Hi Chris,

That looks great, although a sliglty more 3d-ish look might be better, so that it is easyer to see its rotation on all the axes. Coloring would be interesting.

What do you think of the auto IK idea integrated into the toolbox Add menu? I think this would really boost the armatures usability..
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Here is what the bone nulls look like in Softimage XSI:



This is a differemt type of null, for animationg torso's etc:


The torso null moved:


The torso null moved again:




Maybe it would also be nice to add an inbuilt armature rig with lots of nice controls for feet and arms. That could also by in the Add>Armature menu as well as 'IK Chain', 'FK CHain' and 'Null'. It could be called 'Human Rig' or something.
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in this thread is another idea about what could be called "muscle chain", and would be very useful for advanced rigging if a separate type of bone chain.
http://www.blender.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=phpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=2821

Hos wrote:

In tuhopuu1 (in my local copy that I never committed), I created what I called 'bone glyphs': http://bebop.cns.ualberta.ca/~cwant/glyphs.jpg There were controls for altering color and for style/shape (polygon/stars/asterisks, each with a 'number of sides' setting). The shapes would always face the camera so they were easy to see. In the example, I have color coded by finger and used similar shapes to indicate similar knuckles. Auto-IK was set up to create glyphs for the automatically generated control bones. They're ugly, but I think they give some helpful visual cues. One day when I'm bored I'll revisit this again ... Chris

I think they could be useful as an option, It could help a bit now and then when things get to messy. Please add it. Also, for BF can you add the auto IK that would be helpful not having to jump between Tuhopuu and BF just for the one little feature for quick tests?






Other than that. How about a mesh Skeleton ? Like a shell of the mesh model that at it's mesh joints would be the defining joint rotation spot. It could be useful as visual and it could be weight painted. It would remove the ugly opengl armature look. And would launch blender more towards the looks of the higher external animation programs. All of this while being much easier to visulize how to pose it.

Should I make an example jpeg ?

Money_YaY! wrote:

Should I make an example jpeg ?

yes

Martin
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Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans.
- John Lennon

Simple old thing I have wanted to use this feature with.

But to go in depth, at each break the joint could be formed. Basicly every thing works as normal it would use the same armature code. But instead of the hard to read wires of armatures, it would be controled by the rig mesh.
Or it could be like an invisible armature in side of the rig mesh.

Does it sound stupid theeth ?

So basicly it's just changing how the armature looks?

Martin
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Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans.
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theeth wrote:

So basicly it's just changing how the armature looks? Martin

Yeah. Of course it would be nice to have new stuff to, but for now that would be enough to help the eyes focus. Can it be done ?

Changing the looks of the armatures to look more like real human bones sounds hard to do (how do you tell it what is what etc?).

I think it is more important to start with something more needed. The torso null stuff I showed from XSI isn't that important to have. Better to just have a regular spherical null to start with. Ofcourse, maybe in the edit buttons you might be able to choose the look of the null (spherical, 2d star, circle, plane etc).

I once tried a Tohupuu version which had auto IK in it. This was great, but as I remember you had to hold down a key to activate it while adding bones. Surely it would be more usable if were in the Add>Armature menu.
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Monkeyboi wrote:

Changing the looks of the armatures to look more like real human bones sounds hard to do (how do you tell it what is what etc?). I think it is more important to start with something more needed. The torso null stuff I showed from XSI isn't that important to have. Better to just have a regular spherical null to start with. Ofcourse, maybe in the edit buttons you might be able to choose the look of the null (spherical, 2d star, circle, plane etc). I once tried a Tohupuu version which had auto IK in it. This was great, but as I remember you had to hold down a key to activate it while adding bones. Surely it would be more usable if were in the Add>Armature menu.

It would just be blocks or the mesh cut up into joining peices. As for auto IK, it was only after you were done with creating the chain, you select the very last bone and press alt+i . Simple perfect for tests.

The problem with the OpenGL IK draw bones, is that when you get to ti many skinney line every where it gets relly hard to se what is being selected and moved..

Just parenting boxes to the bones would have the same effect.

Martin
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Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans.
- John Lennon