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reference
materialRigging Using Follower and Time Delay |
Spring 2006ss |
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by John Wigger |
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Within Layout one has access to
several motion modifiers, including Follower. Follower is located under the
Motion Options panel within the Motions section of the Setup Tab. Once you have the Motion Options
panel, you need to add the Follower to the bone/object/light/etc. via 'Add Modifier'. In the Modifier box, Following
(none) will appear. That is the
default settings for Follower before you have assigned any channels for the
modifier to actually 'follow. Either
select the Follower modifier from the box and click on Edit to bring
up the possible options to get to the Follower properties; or right click on the modifier itself to do the
same thing. After you have opened the Follower
panel, you will have access to apply follower to the Translation/Rotation/ or Transformation channels of your
selected item. Setting up the Fingers to Curl After you have set up your initial
rig for your object, including zeroing out rotation channels and setting your pivot rotations, you will be able
to apply follower to the fingers to set up the hand rig. Take a moment to open and close
your fingers, your real fingers not on your object. You'll notice that the majority of the movement comes from your
middle digit. We will use this to our
advantage in setting up this hand rig. Create a null, which I name
'Finger Curl' and parent it to the hand bone.
If you can set up a basic IK rig, I'm sure you're familiar with
creating nulls so I wont get into that in this
tutorial. Locking out the rotation/translation of the channels other than
rotating on the pitch would likely be helpful. Also, as and indentifier, I like to add a ring
item shape to this null set up on end to reflect the direction of the open/curl of the fingers. On the base and tip bones for each
finger, we will apply follower to the bones other than the middle digit to save on workflow. This will allow for the fingers to curl in
and out from the hand with the need of only animating one null for all the
fingers. You will need to determine
which rotation channel gives normal finger movement, in the case of the
example object/scene it is the heading.
Set the follower for the base bone to follow the heading of the finger
curl null on the heading channel for the base bone. The tip bone on the example has its natural movement
occuring on the pitch, so apply follower to that bone where the pitch follows the heading of the finger curl null. I myself prefer using Time Delay
in this instance to allow for a little reaction time to show up in opening/ closing of the fingers. Time Delay is located in the Follower Panel
near the top. I have found that if
your character is near real human
scale, around 2 meters tall, a good working number for time delay in this
instance is about 0.3. To save on counter animation and for a more
casual feel, I also tend to add a slight time delay to the base bone of the fingers,
increasing in delay from index down to the pinky. This allows for a slight wave motion to the opening or curling
of the fingers on the hand. Setting up the Fingers to Fan With the ability to open and curl
all the fingers using a single null we have pretty efficient control over one movement possiblity... lets go for more. Let's add another null, which I
call 'Finger Fan' and parent it to the hand bone as well. We could use the same null as before, but I like to keep
them seperate for ease of selection.
Again, using item shape and locking out unused translation/ rotation channels
will help in your workflow. I also add
a ring shape to this null, but this time I keep it parallel to the
hand, as it will control the fanning of the fingers so it is best to lock out
the pitch and bank rotations. We will have to add another instance
of Follower to the base bones for each finger to take advantage of this null. Have each bone follow the heading
of the second null. Now, this is kind
of tricky as we want the fingers to fan out rather than just all rotate
towards or away from the thumb. This
requires setting the follow to a negative number on the heading rotation channel
for two of the fingers. In the
example, these fingers are the ring and pinky. For the outermost fingers, index
and pinky, to achieve a more natural fanning motion the default setting of a multiple of 1 will not work. The fingers move fine, but they move at the
same pace as the middle and ring fingers giving the look of a vulcan greeting
instead of a consistant spread. A
multiple of three pushes them out at a more natural rate. So a setting of 3, 1, -1, -3 along the fingers from index to pinky achieves a decent fan. |
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