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Motion Studio + Multi Morph?
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These pages are a copy of the official truespace forums prior to their removal somewhere around 2011.
They are retained here for archive purposes only.
Motion Studio + Multi Morph? // Roundtable
Post by frank // Feb 22, 2007, 10:15am
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frank
Total Posts: 709
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The ability to have a character that is animated by both bones for the body, and vertex blending for the face, on the same mesh, was an often-requested feature for Motion Studio.
Well, Motion Studio never got the upgrade for mixed vertex blending, so I toyed with various ways to go about this.
Here are a couple of approaches to animating a character's body and face:
Use separate objects: One for the body (boned) and one for the head (vertex blending) but hide the seam between the body and head object using another object (like a collar or something)
CONS: Limited in that all characters must have an object to hide the seam. Can't use a single mesh (or a character with the appearance of being a single mesh).
...or just eliminate vertex blending and use bones for both the body and facial animation.
CONS: Difficult to weight vertices for facial animation, and ultimately it's restrictive in facial detail.
Today I decided to revisit the subject and I think I've come up with a solution to use Motion Studio for the bones animation and Multi Morph (or Space Time Morph) together, on a single mesh (or so it appears).
More details soon... |
Post by Chester Desmond // Feb 22, 2007, 10:25am
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Chester Desmond
Total Posts: 323
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Skinmodifier tsx is another possibility. I haven't used it enough to say how well it would do, but I think it has potential to be useful for this type of work. A combination of it with multimorph (if its possible even) might give you some serious power. |
Post by frank // Feb 22, 2007, 10:46am
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frank
Total Posts: 709
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I've attached a sequence showing the process in action.
What you're seeing is actually not a single mesh, but a mesh for the legs and lower body, and one for the head. Although it looks completely seamless.
Any user that has been with trueSpace for a while will say "Ahhh... but what if I want to use SDS? Using SDS on two objects will surely show the seam!"
Correct, if you have two separate objects close together, made to look like they go together, as soon as you hit the SDS button, the edges where they join will get rounded, revealing the seam.
That was the first stumblingblock I hit with this method, but it didn't take long to figure out a (very easy) solution to it. |
Post by frank // Feb 22, 2007, 10:53am
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frank
Total Posts: 709
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Chester: Yeah, SkinModifier is pretty neat - but it is tough to set up. Also, mixing it with MotionStudio can be a bit wonky.
http://www.frankladner.com/skinmod/
Here's a facial anim. I did with SkinMod: http://www.frankladner.com/skinmod/SkinModTest.avi |
Post by frank // Feb 22, 2007, 11:40am
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frank
Total Posts: 709
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I've attached some screengrabs to visually explain how this is achieved.
What I don't show is the basic stuff before this, which basically consists of taking your single mesh, selecting the part of the object you want to split (using the lasso or rectangle tool), and clicking the "Separate selected part of object" button.
You'll notice the leg/body object is attached as skin, and that the top vertices are 100% affected by the bone. The head part is attached as object, with no skinning enabled. |
Post by Chester Desmond // Feb 22, 2007, 11:40am
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Chester Desmond
Total Posts: 323
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damn that looks cool, and it is very difficult to see that it is in fact 2 meshes.
..I'm still a rank amateur at MoStu but this looks like a great solution to keep in mind. |
Post by frank // Feb 22, 2007, 12:12pm
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frank
Total Posts: 709
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Here's a short anim to show how this looks with SDS enabled.
Deleting the faces of the connecting pieces (as shown in one of the previous images) is what gives the sharp edges at the joining locations of SDS-enabled pieces. |
Post by Chester Desmond // Feb 22, 2007, 7:26pm
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Chester Desmond
Total Posts: 323
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That is pretty cool looking frank. Like to see more of that guy.. |
Post by frank // Feb 23, 2007, 12:18pm
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frank
Total Posts: 709
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Decided to try Motion Studio + ClothMotion. (Results attached) This is just a "what if?" test I did for fun.
As you can see, the seam is visible. The Fix Vertices feature in ClothMotion doesn't seem to "stick" the vertices to the object. They somewhat lag behind in some frames. I'm sure there are ways around this, though.
In reality I would just put bones where any tentacles/clothing/hair or other secondary-motion parts are and animate them by hand. ...after all, that's what animation is all about. ;)
Like I said, this was just for fun. |
Post by GraySho // Feb 23, 2007, 12:41pm
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GraySho
Total Posts: 695
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It's always fun to watch your animation tests. Though I have no use for it at the moment, I'll keep it in mind. |
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