Sub skeletons / "floating" skeletons

About Truespace Archives

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.

Sub skeletons / "floating" skeletons // Roundtable

1  |  

Post by TomG // Jul 6, 2007, 9:15am

TomG
Total Posts: 3397
Hi all,


There have been questions on how to set up the bones system to use sub skeletons, or "floating" skeletons. Two examples might be a head with a skeleton to control some facial animation, and a body with a skeleton to control its animation, or say a necklace which has a skeleton to allow it to deform and be animated, but we want it to follow the movements of a character also animated via a skeleton.


Attached is a link to a video showing how this can be done. Thanks to David Bokon for coming up with the idea!


The principle is to add a dummy object to the bone in the first skeleton, and then you pass the matrix information (position and rotation in space) from that into the second object. This makes the second object follow the dummy (or null) object, which in turn is moved by the skeleton in the first object.


The second object can be deformed by its own skeleton independently.


Its easier seen than described, so have a look at the attached video - a quick test using just two cylinders for now. Hopefully this will prove useful!


HTH!

Tom


http://www.caligari.com/tS75_video/GeneralSubSkel.wmv

Post by 3dfrog // Jul 6, 2007, 9:54am

3dfrog
Total Posts: 1225
pic
That seems fine if you have two meshes such as a seperate head model and a seperate body model and want to attach them together. But what about sub skeletons within a single mesh?

Post by TomG // Jul 6, 2007, 9:57am

TomG
Total Posts: 3397
Wouldn't work with a single mesh, only one skeleton can control one mesh. Which was why the question of sub skeletons was kind of an unknown, as it was known a single mesh could only have one skeleton.


HTH!

Tom

Post by 3dfrog // Jul 6, 2007, 10:27am

3dfrog
Total Posts: 1225
pic
Well, this is useful for cartoon type characters which I like for my personal stuff so that is good. Not so good for realistic characters as they are usually one mesh. But then again I can just build my character differently and have the neck of the seperate object head disappear inside the clothes, if that is suitable for the character. As far as trying to do accident reconstruction I don't think it will be an issue. I don't see any case that would require a complex facial rig.


But I hope that having floating bones that can be attached to a single mesh would be something added to the truespace features.
Awportals.com is a privately held community resource website dedicated to Active Worlds.
Copyright (c) Mark Randall 2006 - 2021. All Rights Reserved.
Awportals.com   ·   ProLibraries Live   ·   Twitter   ·   LinkedIn