i have been going through rig deformation issues from past so many months…i have rigged some of the realistic characters and after it being animated it deforms badly mainly at shoulder and knee areas . i tried influence objects , blend shapes but this doesn’t work…for solving this deformation issue i had to make correctives after animation is done for each of the shots individually because if i made the blend shapes at the T-pose that too behave weirdly when comes into action .i think that’s the bad decision.but to get the perfect look i had to opt that option only.can anyone please suggest any idea so that i don’t have to make correctives of each shot individually .i would be very much thankful…
it possible to see an example?
actually the project i am working on is confidential.i cant show it right now.
If the poses are being that closely looked at/ art directed then I don’t know how you woudl avoid it.
Take a look at Lbrush as it might offer you a way to better control or speed up the corrective shape process and PSD control. All the shapes interp. is spline instead of linear so they hold up with fewer shapes.
http://lbrush.com/features.htm
Brad
its a great to see that you are working on a master project. i wish you success for the job.
Why are you creating your correctives in the T-Pose? … Creating them in the extreme-poses is a much more natural way of working. That should get you pretty close to having a setup that works for most shots. For knees you should need 1 or maybe 2 if you want an intermediate… For shoulders more - maybe 4 or so.
But if your director wants the stuff to look different in different shots, then you have to make stuff unique. That can sometimes be a pose issue though, but if your animators already have posed stuff with your old correctives; they might have attempted to correct the same things you’re correcting with other shapes.
thanks brad for the reply…
yes you guessed right that poses, infact each frame is closely looked at by our art director.
i have heard about L brush and currently i am using hyper real corrective shape script for the correctives that too works fine…but i want to fix out the problem of making correctives on each shot after animation is done…
thanks Oskar Holmstrand for the reply…
sorry i think my question goes bit wrong actually i am not making the correctives in T-pose…i am making it for the extreme poses itself in the main rig file but that too when comes into action behaves weirdly…
suppose lets take the knee example i have made the correctives for the extreme knee rotate X.but when animator set the pose like character sitting cross legged then knee rotate in all the axis X,Y,Z in that pose correctives behaves weirdly and knee areas penetrates and deform badly.
For your example you should be having that knee twist spread out across other joints or painting in Dual Qat.weights to deal with it.
Though lbrush you can take care of that, but for a fast fix you should be having the twist broken out to twist joints.
yes brad you are correct that twist joint should be there to spread the knee twist and i did the same but problem still remains in complex poses and deformation behaves weirdly.
There are reasons that there are “fix” departments at studios 
You could always give the animators caches of their animations and let them sculpt their own fixes:)
I would also have a talk with the animators about what it is they are doing and see if they can pose or if the rig can be adjusted so they are not breaking the rig everytime they pose the character… but with out more details, I know you can’t show, it is hard to guess. Some sitting over the shoulder watching them pose the character to work on ways to get the same poses with out causing broken ugly shapes should be on the list.
[QUOTE=cgartist.rigger;12560]yes brad you are correct that twist joint should be there to spread the knee twist and i did the same but problem still remains in complex poses and deformation behaves weirdly.[/QUOTE]
Do you have a rig control abstraction layer on top of your bones? … If you have hooked up your correctives to the bare bone, you might get more lucky in connecting them to the abstraction layer controllers instead… Or the other way around.
But also – you can’t fix a bad pose with correctives. If your knee gets rotated in all angles, it’s either a) your rig creates incorrect rotations. or b) the animator has posed it in a faulty pose. i.e. If the knee is rotated 90 degrees to the side, the animator has animated it so that it should look like the knee is in a pose that hurts quite bad.
If you don’t already: I suggest having twist-joints in both the upper legs and the lower legs.
thanks for the reply…
brad:
i am uploading two of the images for your reference so that it can clear you my problem.
Oskar Holmstrand ,i am not getting what exactly you are talking about abstraction layer .can u please elaborate it,but yes i put up my correctives connection with skinned joints…
i put up twist joint for upper legs then too deformation is not satisfying. sure i will try it in lower legs too.
The leg, yes you need twists in the lower legs but the main issue is the basic skinning.
I can tell by looking that the weights are painted to the wrong joints in those images both at the lower arm and the upper thigh…that area has a large muscle that helps hold the shape.
Your twist joints are not taking on as much twist maybe as they need to and /or the animators are FK animating the “twist” on the elbow and your twist joints are not taking care of it… elbow twist is really rotation at the shoulder not the lower arm.
You could lock the rot. at the elbow and not let it bend or separate off the deformation joints completely and have no weighting on the main shoulder/elbow.
The hip area joint looks like it is in the wrong spot and the twist in the mesh is happening to close to the socket. Spread the weighting further down the leg.
I don’t see a knee cap helper. The knee joint looks like it is to far forward and high in the leg.
Better weighting and joint locations and making sure the twists are actual working with how animation is posing the rig will get you most of the way there, then you can add correctives on top. Doing that now with out fixing the skinning will leave you to be doing per shot fixes the rest of the project.
once again thanks brad…
i will definitely try to improve in the area you are pointing to.
as i hide out the joints and lock it …i thinks animators are not fk animating it.
and about elbow twist joint rotation those are depended on wrist rotation.first elbow twist joint is rotating 0.5 of wrist and the other one .35 of wrist.if its wrong let me know i will try to change the setup.
hmm i have tried to lock the shoulder rotation will definitely try to lock elbow one too.and see if it solves the problem.
yeah i dint used knee cap helper will include those too.knee joint is placed high in the leg because of some model issue…
I don’t think the problem is the twist distribution, I think your skinning to those twist bones is off… or the roll axis is not inline with the muscle mass giving you some strange bulges during twist.
@knee- place the movement joint in the right location, then place the helping deformer joint where it needs to fight bad modeling.
good luck,
Brad
i think there might be some issue with skinning…if you dont mind i can mail you one of my rig …if you can take out some time from your busy schedule and have a quick look at skinning and give feedback.i would be very much grateful for your help…
I can’t this week… get in and play with the weights , it is something you will have to experiment with to get a feel for what the effect of the weights is having on the arm shape during twist.
Try the heat map plugin and then study how it assigned the weight (pm heatweight- skin mesh first then run the tool, works better.
thank you …i will do that…