Hand Rig

[franky]

just a general question. how do you guys approach rigging hands?

i am currently developing our own autorigger system and so far everything is fine and shiny. but i am not happy with the hands/fingers.

right now i have two approaches in my mind.

1. pure fk, rotate each segment of the finger in place
2. use two controls, regardless of how many segments a finger might have
one control rotates the first bone, the other control sits on the fingertip and curls the others bones together. at least for humans they barely are able to move their upper two finger segments apart from each other (by free will hehe)

are there any other ideas out there? i would welcome them!

[ChristopherC]

If you decide to use an approach similar to your second point, keep in mind that we have to let the maximum possible control to animators. It means that you can do your automatic fingers rig, but fingers segments should still be accessible to be animated on top of your rig.


Regards,
Christopher.

[Sil3]

I prefer to have control over any automated CTRL, if I cannot override it then let the Automated stuff out of it, It can be nice sometimes, but the times you migh need to override it and its not possible will become a nightmare for the Animator :D

[franky]

all automatism i have in the rig can be changed on top of it or disabled. thats given :)
there is always the control layer on top of everything and its not locked.

i was just wondering if there are any concepts out there....

[janimatic]

hey
You can do both :
Set expressions on the pivot rotation for the automatic bend (ex: "kine.local.pcrotz"), and add individual fk controls on each key local rotation.

[franky]

i never tried to offset the pivot and animate on top of that. sounds interesting. so far i always introduced a extra null....
thanks for the tip.

right now i just create FK bones and leave it at that. the usual hand poses can be applied via an action as well.
maybe later in a second pass on the rigger i revisit it.

[3DMastermind]

Hey Franky Being an rigger and animator I know the importance of quickly setting a pose but also personalizing the individual fingers for curl. I made a quick system that allows you to set the profile of each finger with a controler (yellow) . Then allows for individual bone rotation.
I must say I really like it. It's very simple and works great.
1 rotate 5 yellow controlers
2 rotate the finger bones
Use the synoptic "F3" on any object to reset>reset all ;)
I have attached the scene.
Let me know what u think...


-manny

[norvman]

Thanks for the show on the Hand rigg Manny ... don't know if this is in your tutorial or not is so I haven't gotten to it yet...

Like the shredder look on the controllers... ha!

[franky]

thanks manny, i tried your scene and indeed it feels indeed good.

in my rig i have it completely straight at the moment, 3 controls for 3 bones. rotated in add mode you get that curl as well. but it gets messy with 5 fingers and 3 controls to select the right ones. if i imagine now to add another control at the base of the finger its getting too much. but, still thinking, i cant find a way to have lesser controls and the same flexibility :(

maybe its enough to have one control for the base bone and one control for the rest of the segments... hmm.. but then, how do you pose a finger that rests on a table and holds some weight and therefore is bend backwards in tis last segment... sigh..

[EricTRocks]

Just a quick question for Manny here. Is it a common practice in production rigs to actually key the bones themselves? Just want to know for future reference when building my rigs. I've been told lately that you want to keep it separate in case you need to change naming or something else in the hierarchy.

Let me know,
Eric T.

[3DMastermind]

Hi Franki. Although I haven’t animated with the hand rig I supplied yet, I am looking forward to it.
I too animated with selecting/keying all the bones on the fingers with "add" mode. This does indeed get messy not only the picking/animating part but also there are f-curves everywhere, so tweaking the curves is a real pain. After the blocking phase, I always have a tendency to offset the individual finger rotation for natural flowing hand animation. This is especially where this rig exells. eg: when opening the hand, the thumb/index goes first, when closing the hand, the pinky goes first. This is essential because a lot of pros always look for ‘finger curl offsetting’ in demo reels.
Basically, as I’m sure you already know since you animate frequently, the fingers should not all curl/uncurl at the same time. I explain this on the last clip in my training DVD (clip 47 “finger movement”).
With the rig I provided, you only have a single controller to animate per finger row making the offsetting quite simple with the f-curve editor.
Also, in exceptional cases like the one you proposed, you do still have the second layer of anim where you can animate the individual finger bones.
Eric, the beauty about the rig I provided, is the fact that you only key the yellow controller on each finger row.
There are times however, like when a character holds a glass where you may need to really detail the finger curl.
In this case, you animate the single controller on each finger row and then fine-tune with individual finger bone keying.

[EricTRocks]

Sure i understand the rotating of each bone to fine tune, but I was mainly asking if it was ok to key that actual bones. Shouldn't you setup a controller to key that feeds into each of the individual finger bones?

Thanks,
Eric T.

[franky]

i think manny just provided the hand as it was...
its easy to put controllers to control the bones. i for myself like to keep the controls all in one class, like null or curves. i wont key bones directly.

manny, your explanations are clear and i follow your argumentation. i am a fan of layered controls/animation and so this way of rigging hands fits in my philosophy. likely i would have an additional parameter on the finger curl control, to make the direct segment controls visible, but only when needed.
so most of the time it would look nicely clean with one control for each finger. i like it!

[EricTRocks]

I understand the rigging method entirely, just wanted to see what he thought of keying actual bones. I like to keep the animation off the bones but wanted to see what Manny's opinion (and others like yours Franky) was on the issue. I dig the hand rig alot and is plenty functional. Good job.

Later,
Eric T.

[3DMastermind]

I always use character key sets for blocking.
So I had set the 'keyability' on each object with the keying panel prior to posting the scene.
If you select the finger bones and go to the 'keying panel' you will notice that they will key in rotation only.
Personally, I would remove the finger bones "keyability" from the panel since all you need for blocking is the yellow finger controllers rotation and maybee translation.

If you then need to really mod the profile of each finger bone (quite rare).
At the final stages, I would switch to "key marked parameters" mode instead of "character key set" and key the individual finger bones where needed.

[EricTRocks]

Thanks Manny.

[pooby]

I sometimes use this setup for fingers. it allows almost any finger position with just one null per finger. The problem with a lot of automatic curlers is that they wont allow the fingers to be straight, but at 90degrees to the hand.
The other good thing about this method is that, because it uses translation and converts it into finger rotation, you get some natural overlapping movement for free if you wish.
It's also very easy to grab and move all the controllers at once, then offset them after if necessary.
This is just a rough version.. it has no spread or override controls etc.

[norvman]

Great Rigg Pooby!

Thanks for the share!

[pooby]

Cheers Norv,
Another thing that's very handy (pun intended) is to use a smooth operator applied to the wrist area after the envelope.
Set it to concave only and it will smooth out the deformation on the wrist when the area is compressed but leave it alone when it's stretched.
Wrists are pretty hard to get right, because they dont work as a hinge in real life, they are a mass of bones sliding over one another.

I use smooth operators all the time to neaten deformations.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=D1Aj2yODys0

[norvman]

Well here you go... getting me to stick my nose back into the manual again...

I had not realized there was any other way of smoothing other than 'painting'

but sure enough there it is...

Let me get your work flow down here...
your applying your envelope....
doing all your weight paint adjustments ...
and then....
doing a smooth op on top of all that...

I am supposing by selecting only certain points and/ or clusters and applying...
Smooth Envelope Weights from the Animate tool bar...

Or is there some other way....

like just doing more weight painting....

Little confussed when you say smooth operator...




p.s... does Sade really help you with your smooth operations?

[pooby]

Sade isn't compulsory, but it might help you to remember to use smooth operators.

dont get confused with smooth weights.. that's totally different.

This scene demonstrates what I mean. Pick it apart and see what's going on.

Basically, the enveloping is happening, then smoothing is occuring afterward to the envelope-deformed mesh. it's only smoothing the concave areas as I've specified that in the operator panel and it's only applied to a cluster, not the whole thing.

The smoothing operator can be found on the left panel under DEFORM- smooth, and it's applied when in animation construction mode AFTER the envelope is applied. You can move them about in the stack if for some reason you applied it before the envelope.
in fact, Say for example you DID accidentally apply it before the envelope, what would happen is that it would take the mesh and smooth any concave parts (NONE in this case before its bent so NO smoothing would occur) then the envelope would occur.
The result would appear as if the smoothing wasn't working, but it would be, it's just not doing having to do anything that would appear to be helpful.

The order of the stack is something thats really worth getting to grips with. It's very logical

[norvman]

Yes Sade definately will help me remember... :biggrin:

Okay I'm begining to understand what your doing... so you apply the Deform Operator ... "smooth" to an envelope at the Animation Construction level... this 'auto smoothes' sort of ... and cuts down on pinching in the joins and other places...

however... I'm still not quite understanding how your getting your results buy just applying the Deform>smooth operator...

That is to say I can't seem to get it to work the way you have it set up in the scene file...

I apply a deform smooth and place it at the Animation Construction level ... after the envelope ... but can't seem to get it to do what you've gotten it to do with your example...

I noticed that you were using some Smooth Envelope Weight Operators in your cluster stack ... (what are those all about?)

[pooby]

I noticed that you were using some Smooth Envelope Weight Operators in your cluster stack ... (what are those all about?)

nothing.. ignore those. they have no bearing on whats going on with the smoothing operator. I just forgot to Freeze the weight painting and smoothing. Weighting smoothing only affects the distribution of influence of Envelope items. It wont smooth out geometry as a separate operation.
That's what the smooth operator does.

I don't know what yours is doing, or if it's doing anything at all, but if it IS smoothing but not looking correct there is a chance that you havent chosen to only use Concave..
(in the Smoothing ppg - advanced settings - restrict to curvature type- concave)
On my scene switch concave on and off, you'll see the difference..
Also I had to bump mine up to 100 strength by typing it in, not 20 which is the max if you just use the slider.

[norvman]

nothing.. ignore those. they have no bearing on whats going on with the smoothing operator.

got yah...

if it IS smoothing but not looking correct there is a chance that you havent chosen to only use Concave..

Yes it was caveing in instead of pushing out...

(in the Smoothing ppg - advanced settings - restrict to curvature type- concave)

Okay! it's working now.... I just wasting looking hard enough. my bad....

Also I had to bump mine up to 100 strength by typing it in

OKay now I'm getting it to look just like yours.... Great!

your a damn Wizard Paul...

Some one said you lived close to Stone Henge I think you've been getting extra help from the standing stones :biggrin:

Or maybe it's the wood imps....:1eye:


Thanks for the help...!