Issues with Advanced Skeleton rig

[Tarje Pladsen]

Hi.

I'm at the point where I'm trying to do some custom animation on my character.
I've dowloaded the Advanced Skeleton rig for maya, which feels really great to animate with.
But after Auto Compute Skeleton Mapping in the Character Maker and loading the anim from the Load Motion From Skeleton I run into some challenges. I've only used default values.

First and foremost the Golaem Conversion Quality bar is red which means there is something wrong with my rig setup. 

I had to remove Squash and Stretch which causes the arms to extend during anim. Why this is enabled by default I can't really understand.

Secondly there is definitely something wrong with the IK Normal Planes and/or the Roll Bone settings. I've tried numerous settings, but the capsules never sticks to the original rig, and the IK plane is off.

I also get several errors in the script editor, stuff like this:
Frame: 41, bone: man_setup_advancedSkeleton:Ankle_L, position error: 8.37572

They might be complaining about the same thing, but seeing as I'm a bit new to this I thought I'd ask you guys for some pointers. I've attached the rig I'm using in a maya scene with just some simple keyposes.

I'm using Maya 2016 on Linux, Golaem 4.2.2​

 crowd_fx_rig_test_v001.mb.zip

​
Thanks!
-- 

Tarje Pladsen

CG Artist

[Thomas François]

Hello Tarje,

Can you also send me your gcha, and the fbx so I can see what could possibly go wrong?

Best regards,

Thomas

--
Note that crowd...@golaem.com is a public list.
If for any reason (confidental project, sending production files...) you need to post a private message to Golaem Support, please use http://support.golaem.com
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Golaem Crowd List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to crowd-list+...@golaem.com.
To post to this group, send email to crowd...@golaem.com.

--

 

+33 (0)2 99 27 21 45
http://www.golaem.com

[Tarje Pladsen]

Hi Thomas.

I realized the rig didn't "stick" long before I got to exporting the fbx. And the gcha was just made with the default settings. I went through this process a couple of times, so I'm quite sure the rig has to be tweaked inside the Character Maker to make it work.

I'm just unsure about what settings to tweak...

But if you still need the fbx and the gcha, I'll be happy to supply it. :)

Tarje Pladsen

CG Artist

[Thomas François]

Hi again Tarje,

It appears that the gcha created with auto compute isn't correct for this rig, you will have to make some adjustments by hand to get your gcha to perfectly convert your motions.

Please send me your gcha and fbx so I can tell you if there are mistakes.

Best regards,

Thomas

[Tarje Pladsen]

Hi.

I definitely know that there are mistakes. I can fix as much as possible and send you the gcha and the fbx. 

But it might be less time-consuming for both of us if you could show me what settings to tweak. I know this is asking much, and if there is a lot of steps to it then no problem.

If it ends up being too much of a hassle I might change to a different/simpler rig. Thanks for taking the time so far Thomas, appreciate it.

[Thomas François]

Hello Tarje,

Here is a quick step by step.

1.Open the Golaem Character Maker . select the root bone man_setup_advancedSkeleton:Base_M (not the fit skeleton one!),

After some quick tests it appears that Advanced Skeleton is better converted with detection mode set to Current values. 

Click on Load Selected Skeleton and click Automatic Compute... 

Here is what you get:

You can map the missing bones of the feet.

Now when when clicking Check Skeleton Mapping button you see that there are undesired bones in the IK of the right leg.

You can map the unwanted bones here:

Now your leg is correct.

Now for the head The Neck bone is mapped instead of the Head, just replace it.

Go into the Geometry tab of the character maker.

Add the geometry by selecting each surfaces and clicking + on the right corner of the menu. (I'll leave that part to you).

Create the Rendering Types. (here again I'll let you do it)

Now before exporting your Character geometry make sure to deactivate every scale compensate on your joints. Golaem doesn't support this feature.

You can deactivate those with a little script:

$joints = `ls -type "joint"` ;

for( $joint in $joints )

{

    setAttr -e ($joint + ".segmentScaleCompensate") 0 ;

}

Select Your Character's bones and geometry and click on Export selection as Fbx.

Set the bounding box and save your Gcha.

You may open a second maya and import your fbx to check how it looks.

Now to convert your animations. Open the Motion tab.

Select every bones of your animated character and Bake animations.

Select the root bone of your animated character. Click on load Motion from selection. Your animation is converted.

Set the footprints and save your motion.

Now test your gcha and motions.

Create an entityType and load your gcha. (set the renderingType)

Create a poptool load your entityType and click Create.

Go into the Behavior editor and drag and drop a Motion Behavior and load your motion.

Play your simulation your entity rises its leg.

I hope the above is useful to you, please let me know if you have any questions.

More information here.

I'll let you setup your character for Physics. (If you plan to do physics simulation with it).

Best regards,

Thomas

[Tarje Pladsen]

Hi, thanks for the detailed guide Thomas.

I imported your gcha file and it seems to work fine when running the Check Skeleton Mapping.
As far as I can see the IK Planes and the capsules seem to look "right" as in the picture below.
So far so good...


​
I have 50 frames of animated keyposes on this rig, that starts to animate from frame 1-50, where the first frame is bind pose. 
The reason for having anim on the character is so that I can check to see if the motions are applied correct to the rig.

As I only need the anim from this character and I'm not planning on rendering him in any way, I chose to skip right to the motion part.

I go into the Motion tab, select the skeletonBaseM joint and Load Motion From Selection, as in the picture.

It loads the 50 frames and after a couple of seconds the anim is imported and everything is off. 


​
I get several different errors in the script editor, some of them look like this:

Frame: 1, bone: man_setup_advancedSkeleton:ElbowPart2_R, position error: 0.243235. Tip: If this is the first error, consider adding a spine or limb before the bone man_setup_advancedSkeleton:ElbowPart2_R in the skeleton mapping, to make sure that animation before this node will be taken into account. If There was already an error before, then this one may be a consequence of the previous one

​

Frame: 12, bone: man_setup_advancedSkeleton:Ankle_L, position error: 7.15474

// Warning: Cycle on 'man_setup_advancedSkeleton:UnTwistNeck_M.rotate' may not evaluate as expected.  (Use 'cycleCheck -e off' to disable this warning.) // 

Ignoring the errors for a moment and removing the Squash and Stretch to zero gives me a better result,  although the limbs are still way off.

From here on, I am quite lost on how to improve the results.
I've used most of the day trying out different other rigs as well, but none seem to work out of the box.

Am I misunderstanding the workflow? Or is it simply issues with the rig?

I've attached the mayafile with the anim, as well as gcha and gmo. 
​

 advancedSkeleton_v001.zip

​
Best Regards.
​ 

[Thomas François]

Hello Tarje,

You may have missed the part where you must bake the keys for all the joints before converting the gmo.

Tell me if that solves your problem.

Thomas

[Tarje Pladsen]

Hi.

Baking the joints through a FBX Export in Maya, importing the FBX in a new scene, applying the gcha, and then exporting the .cmo data worked much better.
I no longer have any cycleCheck errors and no problems with squash and stretch.

1. I do still have lots of position error in my Script Editor. Could you elaborate a bit on what this error message mean, and how to fix it?​​

2. Secondly, the capsules seem not to stick to the joint, they seem to lag one frame behind no matter what (check the video)... Should I care, or is it just a preview thing that doesn't really matter?

​

 capsulesLag.mp4

​

Thanks!

[Thomas François]

Hi.

Hi Tarje, 

Baking the joints through a FBX Export in Maya, importing the FBX in a new scene, applying the gcha, and then exporting the .cmo data worked much better.
I no longer have any cycleCheck errors and no problems with squash and stretch.

1. I do still have lots of position error in my Script Editor. Could you elaborate a bit on what this error message mean, and how to fix it?​​

Usually those errors comes when there is a difference in position between the joints of the source motion and the converted one.

-This can happen because of translation keys (the animation should only use rotations on bones, except for the skeleton root which can also use translations)

-This also happens when some joints are not baked. You are using controllers when animating your character but Golaem doesn't use it so pay close attention to always bake your joint's animation before converting it to gmo.

- Also some joints might not be mapped in the gcha which results in an error of position for the bone which comes after in the hierarchy.

Having conversion quality warning isn't a problem if the result match closely to your animated character. 

Put your Character maker locator on top of your animated character and check the differences.

Sometimes the position error is so tiny (0.01...) you will just ignore it.

 

2. Secondly, the capsules seem not to stick to the joint, they seem to lag one frame behind no matter what (check the video)... Should I care, or is it just a preview thing that doesn't really matter?

This is just a previz issue, it will be corrected in the next version.

Best regards,

Thomas