Species - new feature Requests

[Jose Carlos Poeiras]

After a brief chat with Eric,
I decide to post a small wish list for a future Exocortex Species release.

Species new feature requests:

1.Unlock all transformations in all controls (scale, rotation and translation), this could be an option along with
dual quaternion and fingers transformations setup menu, when you create the Anim Rig.

2.Toggle on/off between render geometry and low-poly geometry, this could be easily achieve by switching on/off some of the deformers shadow display or using a very low-poly geometry.

3.Having the possibility to deform the shape off the character between joints, using secondary controllers. This could be achieved using the deformers or other new controllers to displace the original deformers position.

4.Bendy Limbs  would be a great new feature.

5.For a long term consideration, a Face Rig feature . This could be very useful feature, however very difficult to be implemented without huge discussion. It can be a decisive factor to some users, but others might find it completely useless.

I hope that other users can add some of their own requests, so that all of us can have an idea
of what could more useful in a future update.

Best Regards,
José Carlos Poeiras

[Eric Thivierge]

Thanks for the suggestions. I've logged a few and others are already in the system. Some questions below.

1.Unlock all transformations in all controls (scale, rotation and translation), this could be an option along with
dual quaternion and fingers transformations setup menu, when you create the Anim Rig.

This isn't really possible with the design of the rig as it is optimized to only have certain constraints on certain parts of the rig to optimize the rig speed for animation. Having pose or position and rotation constraints on everything will slow things down. Also the amount of key frame data that is being saved on the controls will increase significantly as well which can add to scene size. Can you give an example where this would help? Maybe there is something we can add to particular parts and not everything?

 

2.Toggle on/off between render geometry and low-poly geometry, this could be easily achieve by switching on/off some of the deformers shadow display or using a very low-poly geometry.

Logged

3.Having the possibility to deform the shape off the character between joints, using secondary controllers. This could be achieved using the deformers or other new controllers to displace the original deformers position.

Can you provide an example of what areas you're speaking about?

 

4.Bendy Limbs  would be a great new feature.

Logged

 

5.For a long term consideration, a Face Rig feature . This could be very useful feature, however very difficult to be implemented without huge discussion. It can be a decisive factor to some users, but others might find it completely useless.

Logged

[J Scheepbouwer]

Hi Eric, Chris and everyone,

I'll add my suggestions and ideas. Good idea to start such a list, even if some wishes are way beyond feasible or even possible, just to kick off some discussion.

To walk through the list so far:

1. Not high on my personal list, I prefer the speed of an optimized rig over the flexibility of a fully unlocked one. Maybe add option of a secondary rig (or parts of) that lives 'on top of' main rig?

2. Good idea, but how to do this with highly customized geometry?

3. see 7, I think that encapsulates this point.

4. Yes, nice. Everything bendystretchy!

5. Agreed, also about the part that it may be daydreaming. But hey, we got to start somewhere?

Then my additions:

6. Quadruped proprig. I think the most logical expansion on the man/woman biped proprigs.
7. Muscle system. Not trivial, I know. More like a chapter on it's own. But still, I want it.

8. Hair. And here, I mean the brilliant part of Species is that it blurs the line between modeling and rigging, you can almost do both at the same time. I'd love to be able to model my characters with hair in place, for instance with polygonal description of shape/volume of hair and a conversion at proprig>animrig time to dynamic strand-setup. (Yeah, dreaming again)

9. Clothes. Be able to choose from basic stock of items (pants, shirt, skirt). Fully set up with clothdynamics. To have it integrated within the proprigworkflow would be sweet, even if only to provide startingpoint/placeholder/stuff to replace your own clothes with.

That's all :)

Best wishes, Jasper

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[Chris Covelli]

Hey Jasper and Jose,

Some great ideas you guys have.  Among them, the low res mesh, bendy limbs, face rig, quadruped rig, muscle system and costume system are all things we are either planning

already or at least looking into.  Many of them we are researching however, and may take a long time to implement.

We hadnt considered hair before.  We will look into it, but honestly, I fell like hair is such a specialized, personal thing there might not be a way to make it pre-set and still give the user enough flexibility to really get what they want. 

Chris Covelli
http://www.polygonpusherinc.com/

[Jose Carlos Poeiras]

Hi guys,

about this issue:

1.Unlock all transformations in all controls (scale, rotation and translation), this could be an option along with
dual quaternion and fingers transformations setup menu, when you create the Anim Rig.

This isn't really possible with the design of the rig as it is optimized to only have certain constraints on certain parts of the rig to optimize the rig speed for animation. Having pose or position and rotation constraints on everything will slow things down. Also the amount of key frame data that is being saved on the controls will increase significantly as well which can add to scene size. Can you give an example where this would help? Maybe there is something we can add to particular parts and not everything?

I would like to give this examples were I feel it could be be very helpful to unlock some of this controllers limitations:



This elbow limitation is particularity problematic because animators tend to break this joint a lot, to convey movement or
silhouette during extreme transition arcs, or just for poses on print work.



In this example it would be useful to have unlocked transformations on the fingers to create a smeared frame to convey movement and overlap, let's say on a slap, a whip, swish.


In this example you can use the head controller give some squash and stretch to the character
or just to give some overlap on an up and down movement.
In fact, I have used this setup many times.

3.Having the possibility to deform the shape off the character between joints, using secondary controllers. This could be achieved using the deformers or other new controllers to displace the original deformers position.

Can you provide an example of what areas you're speaking about?

About this issue, you can see I that I adjusted the deformers position to create a new silhouette
for the caracter. Obivious this sould be done using specific controller connected to the deformers
and respecting an hierarchy. An extra set of controllers, much like the extra  "FootRollOuter_L_Con"
that you can turn on/off to change the foot pivot.

[J Scheepbouwer]

Hi Chris,

great to hear you're already looking into almost all of those things! That's more than I expected!
Regarding hair: yes I know, it's something of a stretch. I think it would fill a hole in SI though: intuitive hair creation that's an integrated part of setting up a character. Current solutions (melena, kristinka) are rather technical/unintuitive and come after the fact.

thanks,

Jasper

[Chris Covelli]

Have you tried fibers in Zbrush?  I found it pretty easy to use and apparently there is a plugin that converts it to strands for export xsi, although I havent tried the plugin yet.

Chris Covelli
http://www.polygonpusherinc.com/

[J Scheepbouwer]

Nope, I don't have ZBrush. On my wishlist, though...

[j3st3r]

Hi folks

I don't think that the forearm rotation limit is wrong, since the wrist twist (pun INTENDED) is reflected along the forearm.

I don't know, if the following had been suggested so far, but here's my list:

- I'd like to see volume preserving. At this moment when the elbow is bent, the deformation at the elbow is terrible.

- Recently I had to create a character, and I never use extended fingers on my models, so I changed the prop rig according to my workflow. However, when I made the animrig, it didn't take my changes into consideration, and the hand poses were awkward. So, the idea is to have animrig consider the changes on fingers when creating a rig and storing the poses.

- I'd add a deformer for the breasts on females, I know it's not that straithforward, yet it'd be useful. Recently I had to work with a rigged DAZ model, and it was interesting how they built up their skeleton structure. Worth a look. It's not surpassing our beloved Species, but might give some cool ideas. Back in 2006 when I did my Fauna image, I rigged the breast with springs, and it was terrific, how it reacted to the posing :)

- I'd love to see a direction toward rig elements (if that is possible), where I can assemble a quadruped lowerbody and a human upperbody, or a fishtail to a human upperbody, etc. :)

that's all so far...I'm using Species at this moment on a project, I'll collect my experienc and post it here...

Cheers

Szabolcs

[Chris Covelli]

Hi Szabolcs,

You're right about the forearm, the human forearm does not naturally rotate on the X and Y axes. 

Ill try to answer all of your suggestions in line-

- I'd like to see volume preserving. At this moment when the elbow is bent, the deformation at the elbow is terrible.

If you are using Soft 2011 or higher, you can choose to add a dual quaternion ICE setup when you build the AnimRig.  You will have to manually connect and paint the empty weight map we provide on the mesh but it should help with volume preservation.

- Recently I had to create a character, and I never use extended fingers on my models, so I changed the prop rig according to my workflow. However, when I made the animrig, it didn't take my changes into consideration, and the hand poses were awkward. So, the idea is to have animrig consider the changes on fingers when creating a rig and storing the poses.

Not sure how we would do this, but its worth looking into.

- I'd add a deformer for the breasts on females, I know it's not that straithforward, yet it'd be useful. Recently I had to work with a rigged DAZ model, and it was interesting how they built up their skeleton structure. Worth a look. It's not surpassing our beloved Species, but might give some cool ideas. Back in 2006 when I did my Fauna image, I rigged the breast with springs, and it was terrific, how it reacted to the posing :)

 We were thinking of adding some ragdoll simulation capabilities to our rigs in the future, maybe springs and jiggle for breasts and fat characters would be cool too.  These would have to be optional, i.e. something that can be added in a modular way to the AnimRig. 

- I'd love to see a direction toward rig elements (if that is possible), where I can assemble a quadruped lowerbody and a human upperbody, or a fishtail to a human upperbody, etc. :)

We do have plans for other configurations of creatures ( that would include cross combinations ), but these are a very long way down the road.

Hope that helps!

-Chris

Chris Covelli
http://www.polygonpusherinc.com/

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[Szabolcs Matefy]

Thansk Chris!

Actually Dual quaternion doesn't make nice deformation, today at night when I'm back home, I'll make screenshots displaying my problem.

About the finger thing, I though that you have the data  of the offset in rotation, you just need to compensate when you create the anim rig, via offset map, or simply overwrite the values in the actions.

By the way, if there is beta again of Species, just thin of me for testing...I'm a character addict :D

Cheers,

Szabolcs

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--
Szabolcs Matefy

Senior Character Artist
Crytek Budapest
Certified Softimage Instructor
skype: matefy.szabolcs

LinkedIN: http://hu.linkedin.com/pub/szabolcs-matefy/12/38/303

http://www.behance.net/szmatefy

[J Scheepbouwer]

Hey Chris,

that's interesting what you say about the dual quaternion option during animrig building: I never realised I'd have to connect and paint on a weightmap myself, I just assumed it was all pre-set (like everything in Species). Can you explain why the weightmap is not connected and painted by default?

[Szabolcs Matefy]

I think he meant the blend should be painted

[Chris Covelli]

I dont actually remember the reason we couldnt have Species add the the weight map to the ICE tree automatically.  Might have something to do with adding a suffix to the end of the weight map's ICE node name.  Eric can explain better when he gets back from vacation. 

But as far as painting the weight map, its up to the user where they would want the Dual Quat effect, so we left the weight map empty for the user to paint in themselves.

Chris Covelli
http://www.polygonpusherinc.com/

[Szabolcs Matefy]

It works pretty well. I think the weight map (if you mean the envelope) had issue only because for some reason it started as .cls.etc, whenever I wanted to connect my own weightmap, I couldn't, unless I edited the name...

[Eric Thivierge]

In regards to the hand poses after adjusting the fingers on the PropRig. It'd be pretty impossible to cover all of the bases for the hand poses for all the various positions they can be put in. Could we instead create a utility command that allows you to replace the poses with new ones?

--------------------------------------------
Eric Thivierge
http://www.ethivierge.com

[Szabolcs Matefy]

Actually what I thought was to incorporate an offset into the action. So if I rotated the index finger by 15 degrees, the rotation in the action would be x-15 where x is the original rotation in the action.

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[Nicolas Esposito]

Regarding the FaceRig I actually made a kind-of custom rig for the face that is parented to the AminRig itself ( first I created a rig for the head, then merge the character and attach the rig to the AnimRig ) and it works quite good, especially for exporting to game engines

Also I made a reference rig that is able to modulate in realtime the C3D or FBX face mocap data imported into SI...nothing fancy, just some basic custom operator, 30 minutes of boring stuff :-D

The nice thing is that the rig can be adapted to a new head by ICE and some tricks, and with the custom operators that I created I can share the same mocap between characters with just few steps

I don't know whats behind the creation of the rig in Species, but I guess some kind of picking session and creation of the rig ( similar to Facerobot ) can be implemented, but since scripting is not really my thing I haven't tried yet

[Nicolas Esposito]

Also, since I just re-watcher the Rig Addition video, if it would be possible to add am additional bone chain with all the controls already setup, possibly choosing how many bones you'll need, that would be really nice and time saving, but I guess this is something already achievable with ICE, right?

On Thursday, March 7, 2013 5:05:10 PM UTC+1, Jose Carlos Poeiras wrote: