Animating a human-robot (xpresso and the range mapper)
by Claudia Magnesa
on
May 14, 2009 at 11:00:49 am
Hi, can someone please help me?
I am trying to animate a human-robot, what is the best way to animate? Bone? xpresso and the range mapper? or something else?
Is there a tutorial for xpresso and the range mapper? (if thet is a way to animate)
Please please help!!
Re: Animating a human-robot (xpresso and the range mapper) by Adam Trachtenberg on May 14, 2009 at 3:27:35 pm
If nothing bends you can animate strictly with IK -- no bones or joints necessary. Otherwise you will need joints, weight tags, and a skin deformer.
Range Mapper is just an xpresso node that converts a range of inputs to a different range of outputs. It might be used in a character rig but it's not a character animation tool in itself.
CA is too big a topic to explain in a forum post. I suggest you check out the tutorials that came with Cinema and some online tutorials at C4DCafe, etc.
Re: Animating a human-robot (xpresso and the range mapper) by Claudia Magnesa on May 14, 2009 at 3:45:27 pm
Thank you so much
Is there a tutorial for IK? I am using the primitive Figure given in C4D and made editable. But how can I bent it (like he is picking up something from the floor) without going to a long process of rotating and moving most of the joints. If there is a way to do so!?
Re: Animating a human-robot (xpresso and the range mapper) by Claudia Magnesa on May 15, 2009 at 10:31:55 am
Yuo were talking about animate strictly with IK -- no bones or joints necessary. But on the tutorial from the link you gave me, it uses joints. Is it possible to explain the difference?
Thank you
Re: Animating a human-robot (xpresso and the range mapper) by Adam Trachtenberg on May 15, 2009 at 2:46:07 pm
Yes, as I said originally, joints are only necessary if you have a single-mesh model that you want to bend, as opposed to multiple models that don't bend. You can think of it as if the separate models are behaving like the joints with an IK-only solution. So instead of creating the joints and binding, you would set up the separate models in a joint-like heirarchy and apply IK directly to them.
Re: Animating a human-robot (xpresso and the range mapper) by Claudia Magnesa on May 15, 2009 at 3:07:45 pm
ok, so if I use the IK-only, can I bent the human-robot like he is picking up something from the floor? My main problem is the feet, they are not fix on the floor so if I want to bent him, I need to bent the upper legs, lower legs, feet and move the whole figure down and try to match the position of the feet where they were before and right on the floor again, and as you see it is too long and I think it is not the right way to do it.
Hope it was clear, sorry to be a pain and thank you so mauch for all your answers.
