hello, since i slowly enter again in the rigging area of the project,and i haven't actually rigged something in the past months, i made this thread to keep everything about rigging in one place

this is the 1st character setup,i just want some feedback for this to see
if i do things correctly

i moved the spine handle to make the curvature
hope im allowed to do that



a question i have,is how to rig parts like clothing and hair (with realtime game engine in mind)
but to be honest i havent searched on how to do that yet (so if you feel like answering....)

I guess the main question is:
does it work with all the specific movements you want to make your character endure?
If so: then I guess it's allowed...


Have you finalized the decision on what game engine you're going to use yet,
as I guess a lot depends on the inner workings of the chosen engine...

game engine is unity,that won't change^^
in the past i had some problems setting up the bones in the correct places
that led to bad deformations as well

thats why i ask to be sure....^^

some characters are very flexible and might have some extreme poses

I know you already know all this, but anyway...

If you're using 'standard' XSI envelope, and everything related is the same (envelope weights, number of assigned deformers), it should match, regardless of extreme poses.

Usually, only SRT is taken for export. Neutral poses, constrains, IK... that, in most cases, it's not - that's a reason for enveloping to 'shadow rigs', and exporting only their (plotted) transformations, together with enveloped mesh.

Unity or another engine, it's always some allowed maximum of deformers (bones) for everything, as well as maximum of deformers, assigned to particular vertex. Let's say, 64, 128, bones for all, 4 bones per point, something like that. If you try to export more, exporter can do some 'own solution', and that can looking strange...
There is 'Enforce Limit' option in Envelope Weight Editor for setting limit per point.

thanks a lot for mentioning this,
unity;s limit is 4 deformers per vertex afaik
about the shadow rigs,i learned that the hard way...
i do have a shadow rig created in this one

cloths and hair tip: keep it veeeeery simple. surprisingly enouth, straight forward kinematics ends up being a nice solution for animating that stuff. it's reliable, controlable and fast. in many cases, it's like 4 bones and off you go
these days realtime simulation is getting really good, but thats a different ball game. if you can use that, do so.

or you might have a look at some spring chain (rotational spring solver), like Helge Mathee's, if you're not that confortable with manually animating stuff and realtime simulation is not an option. Well set up, it shouldn't be too hard to deal with overlapping or getting the chain to move where you want it to... i'd go for the very first option, though.

thanks a lot craft
very helpfull

game is a just in case option though
but there are more and more tutorials and add ons for unity
that might not be impossible to do it with little help^^