Procedural 2d joint

[Mathaeus]

Procedural 2d joint



Hi all,

here's a new toy. It works in the same way as 'corrective shape', but instead of modeling the shape key, it's completely procedural. It applies a bunch od deformations along bones, before envelope operator. This one is a 'recipe', nothing generic. A bit of shearing, scaling, there is some basic bulge and 'clamp' to avoid interpenetration. To make it faster, there is no any 'expensive' feature inside.
It likes the 'absolute' envelope assignment to rotations, everything bellow the elbow should 100% rotate with forearm bone, everything above, 100% with bicep bone. It's designed for standard SI 2d chain (X is direction, Z is axis of rotation).
I'd believe it's possible to use this setup on any 2d joint. Important parameters are 'bounding box' ones, called, X MinMax, Y Min max.. - in coordinates of reference pose for 'forearm' bone. Area of deformation is scaled and limited by these values.

Hope someone will find it usable

Here it is

[druitre]

Hi Mathaeus,

I've downloaded and tried out your emdl - I like what it's doing!

But, when I try to make a joint of my own (as far as I can see, I duplicate what you do exactly) nothing happens. I can't get the compound to do anything. Do you have any idea what I'm doing wrong?

joint_test.rar

[edit: I'm on 2012]

[Mathaeus]

unfortunately I can't checkout 2012 scene. Generally, it needs:
1: an applied envelope operator on mesh ( because of active static kine state property)
2: standard SI bones (because of specific coordinate system)
3: two 'neighboring' bones, 'forearm' is a 'child' bone
3: 'MinMax' parameters should cover the area of deformation, default is for tiny arm in 'common' 10cm=SI unit
4. 'forearm' rotation - at reference pose (that is, static kine state) it does nothing
5: appropriate 'side of rotation' default is negative Z angle, if forearm rotates in positive Z, enable this in compound. For now, it does nothing on 'the other side'

Cheers

[druitre]

Hi Mathaeus, I figured it out: the mesh needs to have all its transforms frozen and a neutral pose set. Without either one of these, nothing happens.

It works now, I'm off to experimenting

[Mathaeus]

yeah that would be number 6 ... thanks for finding !
For now, I feel satisfied only with performance, it seems it's feasible to go with much more complex one, maybe completely procedural for entire character. But that will need a lot of brain-frying , to get something usable.

Thanks again !