Using the turner rig for poses in blender

[pumpernickel]

Since I didn't find anything in the wiki or the forum about this, I thought opening a thread about it would be appropriate. If there is already a good thread please point me to it and this one can be deleted.

I'm not totally unfamiliar with simple-to-medium level rigging in blender, but I got some problems understanding all of the turner rig that comes in Overgrowth/Data/Blend files/turnerrig.blend , and thought maybe some other people have the same problems as I do.
This is what I found out so far, please correct me if I'm wrong.
Out of the 22 layers with content the most interesting to me so far are

top row:
1(shoulders and hip)
3(Head and neck)
9+10(left arm+hand ik&elbow target)
11+12(right arm+hand ik&elbow target)
14 (left foot ik+knee target)
16 (right foot ik+knee target)

bottom row:
13 (root bone)

The ear controls are always visible on all those layers somehow (yeah I know why ;¬)
In addition there is probably useful stuff on bottom_row->15 but I'm not sure how to make use of that together with the rest of the controls.

First I had some problems with the hand ik until I noticed the ik is weighted by a slider at the bottom of the hand ik bone settings.
But I didn't yet get to work the elbow target bone or the shape_fist feature of the hand bone though.

So, what did I miss?
A few hints on how to properly use the turnerrig would be very much appreciated :¬D

[pumpernickel]

Ok I figured out that the elbow target only works in conjunction with hand ik turned on.
Now the only thing I'm not getting is how to let turner make a fist. Is it even possible with that rig? I only see straight bones in his hand, no joints to bend 'fingers' .,.

[Endoperez]

Ok I figured out that the elbow target only works in conjunction with hand ik turned on.
Now the only thing I'm not getting is how to let turner make a fist. Is it even possible with that rig? I only see straight bones in his hand, no joints to bend 'fingers' .,.

Search wolfire blog for "blend shapes" or "morph targets". IIRC that explains it.

[pumpernickel]

Thanks very much for the hint, I take it you mean this blog entry
http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/08/Hand-sh ... ate-frames
If I undestand it correctly, the term in blender would be 'shape keys'. Sadly there is no shape keys defined in the 'turnerrig.blend', there is 'fingers' and 'hand' (l/r resp.) as vertex groups, but there are no keys for them (or I'm looking in the wrong place).
Also there is no 'fist' animation/action (well how could there with neither the finger joints nor shape keys), the way I did it with the chars I made myself so far was with actions (control bone for the fist animation according to 'humane rigging' vids).

So I still need to know: how does turner make a fist? Do I need something in addition to the turnerrig.blend? Do I need to make those shape keys myself (I could but I assume that's not the best way to go)?
I believe those belong in the default turnerrig.blend, as that would make custom animations easier.

[Endoperez]

If you want to work with existing animations/export to Overgrowth, make sure you're working in the file that's been edited most recently, and that has the most data. I think that's rabbit_rig, not turnerrig.


There's a "turnerhandrid.blend" too. I'm starting to think that hand shapes are changed in the game code. It'd have to be saved per-animation though, so there should at least be a way to mark that change in Blender. Hmm. You could probably export the mesh from turnerhandrig.blend, then import it into the normal rig, then use that new mesh as a shape key (maybe? maybe there's a modifier to match mesh A to similar mesh B?)

[NZJenkins]

The shape keys are in rabbit rig. Four for each hand, not sure why. If you want to make a fist there is a control on the Hand control things. Just have a look at some of the animations I guess.

[pumpernickel]

Yupp, that (rabbit_rig.blend) was it, thanks a lot!
Gone from total confusion and self doubt to all normal again ;¬)

To make a fist I just use the controls next to the shape in the mesh, works like a charm.
(still didn't figure out how to use the shape_fist slider in the non-ik hand bone, does notten for me)

The rabbit_rig.blend also has all the meaningful armature layers already selected so no need to mess around with the other bone layers, sweet.

So for everybody who wants to dive into animation:
use the rabbit_rig.blend, the turnerrig.blend is missing some important features and only will make your mustache turn grey and fall off.