FA+
Shop
Beyond proportionality
13 years ago
Now that I have a working proportion mannequin, I should probably make some more decisions regarding the future appearance of the character...
- Digitigrade vs. plantigrade: For the moment, that's a no-brainer: I'll go with plantigrade. Digitigrade may look cute in single images, but I have yet to see an example in CGI animation that doesn't look weird. The Anubis guards from the Scorpion King (or was it the Mummy?) didn't really work for me. I am not even sure a bipedal animal would remain digitigrade; the paws alone do not provide enough standing area for proper equilibrum, so evolution may work against digitigrade furries. Yay, science guesswork! Also, the "additional" joint (it's not really additional, I know) will need to be included in the inverse kinematics; mocap data would need to be adapted; book examples and tips for motion sequences would not work any more; the optical appearance of the leg would change; and finally, uh, I just don't know why I need all the baggage. So, it's plantigrade until I have some genuine experience.
- Four vs. five fingers: (counting the thumb, naturally) Toughie. I have the gut feeling that four fingers would be too mickeymousy, too cartoony for what I would like to achieve. The fingers would need to be thicker, and perhaps interaction with items and props would become harder? Gee, I just don't know. The one additional finger does not seem to be so much more work that I would want to drop it. So, five fingers for now.
- Head shape: Changes with species. Sure, my current mannequin head is a ball with a box, and I will need to create various heads for various characters. The different muzzles will hugely influence the perceived size of the head, and the ears may or may not add to the height of the overall figure. Fortunately, the head is relatively static shape, and I have a good idea about how I want it to look. (Things will become interesting again once I am making the facial expression morphs. But that is for later.)
- Tail: When Timothy Albee did "Kaze - Ghost Warrior", he said that tails would have cost him too much time to be done believably, so his furries went without. Now we do have spline IK and dynamics and inertial forces on hair physics, so perhaps the tails can be automated? Hmm. Personally I feel that the tail is a major furry appendage and totally important for the look and feel, so whatever I save with plantigrade furs, I will sacrifice gladly again to do tails.
- Clothing: The major obstacle on the way (much more than fur, by the way). Cinema4D has no good cloth engine. (It does have cloth, but the collision detection is for the birds, so I can't really use it.) Softbody dynamics goes only so far. And tight jumpsuits that can be animated just like the actual skin lock me into a modern or even sci-fi theme. I would like to have loose clothing, flowing dresses, layers of cloth, scarves, gloves, bandanas. Belts, too, both around the waist and across the shoulders, with scabbards and holsters. Clothing expresses so many facets of a character that I just can't imagine going Tarzan and provide all of them with a Weissmueller loincloth or swimming trunk.
The irony in the clothing issue is that I need to have the cloth behave "dramatically" more than naturally. I want control over it, so even if C4D comes with a new cloth engine next year, it may not be what I want. Oh, I wish I could peek into the Pixar studios to see their new cloth engine they did for "Brave"!
Sure, I could program it myself (yes, I can) but that would be a huge effort that would take me months and might not perform fast enough, and I would really like to spend a few bucks on such a system. Why oh why isn't there any alternative?
(Just for the record: There are alternatives. Blender has a cloth engine although I don't have a clue how good it is. There are standalone dress makers and simulators. But changing programs for a cloth simulation means that you have to bake, export, import like a madman.)
That's where I am. And I still have to update some of my plugins for the R14... so the rest of the year is spoken for. Hopefully I can get a body mesh done for rigging; my hands are itchy, and it wasnt the ivy.
- Digitigrade vs. plantigrade: For the moment, that's a no-brainer: I'll go with plantigrade. Digitigrade may look cute in single images, but I have yet to see an example in CGI animation that doesn't look weird. The Anubis guards from the Scorpion King (or was it the Mummy?) didn't really work for me. I am not even sure a bipedal animal would remain digitigrade; the paws alone do not provide enough standing area for proper equilibrum, so evolution may work against digitigrade furries. Yay, science guesswork! Also, the "additional" joint (it's not really additional, I know) will need to be included in the inverse kinematics; mocap data would need to be adapted; book examples and tips for motion sequences would not work any more; the optical appearance of the leg would change; and finally, uh, I just don't know why I need all the baggage. So, it's plantigrade until I have some genuine experience.
- Four vs. five fingers: (counting the thumb, naturally) Toughie. I have the gut feeling that four fingers would be too mickeymousy, too cartoony for what I would like to achieve. The fingers would need to be thicker, and perhaps interaction with items and props would become harder? Gee, I just don't know. The one additional finger does not seem to be so much more work that I would want to drop it. So, five fingers for now.
- Head shape: Changes with species. Sure, my current mannequin head is a ball with a box, and I will need to create various heads for various characters. The different muzzles will hugely influence the perceived size of the head, and the ears may or may not add to the height of the overall figure. Fortunately, the head is relatively static shape, and I have a good idea about how I want it to look. (Things will become interesting again once I am making the facial expression morphs. But that is for later.)
- Tail: When Timothy Albee did "Kaze - Ghost Warrior", he said that tails would have cost him too much time to be done believably, so his furries went without. Now we do have spline IK and dynamics and inertial forces on hair physics, so perhaps the tails can be automated? Hmm. Personally I feel that the tail is a major furry appendage and totally important for the look and feel, so whatever I save with plantigrade furs, I will sacrifice gladly again to do tails.
- Clothing: The major obstacle on the way (much more than fur, by the way). Cinema4D has no good cloth engine. (It does have cloth, but the collision detection is for the birds, so I can't really use it.) Softbody dynamics goes only so far. And tight jumpsuits that can be animated just like the actual skin lock me into a modern or even sci-fi theme. I would like to have loose clothing, flowing dresses, layers of cloth, scarves, gloves, bandanas. Belts, too, both around the waist and across the shoulders, with scabbards and holsters. Clothing expresses so many facets of a character that I just can't imagine going Tarzan and provide all of them with a Weissmueller loincloth or swimming trunk.
The irony in the clothing issue is that I need to have the cloth behave "dramatically" more than naturally. I want control over it, so even if C4D comes with a new cloth engine next year, it may not be what I want. Oh, I wish I could peek into the Pixar studios to see their new cloth engine they did for "Brave"!
Sure, I could program it myself (yes, I can) but that would be a huge effort that would take me months and might not perform fast enough, and I would really like to spend a few bucks on such a system. Why oh why isn't there any alternative?
(Just for the record: There are alternatives. Blender has a cloth engine although I don't have a clue how good it is. There are standalone dress makers and simulators. But changing programs for a cloth simulation means that you have to bake, export, import like a madman.)
That's where I am. And I still have to update some of my plugins for the R14... so the rest of the year is spoken for. Hopefully I can get a body mesh done for rigging; my hands are itchy, and it wasnt the ivy.
What about interaction of fur and cloth. Fur creates volume which is, in fact, the collision area with cloth. It seems to me that computational effort would be terrible. Would there be any trick except setting an offset to the obstacle (i.e. the body)?
I think that ultimately you would work with some static clothes, tied to the body mesh, and a few trailing/dangling pieces that are simulated. This would keep the possibilities for errors down. But for a flowing dress, Jedi robe, Batman cloak, or windswept silken skirt you need a fully simulated cloth - that at the same time assumes dramatic poses just the way you want them... sort of a contradiction. I don't know how this can be solved. Maybe a morph between simulated and prescribed poses.
Not sure about Blender fur; in C4D it has no volume or resistance. A collider object would deform the fur, but the fur has no retro effect on the collider (like stopping its motion, or changing the path of the moving collider). Maybe you could change the fur into a soft body object, but you are right, the computation time would be immense. Hair physics is normally limited to the "physical" hair level anyway to save simulation effort.
So, if you want to have a collider object that is influenced by the fur, you will need a proxy object that acts on behalf of the fur and pushes back. For cloth, I think that the easiest solution is to choose a cloth style that is "closed" at the arms and neck, and have no fur underneath at all, but if you need a more open style you will probably need to resort to tricks.
Even worse is fur on fur collisions... better to avoid those altogether...
Though their spines are horizontal, so you may still be right when it comes to the humanoid form.
Nice initiative, BTW XD.
My main argument against using digitigrades would be the "look" anyway - it's not what the audience expects from a bipedal upright humanoid, so even if it is biomechanically correct, it strains the believability. Suspension of disbelief is important for a scene that features fantastic (anthropomorphic) creatures already, so I wouldn't want to saddle myself with making that detail believable if I can do without - just to keep it easy
Of course it would be interesting to see it done, and see it done nicely. I hope we can assemble some animators within the fandom that could experiment with digitigrade movement...