Attaching an object with connectors to a puppet.
I can't figure this out at all. I've been at it for about 3 days now..
The set up is this -
I have an eyeball sitting above a small cube connected with a ball joint connector. The cube is the parent and the eyeball is the child.
I also have eyelids connected to the same cube with a bolt connector. All objects are movable and have collision turned off.
I then open a new character creation and try to attach the eye to the puppet.
The eye appears to be unmovable in the tweak menu on import, so I make it movable.
I scope in to the puppets head and group the head and eye together and all seems well. I can move the head around and the eye moves with it. But when I go to play mode the eye drops off and plunges downward.
I have tried scoping further in and grouping at that level but the same thing happens. Sometimes when I scope further in and select the objects for grouping I don't get the option to group at all.
Incidentally, I have successfully managed to attach hands with connectors (movable fingers) to a puppet without any of these issues.
Is there something about the set up of the head of a puppet which causes this object rejection?
.. Another point to note is that when I'm in play mode all objects (the hands) with connectors are flopping and swinging around unlike the rest of the the puppet which stays set.
All I'm ultimately trying to do is have a puppet with movable eyes, eyelids, eyebrows and mouth that I can animate with keyframing or possession.
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Hi,
When you think of the tweak moveable, change it in your head to be called "not glued to group"
So making the eyes moveable are making them fall out of the head as they're not glued to it.
So what you need to do in this case is make just the cube non moveable, but leave the eyes and eyelids moveable as the connector will hold them in place.
John -
Oh my god it worked! I only wish I'd asked 3 days ago!
Thank you so much for this!
Can I trouble you for another solution?
This time it's animating the mouth. I'd like to have different mouth shapes /phonemes that I can swap using key frames. But how can I have different mouth objects that I can cycle between so that only the one I want is showing when I want it to?
Cheers
D -
Stick all the jaws on the puppet at the same time and use keyframes to make the different jaw parts invisible/visible on demand
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hi,
No problem
first make all you mouths invisible using their tweak menu.
then create a keyframe for each mouth where you record turning the visibility on (MAKE SURE YOU NAME THE KEYFRAMES!) then turn them on and off to get the different mouth shapes , using a timeline for this often works well.
John -
Thanks folks, I'll give it a go. Hopefully I'll have time to make something before the beta expires! Eek!
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Maybe we need to rename movable to locked/ unlocked (in group), seems to be a lot of confusion.
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Successfully lipsynced a puppet using the different phonemes/mouth shapes with invisibility as suggested. Worked a treat ?but it took forever! If anyone has a logic solution to linking the mouth shapes to an audio file so that they swap in response to the varying wave form during playback I'd love to know!
Thanks again folk
Dreeko
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