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IK handle to make character squat

megavladmegavlad Posts: 11
edited October 2017 in New Users

In traditional 3d modeling and animation packages, such as 3D Studio Max and Maya, character animation rigs have a (somewhat) usual set of animation controls. One of these controls is located at the hip and uses inverse kinematics to make the character squat by manipulating only that control. 

In this video, the presenter uses this control. He's talking about unrelated stuff, but you can see the control in action. He does it really quickly, so it's easy to miss. You can see the bend at the lengs and hit whole move moving down:

It's at 4 minutes, 27 seconds into the video.

 

I was looking for such a control in Daz Studio, but couldn't find it. Is such control available?

 

Post edited by megavlad on

Comments

  • KnittingmommyKnittingmommy Posts: 8,191

    As far as I know, there aren't any rigs like that in DS.  It would be nice.  The best you can do is possibly rig your model in Blender and then import the FBX into DS.  I've heard that's possible because you can import some rigs into Blender, but I haven't done it yet.  Your other option would be to rig the model yourself if you know how to do that inside DS.  I do wish there was a rig in DS that was more appropriate for animation, but that doesn't seem to be something that will happen in the near future.

    Now, you can make a character bend the knees and squat, but your mile mays vary and it will depend on the character because it seems like every generation does something slightly different with the hips.  On G8, you can pin the feet and then select the hip, move the transform straight down and the character will squat.  However, the pinning at the feet aren't perfect and always does weird things while you move the character.  

  • megavladmegavlad Posts: 11
    Knittingmommy said:

    On G8, you can pin the feet and then select the hip, move the transform straight down and the character will squat.  However, the pinning at the feet aren't perfect and always does weird things while you move the character.  

    I tried pinning the feet before, but it didn't work for me. For the most part, I'm ok with the movement controls that we're given; it's just this type of motion is annoying to do. Maybe creating poses to be reused later will do the trick.

    Thanks

  • KnittingmommyKnittingmommy Posts: 8,191

    I'm not sure why, but pinning with just the active pose tool never pins very well.  Pinning is better if you go under the ActivePose in the Tool Settings tab and tell it to pin at both ends.  The feet still wobble a bit, but they do stay planted on the floor a little better.  Going with poses might be better.  You can pose a character in one keyframe and then move several keyframes down and add a squatting pose.  As you play through the timeline, DS will do it's best to transition smoothly from one pose to another.  So, you could have your character standing, make the keyframe, use a squatting pose 10 or 20 keyframes away and set the keyframe there.  Scrub through the two poses and DS does a pretty good job of making it look like the character is squatting.  This is mostly how I do the few animations that I've done so far.  Just combing poses and making aniblocks from those poses so that I can reuse them later.  

    You can also make aniblock using poses and puppeteer.  

    A little old, but my favorite video showing what you can do to create an animation in DS and Puppeteer.

    Here is a good one on Puppeteer that is more recent.

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