Claudio Andaur and Leandro Inocencio have published a great little rig called 'Maloyo' which contains a lot of clever Python scripting .
Claudio writes:
Leandro “Cesio†Inocencio and I were trying to figure out a way to set up a rig in a similar fashion than the fantastic rig from Victor Vinyals demo reel, with smooth IK/FK blending, autosnapping and UI simpleness as Pepeland's Red Nelb.
Lots of features missing in the Blender API as well as bugs in Blender, were stopping us to get what we wanted. Fortunately, Campbell Barton and Joshua Leung were there to help coding the needed API commands and fixing the annoying bugs and we succeed at getting the smooth IK/FK blending which was the most difficult part (actually it was Joshua who provided us a sample code that put us on the right track).I finally applied all these tests and ideas into one single rig for my Maloyó Project.
Instructions are in the file; check out the demonstration video below to get an impression of this rig's capabilities. Further information & download on Claudio's site.
17 Comments
Very nice! Thanks for sharing it!
-AntonG
Wow! That is amazing, though sounds just a little bit complicated for me. Was it inspired by that lil kids show Pocoyo by any chance? :)
Ultimately, I think it's Claudio himself in a super-hero suit! :)
@Anthony: Yes, it was. At his blog he mentions that he likes the Pocoyo Animation and tried to make his Maloyo character based on it.
I wish I could use maloyo as a sven coop model.
If anyone wants to try out the rig, don't forget that you'll need a recent SVN build for it to work. (I skimmed that part first time through, in my haste to experience the Stephen Fry-related goodness)
Hey, the little red fella made it to Blendernation ! :D
Yes, you need SVN build to try this rig. "Pocoyó" is one of my favourite shows (and my daughter's) so this is for a kind of homage short movie I'm making. And yes, as Bart said, this is supposed to be me (or my alter ego) in a Pocoyó style :)
You can read more about the short movie WIP in http://www.malefico3d.org/blog-en/?cat=6 (all "Maloyó" related posts)
Regards
malefico
Haha! Great work malefico. I haven't talked to you at the Blender Conference, but I might try next time.
I thought it looked a lot like the Lego Knights' Kingdom figures. I haven't tried this yet, but it looks awesome.
Sure it's you! The stare has the same vivacity! :)
Great material!
Thank you for sharing!
Usted es un caballero! :)
Exactly - which? - build is needed to run this rig?
That is very interesting! Can't wait for all those new rigging
features to come in 2.50... *drools*
wee, maloyo on blendernation! awesome, truly a cool rig. BTW those who don't know malefico: poor guy has made so many cool bird (and some other animals) rigs for plumiferos I'm shocked that he still has the energy to rig like this on his own time.
thanks malefico, I'll be learning a lot (as always) from your work.
great work you two, specially cool that you've help improuving the py api :)
Ahh, space switching! Well done Claudio & Leandro, it's a nasty problem to crack no matter what animation package you're using - I implemented space switching in Maya a few months ago, and it was a right pain! Well done.
I'm curious to know how this system deals with keyframing - is it possible to animate an arm in IK for the first 50 frames, say, then switch to FK for the second half? Does the rig slow down from the scripting craziness that you (presumably) have running in the background?
Karl
@Karl: it is possible and intended :) . I'd recommend the following workflow: pose your character in whatever mode (IK/FK for the arms/head) and use the "KeyArm" or "KeyHead" options, that would care of constraint influences as well as keyframing the bones. About slowdowns, you might experience some. I think there is a bug somewhere related to python things that I've heard about... but try it for yourself and let me know !
@Bassam: you're the master !
@oto: O brigado !
Thanks everybody ! :)
Wow.. Fantasic rig. Character animation is still too complicated for me, though. How I wish I can master character animation soon!