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Toon Rig : adapt mixamo mocap animation
Posted: 01 July 2021 12:21 PM   [ Ignore ]  
Total Posts:  27
Joined  2021-02-26

Sorry to post so so much about the toon rig but I can’t find nice tuts about it and so I’m looking for help where I can…
I already read the topics here about the difficulties to have mocap data applied on the Toon Rig.

What I try to do here, waiting a new rig feature, is to find a solution anyway to use the Mixamo motion capture animations on the Toon Rig.
And what I came up to is to use the Mixamo Control Rig as a step before. It’s the beginning and I have a lot to figure it out before a clean and easy solution.
Here the steps :
- Import mesh from “Toon Rig - Sporty” into Mixamo to use it as character
- Choose an animation and download its FBX
- Open it in C4D, create a new Character and use “Mixamo Control Rig”
- When hitting the tab “Adjust” in the Mixamo Character, the rig auto-fit to the skeleton of the animation.
- Retarget all in the “Retarget Master”
- Select the skinned mesh imported in the tab “Weigh transfer”
-> Now the Mixamo Control Rig move with the animation.
- then, create Parent Constraint between all the major Controllers of the Toon Rig and the Mixamo Control Rig (root, hips, spines, neck, head, hands, feet, ...)

At this stage, I’m able to have the Toon Rig moving accordingly to the mocap data read through the Mixamo Control Rig. There are a lot of problems to correct so I create a Motion System Tag to apply a layer of animation corrections.

The problems I have now :

- the elbow don’t want keyframesç It increments its position each time I hit “set keyframe” (even if it’s the same position I try to keyframe)

- the toe don’t want keyframe either… I need to figure it out.

- It’s a tedious system and it’s only for one animation at the time. Maybe the creation of motion Clip will help me…

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Posted: 01 July 2021 12:26 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 1 ]  
Total Posts:  27
Joined  2021-02-26

Here is a screenshot of my scene today.


Here is a tutorial that helped me :

- Create variations of Mixamo animations in Cinema 4D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HS2S5SleiHE&t=2s&ab_channel=Maxon

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Posted: 01 July 2021 04:11 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 2 ]  
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Hi vincent.tirtiat,

Please post questions in the Q&A forum. In addition, direct related questions to a specific tutorial can be asked by pressing the Help button under the tutorial.
Thanks for considering it. Otherwise, the forum becomes hardly readable. Hence why I have moved your post.

My best advice would be to request Mixamo options as you have linked (YT) for the Toon-Rig.
https://www.maxon.net/en/support-center
Support>Suggestion

This is not the first time this question was asked. But, unfortunately, I’m afraid that these rigs are too different to make sense to be used in that way.

Since you mentioned the mocap and one project only. That would indicate a limited duration. Which in return, makes me suggest the following: Instead of investing days of connecting rigs that are not connectable, use the mocap data as reference and animate the Toon rig accordingly. Find the key Poses, and set them in keys. Then perhaps check if an in-between key needs to be placed. I would call that “tracing/reference”.

Besides that, problems to go from IK and FK from one to another rig, here the complexity is even more significant. Compare alone the Control objects of the two rigs.

After a lot of time exploring in the past and looking into it again today for a while, I would go with the “tracing/reference” method.

In my understanding, a good rig lets you focus on the animation and not do something and then fix it with additional Animation layers while having the source, then a converter rig, finally a completely different rig as a target.

Having said all of that, I believe I will regret this, but I share it anyway: Use the Character Definition tag to use the Controller to transfer data.
Explore the Definition Tag first on a small example, so anything that is not working might be easier to spot.

The setup between two rigs must be the same, creating one new definition and saving that. Then, use the exact preset to load it into a new Definition Tag for the other rig.

Next, the Controller functions differently; as you know, some use positions, others rotation only, or both. This needs to be precise, of course.

Controllers need to be in the Controller field. Perhaps it is only me, but I have placed controllers into the joint field.

Set the reference pose before (!) you call up the solver.

Inside of the solver set the Transfer Mode to Controllers. 

Again: this is not a complete transfer of motion, and (here is my “I will regret this” it might not work as you like, with the set up (123) that you have described. A frame or two-time lag might be the most minor problem.)

The question remains, is the data so detailed from the mocap that even after applied to the Toon (!) rig, that detail will survive? Is the time spent building this long and limited chain-reactive triple rig worth it, while the toon rigs’ specialties are not in the Mocap data? Otherwise, what is the point? All of that indicates to me, use the mocap and “manually trace” the key positions. Perhaps the Pose Library is the answer here.

Below is my idea of an exploration setup for Controller Definition. Build your own; To just explore the file will not really make you master it.
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/7pdIokddYgjkKfpjyeVXDMUQoUD0sxAyEdguBaoOjD4

All the best

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Dr. Sassi V. Sassmannshausen Ph.D.
Cinema 4D Mentor since 2004
Maxon Master Trainer, VES, DCS

Photography For C4D Artists: 200 Free Tutorials.
https://www.youtube.com/user/DrSassiLA/playlists

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Posted: 02 July 2021 07:36 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 3 ]  
Total Posts:  27
Joined  2021-02-26

Hello Dr Sassi, first, thank you very much for the effort and time you put answering me !

I understand I’m not the first one trying applying mocap on Toon Rig, i’ll definitely ask Maxon a feature for this.

The question “Is it wise to apply detail motion capture data to a cartoon character?”
I would say that it could seems weird but it would allow me to propose a quicker way to animate the character (and cheaper for the client that could then consider having animated character in a facebook post for example). But, it looks really complicated to have this option on the toon rig without spending a lot of time in pre-prod… So maybe I’ll let this option down… Don’t know.

I was enthusiastic when I succeeded to get the rig to move with the mocap… But the key lied in the possibility to export this animated Toon Rig as motion clip and to blend several in the motion system. What I failed this morning… ^^’

I will run a couple of tests with your suggestions in the coming days before considering not using mocap.
- use mocap as reference
- character definition (I already hit a brick wall on this… but you gave me something to chew over)

Many thanks !

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Posted: 02 July 2021 03:23 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 4 ]  
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Hi vincent.tirtiat,

The question in itself is so complex that each time I start feeling uncertain when I get this question.

There might be a way, and things might work with some coding (or a lot). I will not exclude this. However, thinking about only the problems of transferring IK/FK settings per body-part from the Advanced Biped rig to the Toon-rig makes me want to go for a long walk. wink


In other words, having seen what people can do years ago already, I wonder what could happen if they would put their mind on that for a couple of weeks.
https://www.cineversity.com/vidplaytut/siggraph_2015_rewind_bret_bays_creating_a_character_rigging_pipeline

This couple of weeks is precisely my point. Aren’t we, more often than not, asked to find the sweet spot between R&D and production time?

I think the Pose Library Browser might be a significant step between this R&D and production decision, as we accumulate with production and get faster with it, the more poses we store. While using the Tween tool for the timing between the key Poses?

All the best

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Dr. Sassi V. Sassmannshausen Ph.D.
Cinema 4D Mentor since 2004
Maxon Master Trainer, VES, DCS

Photography For C4D Artists: 200 Free Tutorials.
https://www.youtube.com/user/DrSassiLA/playlists

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