Hello !
After several tests trying to use mocap on the Toon Rig, I gave up on this idea ^^
So, as you suggested me Dr Sassi, I’ll animate manually everything and will use the mocap data as a reference to help me pose the character. This traditional way to animate actually motivates me ! :D
But ONE thing keeps me awake late night for now : how to copy, transfer and blend animations I have created together ?
I’ll have to make the character play football, walk, jump, make a alley-oop with a basket ball, etc.
And I’d love to be able to mix, blend, repeat all this animation like we can do it with the Motion System, being able to add layer animation onto the overall to correct the transitions between clips, or add facial animation, that suppose to still have access to the Toon Rig (not only the skeleton).
Would it be possible ? :o
Does someone would have a tutorial or a hint to help me do that ?
Will it be with the motion system or a different solution that at least can help me copy/paste my keyframes from a Toon Rig to another ? (I could have a c4d file with the animation of walk, an other for the run, the jump, the idle, etc. Then, just copy paste the keyframe from one to the other, but the number of objects keyframed for a complete animation is huge, it would be insane doing it manually)
Thanks for your time reading another of my concerns ! ^^
Thanks for exploring things and feeling motivated. I love to read this. However, to emerge yourself into that level with a character is different from composing an acting/action sequence with ready-to-use mocap material. Each has its place, but producing the details of a manual “adjustment”, leads to communication with your character that can’t be achieved otherwise. So yes, I’m grateful for your feedback.
The idea is typically to use the Animation System. This requires using the exact same hierarchy. For example, I suggest placing a parent on top of all Mixamo joints, so the parent is just an object and holds by itself no relevant information (well, it can change PSR, but we leave it normally at “zero”. For this, the Character rig is typically made “editable,” which organizes all parts better for the animator.
The other option is to use the character Definitions/Solver to transfer from one rig to the next. This also needs something that is set up equally. It has no tools to. e.g., to overcome problems like differences between the number of spine joints! https://help.maxon.net/c4d/s24/en-us/Default.htm#html/TCHARACTERDEF.html
What I love to use currently is a straightforward but (from my point of view) super powerful tool: Pose Library
The power is not really to apply the whole pose each time. The part that I love a lot is that it can also only apply to the selected parts, and only as much as you move the slider. Try it, it is fantastic for that. Think about hand poses. It can take days to make a believable result for a complex expression, usually, not with the Pose Library. https://help.maxon.net/c4d/s24/en-us/Default.htm#html/78337.html
I practiced the first solution (Motion system) and it works perfectly ! Great ! :D
I already tried the second one (Character solver) and it doesn’t work well with Toon Rig. Or it would be a lot of work to specify each bone with each controller in the Character definition. I gave up.
The third solution seems really nice for pose-to-pose pre-work! It’s sad it doesn’t handle animation but the motion system exist for that I suppose.
I’m sure I will use the Pose Library anyway!
I have a few questions left :
- Why do you make the character editable ? Is it for a performance boost or is it easier to animate ?
- When I make it editable (I select the Character and press C), I don’t know where I can switch between IF and FK on the toon rig ?
I come back with a problem I have when I try to add hand keyframe animation on top of a motion clip.
I import and apply a motion source to a character (exact same character but different scene), everything is ok, the character move accordingly and stay in its position (because I don’t have any keyframe on it)
Then I add a layer in the motion system to add keyframe. When it’s done, the character doesn’t remain in its position for the controller keyframed.
I made a screen recording to show you the problem and I joined the 3 scenes I’m using. https://we.tl/t-ugVWBb0KRq
Thanks for the tips !
I made my hierarchy editable to avoid potential problems.
I don’t understand your suggestion to animate and correct only the Arm instead the entire Rig; and how it could achieve what I’m look for… My purpose here is to be able to create complex animations of a character, then blend them together in a animation non-linear editor like the motion system, then correct a portion or the entire animation on a additive layer.
This workflow allows me to work non-destructively and be flexible with client demands or animation improvements over time.
I tried the same exercise with the editable character as you suggested :
- create an animation and export a motion clip
- Open an other scene and add this motion clip to the character (already animated or not)
- Add corrections onto a layer
Where the problems begin is, when the motion clip ends, my keyframed object (for the correction) return to awkward state…
I guess it’s due to the addition of the different mattrix (from motion clip + from manual animation).
You can find my second test in video here, plus the scene file : https://we.tl/t-oyOgkISTqc
In fact, I was used to animate in Maya back in the days, where I either used Animation Layer or Time Editor and its layer. Can you tell me if I can achieve the same result as we can see in this video of maya 2018 ? You can see at 12min30s that after the clip ends, the character doesn’t pop in a bizarre way : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q5nVvLnq1w&ab_channel=MyOhMaya
I thought that the hand animation was the target. I get it; the whole rig is the target.
The whole rig gets weird if I create a Motion Tag via Create Animation Clip to the Master_CONT+.
If I do that with a new Toon Character setup, it just works, and I can place a relative adjustment layer on top of it—all fine. So what happened was my question exploring the rig.
There are double entries for the PSR. This needs to be handled first. I have delete (not counted, but it felt like) 200+ extra tracks. That will never fly, not in Cinema 4D nor in any app that I have worked in so far. I would suggest to avoid those double tracks at all cost.
After checking everything, I made a copy as reference. Then selected the Master_CON+ and started to create and Animation clip. As instructed per manual.
With just a few simple adjustments I was finally able to reproduce your problem. What happens here. Nothing that you should be concerned about, as it is supposed to work. What happens, so my best guess, there are some XPresso Tags to select the rotation order. There, so my believe two ideas meet without recognizing what is needed. So rotation values land in the wrong spot. Again, that is a guess. But I will write a report about it. Please share your problem:
I think at this point it should go to the support.
As the manual states, the Motion Tag is supposed to be on the Master CON+, and that should be all you have to care about.
Again, thank you very much for all the time spent Dr Sassi !
I didn’t know the double tracks could be a symptom of the problem here. If so, I would have told you that it seems they are reated when I press “Record Hierarchy” to create a keyframe on all the active/selected tracks. Knowing that, I don’t use it anymore and I prefer to select “Character” object -> select children -> Record Keyframe. And it works very well wit these extra steps without creating uneeded tracks.
About the PSR-Xpresso-RotationOrder problem, I have to admit I can’t really understand it ^^
Can I copy/paste your comment or link this topic to my support ticket ?
The extra Tracks are mostly ignored, but if the top track of the same parameter (e.g., R.B) is deleted, this extra track will be evaluated. The same is true if (for some reason) the extra track is moved above the default one.
Yes, you can copy and point to this thread, no problem. I have filed a report about this. Sometimes I’m told here that it was a known problem; yes, I reported it based on a forum discussion.
