Cineversity

Hello,

I modeled a hand/arm and am looking to pose it and maybe animate it in the future. I am familiar with creating a rig with bones/skinning/IK/etc. but I was wondering if there was a simple/quicker way to do this.

To expand on this - When people create character models and pose them for show, are they fully rigging their characters or modeling them in that pose or is there another quicker way?

Thanks!

you could use a pose morph tag using the point level animation feature. You literally just change the mesh to create a pose and you can animate the morph.

Hi spencerokada,

There are other ways, but the main idea is to connect each and every point to one or more joints, so the movement of the points becomes more natural. With the joints in play, the angle among them will give even more options via XPresso. Especially for an arm, Muscle Objects might lead to a more realistic appearance, and those are driven typically by joints.

As vytas_rauckis said, Pose Morph is the next option. Other options could be just a Spline with a Spline Wrap, or just a simple Bend Deformer, perhaps a Mesh Deformer, well anything that can move points in an wanted order.

Typically an object/character is posed during modeling in a neutral pose, as it is called T-Pose for bi-ped (and two arm) figures. It follows the idea to keep all points as separated from each other as possible and in a way that allows for a position to see all points, roughly said. The opposite would be a figure sitting in a lotus formation and with the forearms on the legs. That will cause some extra work to differentiate for any animation work, and a standing stretch with arms in the air will perhaps show some weird deformations. The common T-Pose is even a requirement in many, more or less, automated rigging options, see the Maximo series here on Cineversity for more information.
https://www.cineversity.com/vidplaylist/mixamo_to_cinema_4d_character_workflow/mixamo_to_cinema_4d_character_workflow_rig_characters_export_with_mixamo

All the best

Right on. Appreciate the info!

You’re very welcome, spencerokada!

My best wishes for your project.