Cineversity

Hi everybody,

I am trying around with the mouse preset in cinema r15, but I have some problems. As I want to animate the mouse, I try to move the feet. But these are acting not as I expected, they float to the side way to early. You can also clearly see this problem, if you take he spine controler and pull it down. In this case I expect the feet to stiffly stay on the ground (as feet of human rigs do), but as I mentioned before, they turn to the side.

After a lot of experimenting (up-vectors, xpresso, blocking some axes) I found kind of a solution: I go to the “hand”-bone making problems and freeze the rotation. After that, I go to the IK-tag’s “turn”-option and correct the rotation of the hand/foot by hand. This way I found out something interesting: After I corrected the rotation, the value of “turn” and the bone’s B-rotation are nearly the same (of course not exactly, as I corrected by hand). As I rised the value of “turn”, the B-rotation decreased.

That gave me the idea that I maybe could use a script to always have the rotation of the feet corrected automaticaly. The script is supposed to say “Hey IK’s turn-value, rise till you are equal with the hand bone’s B-rotation”. Unfortunately I have no experience with Python. But as this is kind of a simple issue, I hope that some of you are able to tell me how it’s done.

Thanks for all answers!

Hi anyMOTION GRAPHICS,

Please open up a new version of the “CMotion (mouse)”. Then follow the link to see a one minute clip that I have recorded for you.

https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/Agq39AN15xUUal0VqD00lu0BUe43uC-7ciLYlcfyXR8?ref_=cd_share_link_copy

It seems to work fine here. While you do the steps of that movie clip, what is different on your side?

All the best

Hello Dr. Sassi,

thanks for your answer.

I attached some screenshots to visualize my problem. The screenshot “1” shows the mouse’s original pose. “2” Shows what happens if I pull the spine controler down till the abdomen touches the ground - the feet rotate to the site (I did not touch the feet controlers). The same problem also exists, if I go back to the original position and just pull the foot controler up, as shown in Screenshot “3”. I just move it upwarts not the site.
The screenshots “4” and “5” (attached to the next post, as only three attachements per post are allowed) show a human character, which shows the behaviour I expect.The feet stay straight on the ground if I push the character’s hip down, and if I move the foot around, it does not rotate. Of course, if I move out of a certain radius, the human character’s foot also rotates to the site, but to achieve that, I have to clearly move the controler away from the foot. The mouse’s foot starts rotating way to early.

Thanks a lot!

Here are screenshots 4 and 5 (as announced in my previous post)

Hi anyMOTION GRAPHICS,

To have the mouse with the feet straight even in that extreme position feels odd to me. Your example with the human feels in the same way. Get up of your chair and try it on your own. I did of course, as every animator should explore things practically. I can’t leave my feet flat down on the floor when I go really down. I’m not certain what you can do, but I consider my self relatively bendy.

There is of course the discussion what is practically and what is artistic expression. Both often do not overlap so much. But that is certainly not what you like to discuss.

The next point is for me, that each rig has to follow the needs, mentioned above. It should be not filled with automatics which forces a certain behavior—just because we can or without considering the target of our animation. This would feel like a point and shoot camera, everything on automatic, only a click is needed, a night mare for advanced photographers. I hope that makes it clearer. The “CMotion (mouse)” had a clear target, moving forward, perhaps in the way a supporting actor would do, running from one hole in the wall to the cheese and to the next hide out: just to make the actor in the kitchen scream. Anything else was not supposed. That the feet rotate while squeezed, perhaps a decision done on purpose. I know you would have done it in a different way. But let me add, if the feet would be always parallel to the floor, it would look horribly un-natural if the mouse would climb up a huge soft cheese, or anything soft. Similar to your screen shot #5, It works for you, not for me and certainly not standing on the beach with the water comes in. To say it clearly, it is an artist call, or should I say, keep the character ad the script in mind? I hope that makes it clear that one idea is only absolute if taken out of context.

If you like to do it, perhaps define that the feed is always flat, PoseMorph would be my suggestion, so you can shut it off if needed, or dial it in accordingly. Perhaps for each foot one slider in the PoseMorph. There is even the idea to take the P.Y value and connect this via XPresso and an Range Mapper to the rotation (for a flat floor). So each time the foot (or paw) gets close to the floor it is set in the way you ask for. Then again, think of a close-up shot (detail) of the foot when it gets close to the floor, it would look like a robot, not like a soft paw from a friendly character. (e.g., Ratatouille, Little Chef: Remy)

I hope this little exploration helps a little bit to decide who much automatism is need and what needs to be done manually.

Enjoy the set up.