Cineversity

Hello!

I am testing out a rig set-up where I weight and add controllers to a one geometry.
I then want that to be a morph target for my regular object.
(Similar to this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-WLDB0BSRs)

Everything is great up to the point where I start animating my morph target but I do not see the refresh on the main geometry.
I only see the refresh when I save the file or move the slider on the morph tag for some reason.

Any idea how I could get around this?

Thanks

Hi Franck,

The simple answer is, as far as I know, there is no dynamically update of the Pose Morph targets.
That it updates during saving is more concerning than anything else.
The Slider change should lead to an change, as the influence changes.
If you stay in edit mode, the influence becomes updated, BUT, it updates the “Stored” information of the Pose Morph each time/each frame, how that works out in production, I have no idea, e.g., Team Render, etc. (that the animation of the Sliders is disabled is perhaps the most prominent side effect of the Edit mode)

Watching the tutorial, gave me the impression that the main idea is, to have a spline outside the character, based on a few points each time, to allow for a quick change of the shape. On the “twin” shape (located at the character) the joints are placed on the points, or more likely somewhere on the spline, to have a precise position each time.
The Spline is used here as Information and representation of the current state, it does not at all have any direct influence to the mesh. It moves the joints, the joints deform.

My first conclusion is, that the spline should be a Cubic [or Akima] interpolation. (Linear, Bezier or B-Spline are excluded, based mostly on handling effort or result).

Your idea with the Tracer is a good fit, and can produce either: Cubic or Akima.
The set up with Null-Objects allows here to reproduce the same Spline, but at different locations. Parenting the Nulls and move the Parent to the face [joints] or away from it [visual, adjustments]. The Nulls are based on the parenting easily defined as local coordinates. In that way, all “Child Nulls” can go into an XPresso>Link List. Via Iteration those Link-List set-ups can be synchronized.

With this simple set up we have already the handles (Child Null) and the Splines (for the Joints as well for the visual representation)

Joints can be created from Splines, based on the points they have. Character>Conversations>Spline to Joints. Which might lead to the idea of an Object Manager>Tag>Character>IK Spline [e.g., Type>Relative].
To position the joints more individual, an Object Manager>Tags>Align to Spline might be an idea.

Useful functions to consider:
Mesh>Commands>Edge to Spline
Mesh>Spline>Explode
Character>Conversations>Spline to Joints
Character>Conversations>Convert to Nulls

Is this more in your direction? I will think a little about splines and how to work with them in the next post, if I get something that is worth talking about. ;o)

All the best

(As a side note, the Mesh-Deformer would work here perhaps as well, but from your previous posts, I stick with your question :o)

Additional Note:
If the target is to have the “handles” for the animation away from the object…
You can set up a Spline base, connect Joints to it and bind the Mesh to it. If you set the Skin so the joints can influence the object without sharing the same position, you can move the object away from the Spline Rig.

Image from the manual

As mentioned above, here is a little set up.

I took your idea to use Four null Objects to define the Spline (Give)

The XPresso set up is based on the idea to recreate the Nulls somewhere on the Character. The Parenting objects on “Give” and “Take” are needed!

The Joints are placed with “Align to Spline” Select all Joints and use the “num*12.5” in the Position field, while all Joints are selected.

The Joints are just bind, for this example I did not fine-weighted them.

My target was here to have the freedom to move the Character freely.

Let me know how close this comes to your needs. The Null Objects can be managed with Pose Morph!

File two has a HUD Interface.

All the best

(I tested the Spline IK for this use, and as long as a circle shaped Spline is used, the results are not desirable)

Thank you very much for your files!
Your Xpresso set-up is very smart! Eliminating the need for all those PSR Constraints and making it all much cleaner.

I see that this type of rig will quickly become very complicated as each eye/mouth will probably have 8 deformation points, meaning having a lot of controllers!
Because of that I believe the C4D HUD interface is not an optimal choice, unless there is a data type that could represent the actual spline in a 2D environment. (If only C4D allowed 2 splines in the Data Type/Spline interface, one could recreate a mouth/eye shape. I could of course try having one Spline interface for the upper part of the eye/mouth and one for the lower part.)

I am going to recreate your setup from scratch on my dummy cube so that I understand everything well.

Above, you mentioned that this probably could be solved with the mesh deformer. I am curious to hear more about that.
Just so you know, the end goal of this rig is having a old school Disney-ish kind of facial deformation, where one can push the facial expressions quite a bit and also have a top level of deformation on the whole head for squash and stretch.
I have done some early tests with the mesh deformer as this top level deformer (with Null controllers connected with clusters), but I see that I have deformation problems where the eye f.ex. are deformed in a way that they don’t seems to be attached to the face anymore.

The actual face/head rig is my goal, not just having a few splines a ctrl objects. So I am open for any inputs and suggestions
My original question was a result of an incredibly annoying obstacle I ran into. It’s a very weird limitation that C4D doesn’t do real-time update of it’s morph targets. But I guess haven’t been designed for that user case.
(I will file a feature request)

Thanks for the feedback, Franck.

The Mesh Deformer might then not the right one for this, except with a lot of weighting and many more of them, if that works at all. Similar to that idea would be the Spline Deformer, where the initial Spline defines the starting point, and the second spline (copy) defines the deformations.

So, why do I think this is not a directions to go here?
The way you describe it, means that the face of the character will be massively deformed. My idea about it, while using joints, one must have a well designed “weight” distribution for each and every joint. Each joint or group of them might go as far as that the whole head is affected. If not everything will move dynamically at the same time, the object {head} will feel folded, scrambled or just fall apart. In the moment you allow for each joint to have influence on the whole mesh, each joint has less influence by itself, as it shares this influence [max 100%].

Why would I think it could work with the Mesh Deformer?
I believe there is a sweet spot, when the base mesh of the object is relatively low, and becomes Subdivided. This would prevent the early folding of the surface. The Cage for the mesh Deformer should be low res naturally, and always handled with the Magnet Tool. The Magnet Tool with a nice falloff will provide a missing overall weighting of the Deformer, but allows for a result that might works.

The ideas to work with Joints and Splines, could work in the same way, by affecting all Splines at once! So there is a movement of all joints, more or less.

Another idea would be the Camera Deformer, as the points of it can be run by a Pose-Morph or even by XPresso. Note: my only critique of this deformer is, that it is very fragile. In the moment one change the aspect ratio of the Render Settings, things change. As I work more often than not in Cinemascope [1:2.40), I notice that, when I changed from UHD to Film settings. Not nice, so keep that in mind.

If I had to do such thing, I would use the Pose Morph in a heart beat. I love to store information rather than to have anything live with the danger to overwrite something I liked and notice it too late.
Who cares how many sliders are in the Pose Morph on the end, what really counts is how easily one can go from one stage to the next stage of an expression. Having said that, and thinking about the “Driver Tag” as base idea,  one could also have a Spline over that face and connect point positions to these Sliders, one or several, and via Ranger Mapper fine tune the mix. Not the Driver Tag, but a self build option.

From what I got from the Masters in that area, Rigging means, to have a fast access to many expression, best practice here, one click to get what you want. The simpler the animation work is, the harder the rigging work might have been to get there. Which brings the “Interaction Tag” in to the game perhaps.
Or: Animation Clips with expression, PLA, and with its transitions… But this leaves out the interaction.

Pose Morph and Live changes , well, perhaps this might get you a step further: I builded a Pose-Morph with a spline [green]. Then added a “Live Spline”, to be changed at any time [yellow]. Both were then connected via XPresso>Mix to the resulting Spline [blue]. Just an idea, and very simplified to showcase the idea. Scene file and screenshot, see below.

All the best