Cineversity

I’m rigging Darkwing Duck. I’ve ran into many problems when trying to animate him. Things don’t move or they crumple into each other.
Ex: upper lips and lower merge into each other.
How do I properly rig his lips/long beak, his mask is literally his eyebrows, eyelids (partially hidden behind his mask). I disabled the mask to rig; he still can’t blink.
Is there a proper way to create eyelids?
His legs bend massively inward when animating due to his natural outward foot position.
I know this is quite a bit of questions. Any suggestions or guidance is greatly appreciated.
I’ve attached a picture of the character in c4d for reference. I know his hat is distorted slightly; different attempt at the time.

Hi casillas227,

Have you explored this series:
https://www.cineversity.com/vidplaylist/toon_rig_series/toon_rig_series_introduction

The first part is, of course, that all is set up well. With the “lips” in this case, they work more mechanically and need an exact positioning of the “shared rotational position”. I’m sure that the number of changes this “beak” will need to come anywhere near the expression used generally for this, I would focus here to get it open and close and get all the required shapes via PoseMorph.

The legs could be adjusted with the Poles if I got your questions correctly.
Here is a very short screen capture addressing the two questions. Note that you have for the mouth three sub-adjustments each time that follows the main upper and the lower main controller.
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/BXvugQhBUDHvV6hffzX8jpMFqg729fViYQMawDOjHmN

Since I really don’t know how much experience you have, and while writing in a forum, I suggest this:
If something is not clear, take the body parts to a new file and set them up manually, not with the character object. Here explore one leg and IK with its settings.
The mouthpart is undoubtedly worth to be explored separately, and you might enjoy more to be able to mess around with it, other than in the file, you have placed a lot of work already in it.

When you write “crumble”, that might be a problem with work in progress weighting, e.g., not 100% weight, not 101%, or 99% will already create significant problems. If possible, limit the point weight to as few joints as possible. Always weight from large (all) then down to finer levels.

If the eye-lid question was a modeling question:
https://www.cineversity.com/vidplaylist/introduction_to_cinema_4d_r10_bodypaint_3d_r3_series/butterfly_head_polygonal_modeling_part_1

All the best

Hey Dr.Sassi,

I appreciate your quick response, suggestions, and the links that you have provided me with. The experience I have with Cinema 4d is about 5 months. I learned just about everything from purchasing tutorials from Helloluxx.

From Sebastian’s Toon Tutorials, I noticed he goes incredibly quickly over the rigging, not explaining any particulars. Ex: Parent cons and blink cons. Where do those go exactly? Might be helpful to have a few pictures with the sphere layouts of the face with multiple views showing where each set is properly placed.

I’ve also noticed there’s no trouble shooting videos that show most common mistakes we might run into and what to do to correct them. I’m pretty sure there are many who are having similar issues.

Weight painting I’ve been figuring out as I go along. I’m still a bit fuzzy with the percentage strength bar as it seems to need to be set at 100 for the entire duration. I kind of wish there was a tutorial for weight painting the entire body as the joints created from the toon rig seem to very particular; as Sebastian fast forward through it. I’d rather have a hour of him doing it in detail than see him fly through it leaving me with many unanswered questions. He does refer to another person’s tutorial, it just doesn’t go to the amount of depth needed for this particular rig.

I also noticed how Fan Joints were brought up, but no tutorial seems to cover them.

I did take the leg into a separate project to use with the IK Chain; that made sense with the pole. The pole however seems to be the part that throws me off when in the toon rig. The knee location and pole are connected. If I go too far in to the center of the knee, the pole goes behind the character. If I place it so it’s in front of the character and animate the knee, I get the usual issue. I have a link to a recording I made showing the issue in question.

https://mega.nz/file/I6wEyDqS#z88_mJD_dwYXcvezRfyuP8XmaWqpGkrVpxdHNkgFje0

I’m watching the Butterfly Head tutorial as we speak and I think it’s what I’m looking for for making a compatible eyelid that will work with the toon rig.

Cheers!!

Hi casillas227,

Rigging is undoubtedly one of the more complex workflows. I avoid here the term complicated, as every single part can often be explored separately. With this, as you did with the leg, things get easier.

However, I understand the need for more in-depth training. The majority of your post is pretty much a tutorial request or a series of such. Please voice your needs over there (Tutorial requests). Currently, the typical request is “just give me what I need right now”. However, as you said, you got training series from Helloluxx. Which is (so far I can tell) always a comprehensive learning course, not a “show me the button to fix it”. The owner of Helloluxx has excellent knowledge, and his material certainly reflects this.

Yes, take any number of trainers and ask what the best length, depth, and detail of a tutorial is, and you will get an equal number of answers, or: “It depends”, might be the reply. Over the last fifteen years, I have seen a huge change here, and I could never find something that fits all expectations. My best answer would be here a 1, 2, and 5-minute version of each theme. One minute to introduce what it is, two minutes as a refresher, and five minutes as a parameter run down, or whatever a tool or function will do. Even here, it will not fit everyone.

Weight painting, as you might have gotten it already in several tutorials, works best from the main joint of a hierarchy and then go to the finer detail joints. The 100% is mandatory, always, as otherwise, the object will not follow.

Please check this out:
https://www.cineversity.com/vidplaytut/weight_painting_part_1

Here is a discussion about the IK problems and legs.
https://www.cineversity.com/vidplaylist/biped_rigging/biped_rigging_1a

I would like to encourage you to have a look here
https://help.maxon.net/c4d/s24/en-us/Default.htm#html/TCAIK-ID_TAGPROPERTIES.html#ID_CA_IK_TAG_ENABLE

To see what Controller it is, you might notice that there is information available. I guess in a while that will look all very familiar to you, and you might get even annoyed by the popping up information

I assume with “fan” joints, I assume those in the eye area, to move tiny areas for expression? The more joints, the more fine-tuning can be done, but also, each joint has less power.

I hope I have addressed all questions. Please request what you need in the tutorial request section.

Cheers