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don't remember for sure tbh, it was more than a decade ago xD I think I just resculpted the same decimated mesh though, yes. Same number of vertices probably, but High density. So no real magic per se

@@JoCoAnim 👏👏👏👍😋 YEP.!!!

@@chrisfu-y4c hi, you can always just add extra bones to your skeletal hierarchy before characterizing. Human IK needs a minimal structure of pelvis, 1 spine bone, a head, clavicles, upperarms, lowerarms and hands on each side. And thighs, calves and feet for left and right as well. But those bones don't need to be skinned to anything nor do you need to animate them or export them to your game engine. It's just so HumanIk 'thinks' it's a human. To facilitate animation down the line, you will want to turn off IK blend on these "fake" legs, unpin the controllers (trans/rot) and hide them. Cheers!

@@thalitak5243 hi, if you're able to send me the scene, I could take a look. Otherwise have you watched one of my latest video about mirroring props?

@@thalitak5243 ruclips.net/video/JcZP7AaG1YM/видео.htmlsi=NXdf_rlmgjBNoMdr

@@JoCoAnim omg I didn't see you actually replied! I actually also watched your extension mirroring video, but I wasn't able to get it right (I also saw your comment on the video for another tutorial about mirroring a custom object- and I failed that one too). That was my first time working on a character extension fyi so most likely I missed some steps there. Anyway, I managed to mirror it by doing it in C4D since I'm more familiar with that software. Thank you so much for ur reply and pls keep making videos like this- ur videos are my best guide!

@@remithivierge8528 hi Remi, could you post a screenshot please?

@@JoCoAnim When you asked me for a screenshot, I opened Mobu to take it. Then I saw the weight slider. It just wasn’t where I was looking at first. :) thank you for this turorial.

I took a day before going back to it-sometimes, after a break, you see things clearer. 😄

would you be able to send me your scene?

@@JoCoAnim hmm, dunno if my link got to You, is there somehow You can mailme so i can send it to You? wojtekjakubo at gmail

there you go drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_5fh5VRTyLvPRXgKbHWwkGje2jhcvWTW?usp=sharing Please only use for personal study. Do not publish work using this model for it is copyrighted. Btw this is 6 years old. I wouldn't to the TPose like that if I had to do it again. Weirdly this was modeled with the paws hanging down instead of resting as in on a flat surface, supporting the creature's wait. So assuming that was the case, I would orthographically oriented the legs and arms so they're strictly under the body, nicely perpendicular to the ground (like you'd do with a biped's legs). Kind like how quadruped dinosaurs have their legs under their body, unlike regular reptiles (lizards, crocodiles...) who have their legs bent outward (to be clear, even if I had to characterized such animal, I'd straighten their legs down to have a consistent way of posing all quads). Finally the most important is to go in the Character's properties once you defined your skeleton and spawned the control rig, and play around with the Foot Contacts option in case you have a hoofed or digitigrade limbs + possibly checked the inverted joint option

hi, do you need this only in MoBu, or would solving and simulation the cloth in a game engine such as Unreal be useful to you? (cause personally, that's where I do all that stuff nowadays) In any case, you can start with my Set Driven Keys tutorial: ruclips.net/video/XDoyznsbYZ8/видео.html&ab_channel=JonathanC This guy made a Pose Reader tool that also seems pretty nice (didn't try myself though): ruclips.net/video/jBTevaiTq9E/видео.html&ab_channel=animbai

@@JoCoAnim No Unreal would be very useful yes! I ts just so hard to choose between game engine or dcc. I was also thinking about Houdini and their tools, especally APEX and what they're coming out with in the next version.

@@808draft i'd say cloth simulating in dcc is obsolete, if you're doing game animation at least. Cause at runtime the animations are blended and layered all over the place so you'd want everything to react dynamically. You could look into the Pose Driver node and the associated plugin Pose Connect for Maya. And physics asset combined with the Rigid Body node in UE.

If the anatomy follow what I show in my Quadruped rigging video then yes of course.

I bake the null's anim and copy one of the curves, for example Y translation, as a layer's weight curve. On that layer I applied a finger pose beforehand, so that the base layer has the fingers opened vs. the additive layer, closed fingers, for example.

@@JoCoAnim this is such a cool technique, did you come up with this?

@@prashantshukla6814 haha thanks Not sure tbh Over ten years of experience, I don't always recall if someone taught me something if it came to me during my sleep hahaha

Though I think for that one, I did.. but I was probably inspired by some similar technique somewhere..

@@JoCoAnim you are a legend. Thanks for making videos bro, will check them out.

Yeah that was an internship a year before joining Guerrilla. Thanks a lot mate! Hope you're doing well

in that case when applying the pose (in fullbody or body part), you might have to then switch to Selection mode, select the FK controls, and Key (in T/R) to save the FK translation

hi, sorry but I did this 6 years ago, I don't fully remember ^^' I uploaded the scene there: drive.google.com/file/d/1lFRZxFQrrOSPyH1e_X7qHfS_7tSKvWI6/view?usp=drive_link Let me know if that's enough to get unblocked

@@JoCoAnim Thank you so much, that's very generous of you! I'll let you know how it goes.

@@JoCoAnim Thanks again so much for this! I was able to get the constraint to work in the way I wanted to yesterday but didn't feel like I had a great grasp of how it was working. This morning I went through node by node and wrote out the causal chain in my own words and that helped immensely in understanding. The inheritance relationships in the controller hierarchy is very clever. I think of it as nephews giving their uncles what their cousin lacks which allows the cousin to inherit that property.

Because my needs are so unique that I couldn't find any relevant information on Google until I saw your video. Thank you so much!

hahahaha I feel you! (I haven't actually checked everything in the script folder... I'm sure there are more hidden gems)

Merci Cécile

hi Sawag apologies but I'm not a big Discord guy (to time consuming haha) I'm in a couple French speaking servers but I don't suppose that's what you're after, are you? ^^

Hey! Generally you want to use constraints on a parent object that the animator won't lanipulate directly (I use Nulls, aka locators, for those). Then parent an actual controller (I tend to use markers for those for yiu can change their look) to that Null. That way the null is driven in the space that you want while you can still animate extra motion on top of that with rhe controller (you'd constrain your bone to the controller and consrrain your model to the bone ; you wanna make sure the model always represents where the bone is). That is a standard approach. Now you can play around with how the Null is constrained. You could use a Parent constraint with 2 source parents (the hands) but then deactivate the Affect Rotation XYZ options in the Properties of the constraint. Good luck!

I've frankly no idea... Every professional maya rigger I've shown MoBu, going like "can we have this in Maya?" they were like "no it's mathematically impossible" lol sorry for ranting, but they were always stopping the discussion on the fact maya has this cycle check that prevents it from having object A constrained to B and B constrained to A. In MoBu you very well can (you'd just turn off the Weight of one of the constraint and only have one of them with a Weight != 0). Maya's constraint are weird anyway, I gave up on that overrated program long ago x)

Ooh actually I remember a friend of mine making an awesome internal tool that would behave kinda like MoBu's Rotate around feature.. or line Multi-Ref. His script made the driving controller dynamically switch who drives and who's driven based on the current selection. The result was very close to MoBu's HIK seamless switching.. His script was made of thousands of lines of code so... good luck D:

What about adding controls to the UI of Hik? I've updated the xml code for the UI to move the controls around but I wasn't able to add costume controls to the biped UI control interface. It that possible?

Saddly, not that I'm aware of

I gave this a bit more thoughts.. who knows maybe it's possible to use rhe extension's name as the "BodyPart" when defining an object in the xml, then use the ID to specify which object inside the extension. Haven't tried cause I doubt it'd work anyway... I thinl the easiest workaround is, instead of creating a marker from scratch via the Asset Browser, create it as an Auxiliary Effector from an existing IK control. That way it'll appear in the picker (maybe first create the AuxEff you intend to use as actual AuxEff, like to animate the hands and hips in specific spaces... and then create an extra AuxEff on the right hand to animate a prop that would be parented to the right hand by default. You can reparent and constrainthat object however you want. You would just never use the IK Blend T/R option on it cause it would tend to drive the right hand which ain't the point here. Same thing if you need to animate a prop around the hips, head or chest, etc.)

Do you mean Update Stance Pose? Do you mean it works with Pose Controls or the actual Mirror option in the Character properties?

​@@JoCoAnim Yes, exactly! It works with the actual mirror option in character properties. I haven't tried it with the pose editor yet... I'll write back as soon as I check.

I really don't manage -__0 I'm jealous! ​ @Ortastal I have the Nulls parented to the HIK FK Spine, the controls parented to those Nulls, Update Stance Pose on each Character Extension, still messes up the HIK when mirroring

​@@JoCoAnim I was not happy for long. I decided to try it on a different model (Personal model), but got the same bug. Moreover, I checked this in all versions from 2017 to 2024. It's the same everywhere. Weird thing...

@@Ortastal hahaha I was right to not believe it in the first place. Well, avoiding direct parenting works as a workaround at least...

Ah thank you for the link!!!

Thanks for your kind words. There's ways to manipulate the translation and scale of bones to create S&S, definitely. As I told someone else in the comment section, I plan on making a tut' on that soon ;)

@@JoCoAnim awesome thank you so much for the reply I cant wait for your upcoming tutorial 🥳

It's next on my todo list actually :) I'm hoping to do it during this Xmas break!

Do you know about IK Pulling though? Super powerful to clean up IK lock at the end... ruclips.net/video/wNwHOGD9B4k/видео.htmlsi=DEMQ6db6sZQd2Vxw&t=1766

Actually yes, I tried ik pulling but if I pull in one direction the other hand will be broken. Maybe I'm thinking like a typical maya rig user, for regular maya rig, we just make the arm maybe 10 percent longer for that few frames, than make them regular length again.@@JoCoAnim

Thanks man! Really appreciates what you did for the animator community, its so hard to find some mobu tutorials on certain topic! @@JoCoAnim

@@juicebox4798 I get your point ut sometimes that's not an acceptable solution based on the art style or game engine limitations.. you should be able to apply a little bit of IK pulling on both arms and tune the FK lowerarms Z rotation to massage overextensions. On locomotion I use that on legs a ton too.

Great question! Pose tool, Story, Bake & Plot sure, since the controllers are adddd as character extensions. For Mirroring, I'd have to check. Probably not the Mirror option in the Character's Properties.. but Char Extensions have a mirror partner option. Never got it working, but never tried real hard either, lol EDIT: I started investigating. Mirroring extensions should be doable. I guess I found the subject for my next tutorial :D

There you go sir! ruclips.net/video/JcZP7AaG1YM/видео.html&ab_channel=JonathanC

IK/FK blending in HIK is obviously better, but it takes sometime for maya animator to get used to(I just start to use mobu recently lol). Most of the maya rigs use toggle, its more straight forward.

hi, I recommend watching the ProTips series from the start, as we cover basics in earlier videos, such as keyboard shortcuts (using the Maya scheme): ruclips.net/p/PLS-6Oz2H9ieNA5_OQzA3zQsOxt9bWX2wi If you use it, select the object you wanna drop in the constraint, hold X, click in the viewport (anywhere) and hold that LMB, drag in the Relation constraint. (actually that drag n drop is heavily used in MoBu, for example to align or parent object A to object B)

Thanks for the kind words. Tbh, I don't know how to change the FK control colors in the picker. I never managed to setup a prop controller in the picker unfortunately. The index I found with a bit of trial and error, but started off of the Character Definition tab (which appears in your Navigator if you first do Define skeleton in the Character Controls (aka the window that becomes a Picker once you characterized your HIK). At the bottom of that list you have a Props dropdown but never got it to work. If you manage, please let me know, but I just made peace with using 100% custom prop controls and selecting them in the viewport all the time, 😢

@@JoCoAnim For the colour, I opted for a re-design of the png under the limbs, with bunch of colors and aligned the fingers to select them in groups of the same phalanx ^^ But regarding the drop down option for Props, it didn't work for me either 🥲 I'll let you know if I find a solution. ✌keep up the great videos.

thanks, you're not the first telling me that, I need to update them all I guess. Doing it now on this video ;)

@@JoCoAnim thank you so much. Also, how do you use the floor contact constraints that u have in the template you provide?

ruclips.net/video/HORQ-VjbydU/видео.htmlsi=J3NsVZQSMBNvAn4E&t=2460@@808draft

hey there, did you try disabling the little Txyz and Rotation or the Gravity little option in the pose controls?

@@JoCoAnim thanks for the reply. But I found in your another video. I have to make it as Character extension

it's been 8 years so I don't recall exactly... but yeah in Morpheme there was a node that let you do that. If you're on Unreal, you can do the same with a Layered Blend Per Bone node, fed with 2 blendspaces with those BS having the same poses, only on interpolating way way more than the other. then using the LBPB Mask to determine how each bone picks from the fast or slow BS. Honestly I think on Horizon it was just exaggerating the head rotation to lead + (and that's very important) counter rotation the rest of the body (hips / spine). Think of it like, the body lagging behind, from head top down, rather than the head leading. The latter will cause overshooting, as is the case in Uncharted 4 for example. When you bank smoothly by rotating with the camera joystick, then stopping that lean to maintain your new course, Nathan tilts way more than he should because coming back. Also on Horizon there are different poses for when your rotation speed accelerates (going into a curved trajectory), vs. when just maintaining that curve (runnning in circle). I called it snaking vs. banking. I since then implemented that on pretty much every game I've worked on ^__^

@@JoCoAnim Interesting! So far I more so thought of banking as the head leading, rather than the body lagging behind. I've felt like my attempts to implement banking didn't quite feel right, but I wasn't able to pin down why exactly. I'll try implementing it as you described and see if that helps. Thank you so much for the detailed answer :3

hey Mauricio, starting around 2:00 I show the underlying setup, where there's a "Root Bone constrained to Controller" parent constraint (and the opposite, Bone Constrained to Controller). When animating, the latter is on (Weight at 100) and the former off (you want to animate the controller not the bones directly), whilst when importing FBX data, you want the incoming animation to drive the controls to retrieve the FBX properly. I use a Parent constraint for the root because there's a 90° offset on X. Because the root bone is Z-Up (Unreal friendly convention) whilst the Controller is Y-Up (MoBu friendly) In addition, I have 2 Relation constraints (same thing Bone constrained to Controls, and vice versa - I note them B_2_CTL or CTL_2_B) for all the additional joints in the Skeletal Mesh that I want to animate (those bone being constrained to their controller counterpart when animating, or again, vice versa when importing). Instead of manually toggling those 4 constraints ON/OFF every time, in another Relation constraint called IMPORT_Mode, I toggle all them 4 based on one single boolean: IMPORT_Mode, which is a Property added to the Root controller, and made accessible more easily via the Master_Relation, which is my "animation companion". I always have it opened when working. It's the table of operation :D That should answer your first question. You'll have access to this whole setup if you use the scenes I posted on Google Drive.

About Root control, that's a key principle for gaming animation. You need a root, a top parent bone that acts as a common ancestor to any other bone in your skeleton, to act like the "main pivot" of your Skeletal Mesh, once in engine. (it's never the hips or pelvis directly, though many people still make that mistake...) I'm sure you can find a lot of resources explaining that in detail. For example, Unreal's documentation on RootMotion

@@JoCoAnim Cheers for the in-depth explanations, I have a much better understanding now. The last thing I'm confused about at the moment is that as soon as I characterize my character and use "bake to control rig", the root bone no longer moves the character around in the scene. Why is this the case? I haven't been able to find any information about this.

It's a hierarchy thing.@@mauricio_duran Totally desireable. When in skeletal mode, every bone has the root as a common ancestor. So moving the root moves everything (especially the pelvis and the rest of the body) whether that's by moving the root bone directly (in IMPORT_Mode) or the Root CTL (to which the bone is constrained in "animation mode". When you switch to Control Rig, if you check out the hierarchy (Schematic View with Ctrl+W) you'll see the Root Control is not the parent of all the others Human IK controllers (FK hierarchy in yellow, or IK hierarchy in red & blue, which in fact is a flat hierarchy, all IK controls are siblings, not parent of each other, so they can influence each other through all the beauty of HIK solving...). Usually I parent the Root Control to the Reference node, which is a common parent to all the HIK controls that get generated with the Control Rig. Just so all controllers are under one umbrella, while the Skeleton & Mesh(es) are under another. When animating for games, the last thing you want is the body directly parented to the Root control all the time. That would act like a "Master control" you often have in Maya rigs, and that is cancer. It has be decorrelated (by default) so you can freely animate the body through space (and easily clean stuff like foot sliding) and animate the root in parallel to get a smooth, gameplay friendly root animation. Now my rigs have a setup to switch the hips to "root space" through an Auxiliary effector. In Master_Relation the option is called TEMP_Hips_Root_Bake. It toggles the Hips Aux Effector (IK Blend T/R at 100%) so the AuxEff drives the main IK Hips control (in that case, you wanna manually slide the Hips' IK Blends to 0% so it doesn't conflict). That Hips Aux Eff is parented to the Root CTL. So that basically gives you what you were talking about, but honestly, that's just for cases where you wanna smooth out a bit the hips related to the root so that in gameplay camera space, it doesn't jitter (for example on a mocap based locomotion cycle, your root typically moves at a constant speed, whilst maybe the hips move more hectically on the fwd axis, causing jitter when you view it with the follow camera, here called Cam_GAMEPLAY), but honestly in MoBu, you really don't want a Master controller to move the whole character around to, say, block their movement out through space. How many Maya tutorials have I seen where people show how to work around that whole mess, with weird parent switching and baking... That's where MoBu shines and is so much more efficient. It's just super easy to grab the character by the hips, work in FullBody mode, and hold Q while moving the character to ignore all pinning... Might take a bit of time getting the hang of it, but once you do, you'll be like "how did I suffer animating with traditional Maya rigs until now?" ^____^ (I hope this doesn't sound cocky, I don't know your personal experience, he!)

@@JoCoAnim Ok yeah, now that it's been laid out this way it makes much more sense. My only other experience with a 3D package is Unreal so my knowledge of rigging is quite surface level. You're great at explaining things and I've been able to follow along with your series up to this point but the root motion section in this video threw me a curveball. Would you suggest I continue along or do you recommend I learn foundational rigging principles elsewhere first?