Hi! I'm currently working in my character's rigging and a question came up (since I'm going to use Ipi DMC for the MoCap).

If I include a jaw joint to the head control, could it affect the way the data will be read when I import it on the final stage?
Can it somehow make the program misread the skelethon?
The area that concerns me is highlighted:



Thanks!!

Hi
Excess bones have no effect on motion retargeting process. You simply don't use them as mapping targets. And in exported animation, they will have the default position in each frame.

Just to support what vmaslov stated: our character rigs in Happy Box had extra 'hold' bones in the chest, extra roll bones in the legs, and a long chain of tail bones, and our mocap retargeted perfectly fine to this rig. When retargeting the motion data only the specifically mapped bones matter--everything else is ignored.

G.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

vmaslov, Greenlaw, thank you very much for your answers.
I was really worried that such a simple detail like this could ruin the entire pipeline. Glad to know it is not the case.

Just to be sure, you should create a simple test that you can apply along the way to make sure your rig stays valid for retargeting. This should help you learn what's allowable and save you a lot of troubleshooting later, just in case the rig doesn't work.

What I started out doing was I took an existing mocap rig that was known to work with iPi Studio, modified it to fit my character, tested it, and then start adding additional bones as necessary. For example, try exporting a character from Studio or a program like Motion Builder, import it to the program where you intend to do the rigging and use it as a base to build on or at least as a template for studying. Every so often, retarget your simple 'test' data to see if the rig is still working. After a short while, rigging for mocap should become second nature.

Note: There may be a few 'gotchas' to be aware of depending on the program you use. For example, in LightWave you need to add extra 'dummy' joints to the ends of each bone chain for data exchange to work properly. I believe this requirement is unique to LightWave joints but other programs may have their own quirks.

G.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Greenlaw, once again thank you for the in-depth answer
I'm about to bind my character to the rig. Now may be a good time to do that test.
Also, thanks for the heads up on that "quirks". I'll try it out in Maya and see how it goes.