🧵 Keeping feet on the ground in rig animation
Anonymous at Thu, 6 Jun 2024 18:36:33 UTC No. 985694
So I made a skeleton for my game and now I want some animations. I downloaded a bunch from Mixamo, scaled and applied their rig to my model and overall everything works fine. Except one small but important detail. Feet are kinda floaty in z-coordinate and not consistent regarding it in various animations. For example if I move model to make feet perfectly align with ground during walking animation, I will get them slightly above the ground in sword attack animation because knees are bended more at all times in that one. Moreover in those attack animations feet are moving sligthly inside the ground and slightly into the air. Is there any good way to fix this without needing to edit every keyframe in animations? I think this is a general question of principle/approach, but if that's important I'm working in Blender. I think there should be some way to lets say ask feet bone to be as close to given z-coordinate as possible and everything else animate around that "pivoted" bone.
Anonymous at Thu, 6 Jun 2024 20:36:35 UTC No. 985703
>>985694
Blender is the problem, Mixamo was built using Maya xyz coordinates. Blender’s developing team has always refused to fix their mistakes and now you are having problems because of them. There’s no fix, you have to manually edit it or stop using Blender.
Anonymous at Thu, 6 Jun 2024 21:08:35 UTC No. 985712
There's an easy fix for this: make your own animations.
Anonymous at Thu, 6 Jun 2024 21:46:05 UTC No. 985720
>>985694
I think it's because the ratio of the lengths of the upper and lower leg of your skeleton is different from the source skeleton. You can fix it by hand or by re-targeting the legs using IK.
>>985703
Blender is a piece of shit and so are you.
>>985712
And can you give me an example of your own animations?
Anonymous at Thu, 6 Jun 2024 22:52:22 UTC No. 985726
>>985724
>Time to leave blender.
Please do.
Anonymous at Thu, 6 Jun 2024 23:49:30 UTC No. 985736
>>985720
> I think it's because the ratio of the lengths of the upper and lower leg of your skeleton is different from the source skeleton. You can fix it by hand or by re-targeting the legs using IK.
Thanks for suggestion, but that's something I fixed before. I'm not even using retargeting, I just use Mixamo's rig as is. I've started from scratch like 4 times, initially I edited every bone in Mixamo's rig to match the model of my character accurately, then I figured out feet are very fucked up so last 2 times I didn't change anything except global scale of the Mixamo's rig. Even though it didn't fit my character perfectly (for example skeleton legs were slightly in-between actual legs), it automatically mapped weights just fine and animation looked pretty good. This way it looked better than anything I did before, but feet still were slightly fluctuating in z-coordinate and mismatched between animations. Now I'm trying to apply floor constraint with a plane in hope it will at least prevent feet bones to clip into the ground, but it doesn't work for some reason. I also found a suggestion to play around with IK solver constraint so that's something I gonna try later today.
>>985712
I most likely will, eventually, as Mixamo's not going to cover all my needs. But I already have to learn and do so many things that saving a bit of work on some basic animations seems reasonable. Also it's faster to learn this way. Like, using Mixamo's animations for first ever monster I make, then for the next check if I again can use Mixamo and if not, try to make my own while already having some experience with rigs, weight painting, constraints, etc. This skeleton's skull is the first time I had to model using front/side reference approach, because using my original approach of just modelling geometry from thin air which I successfully used to build the whole level for my game, didn't work at all here. I just have to learn a lot of things really fast.
Anonymous at Thu, 6 Jun 2024 23:53:27 UTC No. 985737
> Blender is the problem
> Time to leave blender
No way, it's too fun to use, and feels incredibly productive, except some rare quirks.
Anonymous at Fri, 7 Jun 2024 00:01:50 UTC No. 985740
>>985737
Your feelings don’t matter, Blender is proven to never work as expected. The developers of Blender don’t care about 3D art, you’re missing many important animation elements in place of bad design. What you’re learning is not real animation, just like RPGMaker is not real RPG games.
Anonymous at Fri, 7 Jun 2024 08:51:47 UTC No. 985786
>>985740
> What you’re learning is not real animation, just like RPGMaker is not real RPG games.
But Blender is the same level of abstraction as any other 3d modelling software? It's not like it tries to hide away complexity like RPG Maker.
You will still work with rigs, keyframes, constraints, modifiers and similar stuff in any other 3d modelling program.
This means knowledge and skills from Blender will transfer better to other 3d software than skills from RPG Maker to lets say Godot or Unity.
Anonymous at Fri, 7 Jun 2024 10:07:57 UTC No. 985793
>>985786
Godot only accepts glTF files in 3D and Maya don’t support the glTF. The original propose of glTF is the ability to copy and paste as stated by the original owner. Yet, the open source community decided to forced something to work because they were too lazy to create other files that do support it. Now Godot is becoming a mess as it tries to get features out instead of just updating things.
Unity requires code, the free script thing, also code. The only connection to 3D is the ability to make 3D games, not 3D models. You can’t rig, animate, create or texture in Unity. You export supported files like FBX, .dae (Collada), .dxf, and .obj files. Blender’s fake FBX causes problems that you sometimes see in video games. Blender doesn’t support .dae or .dxf so no one tries to make it happen.
In simple terms, Blender is bad and no game engines don’t work like that. You can not make a dog learn to do computer programming.
Anonymous at Fri, 7 Jun 2024 10:33:34 UTC No. 985794
>>985793
Well, I'm using Godot, so I guess another reason to stick with Blender now. I have very nice experience with import of *.blend scenes, with automatic creation of collisions based on suffixes, linking materials as separate Godot files, and automatic reimport with preservation of changes made on Godot side. As for Unity, I've used it before, imo both Unity and Godot are similar general purpose game engines in terms of level of abstraction. What I meant in previous post, is that Blender skills transfer to software like Maya and 3dmax because they are all general purpose 3d modelling programs, and that RPG Maker isn't a general purpose game engine and skills of using it don't transfer to Godot or Unity or other general purpose game engines. That's why making an analogy of Blender to RPG Maker ("just like RPGMaker is not real RPG games") isn't right. More fair would be to make parallels with Godot or Unity.
Anonymous at Fri, 7 Jun 2024 11:02:38 UTC No. 985795
Oh my, tried a few silly things more like additional bone with IK constraint etc, nothing did work.
> I didn't change anything except global scale of the Mixamo's rig. Even though it didn't fit my character perfectly (for example skeleton legs were slightly in-between actual legs), it automatically mapped weights just fine and animation looked pretty good.
Then I just repeated this whole process of reimporting the rig and animations and only did scale it without moving shit around, and also did a bit more work to center it precisely, and everything works as I want now! Maybe the problem with last 2 tries before was that I incidentally fucked up animations themselves a bit in the graph editor, or the rig being slightly off-center also contributed to bad result... Now that feet are perfect I started moving hand bones and remapping weights and checking that feet are unfucked after each step and so far it's all good. Here's what it looks like now.
Anonymous at Fri, 7 Jun 2024 12:25:31 UTC No. 985806
>>985740
> Your feelings don’t matter
Not true. Even if something is works better in some specific circumstances, ultimately what matters most is: will you be able to find enough enthusiasm or willpower to do the job.
Anonymous at Fri, 7 Jun 2024 13:32:53 UTC No. 985811
>>985806
That’s not anything works, “i will build an Empire State Building by myself because of feeling.” Nonsense is what’s wrong with you blender people who are not doing it for art or entertainment, just for the money.
>>985794
Blender is not transferable to anything, no one does dumb stuff like fixing the models coordinate or use Mixamo to make games. You lack the skills to make 3D art, you lack technical knowledge and you are copying the same dumb stuff we in /3/ seen before. Thats why I knew you were unable to coordinate the model correctly has I said in the previous post. You took my advice an experienced person advice instead of bad people at blender.
Anonymous at Fri, 7 Jun 2024 13:49:41 UTC No. 985814
>>985811
> That’s not anything works, “i will build an Empire State Building by myself because of feeling.” Nonsense is what’s wrong with you blender people who are not doing it for art or entertainment, just for the money.
Are you being contrarian for the sake of it? You make like at least 3 contradictions in one line. "For entertainement" is exactly "for feeling". Also, no one is building Empire State Building here, that's what corporations do. And In other threads people claim Maya and 3dmax are often used professionally at studios simply because people are paid for using exactly that, because companies have specific pipeline for those tools, and even if Blender was viable, it's just not nice to break existing processes and pipeline. So Blender is way more of a hobbyist thing. Honestly you sound kinda like a /g/ tard who says people should only use Lisp or Haskell or Rust to code software.
Anonymous at Fri, 7 Jun 2024 15:09:26 UTC No. 985818
>>985814
Don't argue with the retard
Anonymous at Fri, 7 Jun 2024 15:14:27 UTC No. 985819
This video might be useful for OP:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LII
Anonymous at Fri, 7 Jun 2024 15:52:08 UTC No. 985825
>>985819
Thanks! My usecases so far are kinda trivial compared to that one, but it's gonna be useful for bows or throwable daggers I think.
I recently watched a dozen of videos related to rigging, etc, and some of the most useful tips so far were regarding how to configure things to make weight painting less painful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLW
And this dude was the most esoteric video, he literally invented/programmed his own FK/IK UX on top of blender capabilities:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bZ
Anonymous at Fri, 7 Jun 2024 18:30:24 UTC No. 985846
>>985814
>>985818
You people are refusing to accept the reality. Blender is not a 3D tool, it’s an application that supports 3D just as Microsoft print 3D supports modeling. What you call tools aren’t close to the real thing in many other softwares. Infact: >>985825 is enough proof of someone knowing the difference between actual 3D environment and actual mathematical evidence to address the problem.
You never experience real 3D, you have only to believe in lies told by generations of Blender people. The sad part is your ignorance to go into other open source software, Blender isn’t the only one. Yet, you people act like it’s is. Maybe before spreading nonsense about how you think stuff works, you should stop using Blender to see the real problem.
Anonymous at Fri, 7 Jun 2024 18:56:50 UTC No. 985848
>>985846
You do realize blender was used in Godzlina minus 1 as well as Evangelion?
Anonymous at Fri, 7 Jun 2024 21:30:38 UTC No. 985872
>>985846
Post your work
Anonymous at Fri, 7 Jun 2024 21:36:02 UTC No. 985873
>>985846
> Blender is not a 3D tool, it’s an application that supports 3D just as Microsoft print 3D supports modeling
Isn't 3d modelling the main feature?
Anyway, I'm only doing 3d for like 2 months, but I got quite used to basic Blender instruments for vertex/edge/face editing, like proportional editing, snapping, custom orientations, subdivide/extrude, loop cuts, etc.
I feel like those basic things are 90% of what I need as I'm doing lowpoly stuff for a game.
Don't really see a good reason to switch to something else when I'm pretty much satisfied with my experience.
Also, it seems obvious I'm going to use the same 3d editing basics in any other software if I switch, just with different shortcuts.
Anonymous at Fri, 7 Jun 2024 21:40:38 UTC No. 985874
Notice how anti blender fags never say any concrete straightfowards criticism and only throw around vague "it's bad because... it's bad!!!!! Not real 3d, amateur!!!"
Peculiar, curious even. Quaint.
Anonymous at Fri, 7 Jun 2024 22:27:37 UTC No. 985879
>>985848
The Godzlina minus 1 is a lie, no actual evidence to show. Evangelion didn’t fully use Blender and they even showed using different software: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7d
Next time research the actual source instead of believing in lies from the blender community.
>>985873
If all you ever want is basic things then Blender will not be able to support you. They will change everything and you will hate it, it’s the historical fact that happens every time in Blender.
>>985874
Clearly told you about the coordinate OP mess up because Blender development team doesn’t care about following commonly accepted guidelines in 3D. I told you they are the main problem in Blender, read next time.
>>985872
I did -> >>985724
Do you think that animation was easy in MMD or something, 120 frames and 70 body movements.
Anonymous at Fri, 7 Jun 2024 23:08:01 UTC No. 985881
>>985724
Yeah that looks pretty rough buddy
Anonymous at Sat, 8 Jun 2024 02:37:08 UTC No. 985896
>>985881
Literally was not supposed to be serious, you have to pay me for premium memes.
Anonymous at Sat, 8 Jun 2024 09:48:43 UTC No. 985918
>>985896
>it's supposed to be shit
Sure
Anonymous at Sat, 8 Jun 2024 13:22:29 UTC No. 985941
>>985935
Why is no one reading about it being MMD, at least my own work is my own animation and not someone else’s work.
Anonymous at Sat, 8 Jun 2024 14:48:36 UTC No. 985943
skull
Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 07:08:08 UTC No. 986049
>>985941
So it's not even your model? Now I wonder what original model creator used. Probably Blender.
Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 11:58:48 UTC No. 986069
https://www.reddit.com/r/blender/co
Holy shit, this becomes tiresome.
Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 12:09:45 UTC No. 986071
>>986049
Incorrect, this is Animasa model. It is the default model for MMD just as you have a default model of Cube. Also, no Blender never supports MMD models and is never recommended. It was created in Metasequoia (before 3 and 4).
Creators blog: http://masa2masa.blog69.fc2.com/
The software for MMD: https://www.metaseq.net/en/
Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 12:37:43 UTC No. 986072
>>986069
https://blender.stackexchange.com/a
I finally found a way to scale my rig with animations (or rather, to apply scale to rig to be able to export to Godot and properly use parenting there).
The key here is to use graph editor, set pivot point as described and scale locations of each animation...
This sure is annoying.
Probably the worst quirk so far and people even make videos with wrong workarounds that don't really allow to use "Child Of" and Godot parenting later:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOE
Anyway, I'm still sticking to Blender. Its' far from enough to make me jump to alternatives.
When I will find myself having constantly do a bunch of time-consuming workarounds for every asset, then I will definitely reconsider my life choices.
>>986071
Anyway thanks for links.
Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 12:53:00 UTC No. 986074
>>986072
> https://blender.stackexchange.com/a
Damn, I autistically "applied" armature modifier like this post says, like actually fucking baked it.
And what post probably meant is just to add it, now apply it from dropdown.
Now I totally fucked it all up and have to start everything from scratch once again.
Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 12:53:32 UTC No. 986075
>>986074
> now apply it from dropdown.
*not
Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 13:16:56 UTC No. 986076
I even start to think I could probably do my own rig and animations from scratch faster than messing with mixamo. It's almost a week.
Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 14:04:20 UTC No. 986078
Overall, here are my conclusions on proper workflow with imported Mixamo rig/animations:
1. Import the animation file, it will come with their default rig
2. Uniformly scale the rig to you model, it will not fit exactly, but that's ok, prioritize to match hips and everything below
3. Now you can move bones in upper body a bit to make hands match to model, moving those will not break the feet
4. Apply with automatic weights
5. Now import other animations, link them to your armature in nonlinear animation editor, delete their rigs afterwards
6. Apply scale to your rig, now your animations are broken
7. Fix animations one by one in graph editor using method described in https://blender.stackexchange.com/a
8. Now you can weight paint and edit vertex groups to improve mapping of your model to rig
What a wild ride, huh.
Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 14:10:39 UTC No. 986079
>>986078
Also do tons of backups with "File > Save Copy"
Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 15:15:18 UTC No. 986085
>>986078
How about not using Blender and actually use a 3D software that is built for animation. You are literally wasting time on something that normal animation software had already invented. Blender is not the only software in the world you know.
Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 15:33:20 UTC No. 986087
>autistic screeching continues
Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 15:50:26 UTC No. 986092
>>986085
Do you have anything particular in mind that can, for example, [apply scale] to imported rig without fucking up animations?
Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 19:42:46 UTC No. 986185
>>986092
The power of reading compiles you: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ri
You can’t expect free stuff forever or actually do something besides stealing.
Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 22:44:19 UTC No. 986198
>>986185
Tbh I don't really like reading books on how to use software. In my opinion books are good for fundamentals like anatomy or basics of computer graphics, but for volatile applied stuff like software, reading 4chan, blogposts, reddit posts, stackexchange questions, & watching youtube videos is a better approach. There is little inherent value in knowing every feature of a software, you most likely need a very small subset of what any tool is capable of, but there might be inherent value in knowing some theory fundamentals, for better intuitions at least.
Anonymous at Mon, 10 Jun 2024 12:22:19 UTC No. 986273
>>986198
There’s your problem, the answer to your problem should be reading. All those blog post and videos don’t care about accuracy or quality. They are Google SEO exploits to get people like you to be mindless customers.
Reading will always help you, it’s how people know the wrong things in blender and why blender developers should be held accountable for their crimes against Blender community.