Muscles

[manus]

Hey,

I'am working on a character and I want to simulate real muscle movement (in the arms and legs). Does enybody has any idee how I can achive this?
Thanks.... Manus

[mweier]

as always, plenty of ways not all of which work equally well.
first, depends on if you're using rigid bind or smooth bind...
Rigid bind has flexors to help with this.
Smooth bind you would essentially want to use some manner of deformer that is driven by the joint rotation. Influence objects, lattices, or clusters would probably be the easiest deformers to use for this though you may find others to work better depending on the situation. Once you set it up & know the basic range of motion you want, use set driven keys to automate the "flexing" so that simply rotating joints or using IK will automatically do the work for you.

Rule 1.) There are no rules

[manus]

thanks, but I want to model my muscels and use them to deform or create my geometry ( a bit like Metareyes for Max). Is it possible in Maya? Is there a plugin or a script?

Thanks....Manus

[mweier]

I'm not familiar with Metareyes, but it sounds like you want to model the muscles themselves & have that modify the mesh (presumably interactively). In that case, use Smooth skin influence objects as you can model a bulged muscle & then vary how much it affects the mesh.

Rule 1.) There are no rules

[deke-kincaid]

In reply to:
thanks, but I want to model my muscels and use them to deform or create my geometry ( a bit like Metareyes for Max). Is it possible in Maya? Is there a plugin or a script?

Thanks....Manus

Yea, you can do this. Just model your muscles, make them softbodies, bind them to the skeleton and use the wrap deformer to connect the muscles to the mesh. It takes a bit of work and can be pretty intensive on memory so you would need to use max distance for the wrap deformer. It will probably be slow in the viewport so your probably going to want to set your character up with some lowrez geometry to animate with.

Deke

[manus]

Thanks Deke,

But why do I have to turn my muscle geometry in to soft bodies, where is it good for and is the deformation effect easy to control ?

Manus

[rokl]

If you're not in a quick need of muscles maybe you can wait for the new jiggle deformer in Maya 4 which I hope will be also usable for simple muscle effect.

rokl

[manus]

No, I already tried it with Maya 4beta and it doesn't give me the effect that I'am looking for. I want to generate the same effect as ILM used for The Mummy. There the muscles drove the geometry!

Thanks

Manus

[a-d-]

In reply to:
No, I already tried it with Maya 4beta and it doesn't give me the effect that I'am looking for. I want to generate the same effect as ILM used for The Mummy. There the muscles drove the geometry!

Thanks

Manus

hehe then devote your life to programing cuz i don't think it's possible with maya out-of-the-box

[bosco]

In reply to:
hehe then devote your life to programing cuz i don't think it's possible with maya out-of-the-box

Yeah, wait for maya v.10 or so... I don't think it's possible with any program out of the box. Those guys at ILM and PDI had to develop their own proprietary software to do this. I'd say it falls under the catagory "Industry Secret"; )

[stormtroopar]

In reply to:
thanks, but I want to model my muscels and use them to deform or create my geometry ( a bit like Metareyes for Max). Is it possible in Maya? Is there a plugin or a script?

Thanks....Manus

First of all, Metareyes is a modeling tool. It is by no means a muscle animation system. The modeling approach is more like creating muscles, but it has nothing to do with muscle animation or deformation.

A muscle system that works like the mummy is possible in maya, however, depending on the complexity of the character. If you are talking about Mummy type complexity, then you are just going to bring Maya to its knees. From what I have seen, a lot of the Mummy's muscles were simulations with some cheats here and there, but nonetheless its Very calculation intensive and not easy to do.

A combination of deformers and dynamics can get you good results in Maya. But it will be very slow and not workable.

This is something I am very interested in doing as well and in my spare time, I have been developing a muscle system that fakes muscle simulation and at the same time allows for fast feedback. I have been getting some decent results, but there are still a lot of work to do before it is ready for more complex characters. Once I feel the setup is a bit more complete, I will post some samples.

[s-j-tubbrit]

Sorry to revive an old topic, but...

stormtoopar, how is your muscle-based system going, I'd be interested in seeing some examples of what you have or a brief synopsis of the technique you are using if your still working on this that is.

[cinemafan1980]

Well, muscle simulation is certainly not possible with any animation program straight out of the box RIGHT NOW, because it's new technology. But it's no "industry secret", it's programming based on publically available research done at university's over the last few years. There is a muscle/skin simulation plug-in now available for 3D studio max, you can check it out at www. cgcharacter.com . They say they;re developing the plugin for maya, but who knows when they'll finish it, if ever. Hopefully, muscle and skin simulation will become standard, integrated elements to most high end 3d software in a few years. But you have to remember, such a system ADDS a demonic amount of work, because you have to model all the bones and muscles under the skin, assign parameter values for their elasticity and other attributes (you'll probably have to paint maps so that these parameters vary over the different parts of the body) as well as elasticity and other attributes for the skin. Then, after you animate your skeletal rig, you have to wait for the simulation to run, then iron out any kinks that the sim may run into by adjusting animation on an individual vertex level. In most circumstances, you're better off creating muscle and skin deformation with standard deformation tools.

Yeah, wait for maya v.10 or so... I don't think it's possible with any program out of the box. Those guys at ILM and PDI had to develop their own proprietary software to do this. I'd say it falls under the catagory "Industry Secret"; )