Character Animation?

[Arius]

What do people generaly tend to use, a "bones" type system or a plugin like character studio?, I'm basically trying to find out which is the easist and the most flexible.

Thnx ;)

[Goig!]

Bones are much more flexible than Character Studio; and in my opinion easier to animate; but quite hard to rig, at least at the beginning.

[ag79]

hi
my question is why to use bones over c studio
what r the advantages u get. how do u use motion capture with boning.

[Ragnar]

I'm still un-decided between bones and CStudio... at first I thought CStudio was limited and quite ristrictive, but now that I have played around with it a bit more I realise that there is much more too it than I originally thought. It can make lots of processes much easier (rigging in particular) and also has lots more options in terms of saving out sections of animation... Bones also have their advantages... I mean its going to be much easier to create strange animals or monsters that don't have a skeletal structure that loosly follows the biped mould, although the pay off is that it takes more time to rig and set-up correctly....

[ag79]

hi

what is the general practice amongst professional cg animators, bones or c studio. definately Ragnar, while animating strange monsters and animals, bones is the only way out; but what about
simple 2 legged characters. how is boning more flexible solution for these, if so

[Trappist Funk]

It depends what you want to do with the rigged character - if you're doing a quick riggin job so you can pose the mesh then I reckon CS is a good option.

However rigging the character with bones can let you do plenty of interesting things, like wiring things into the side panel (I made a quick facial animation system using position and rotation constraints, a few bones, and the attribute holder stuff once).

You can still make monsters and stuff with CS - you can deform the biped quite a bit and add extra arms etc. One big plus it has is the footsteps feature.

Anyway as I say, if you're looking to quickly rig the mesh, use CS, else use bones. Of course it's good to be able to use both, so you may well want to try out both methods and see which is more to your liking.

When I'm rigging characters at work I use bones, but when I do it at home I use CS. Guess I'm just less interested in spending a long time rigging in my free time!

And then you get on to Physique vs Skin...