Hey Gang !
I just started playing around with Woody, and I would like to share a bit of the process and how I came out with the idea.
I got the RIG from https://animprops.com/ thanks to Roly !
On my first weeks of learning RAGDOLL I came out with this first Test of a Box Jumping and being driven by I main controller, this test brought the idea to my mind, “How could it would be to create a propper puppet” … And here we are !
Stay tune for new updated on the process of Woody ! I will play around and see what I can get using Ragdoll…
Coming Next…!!!
This cowboy has to show his skills at “AlienRider”…
I am planning to do Tail, neck, Head, and ears of the “Alien using RG” and Woody will be FULL RG.
I will try hat holding with one hand and also a version holding with two hands !
let’s see how this test goes this time I planned to make it work on 100 frames of action.
Hey Isai,
Yes I am exploring the Distance CNS… find it very nice !.
Playing with the values of Stiffness, damping and Max and Min… can produce great effects… to for example control how much Woody is jumping from the saddle… I will post a new WIP tonight !
As for the hands… what I am doing right now is: Hands have Parent CNS to the ears… I am planing on baking the animation and do one more pass with RG on top of the anim of arms and hands to see how it can be improved.
Baked frames ! "worth to clearify to new readers … Woody has not a Single Key frame… Everything is based on the creature’s jump. And the Creature has no keys on the head , neck, ears, and tail… Perfect Application for RG…
TIME: all the process ( planing, set up, reseach, test) took 6 days “ish” about 2 hours max per day… including setting up and searching for each rig
After retargeting the markets to the Controls of the RIG this is how this test is looking.
Couple of questions did rise in my process.
1- I could not figure what is causing that first Pop on the first 2 frames… Woody kind of pop’s to place…
2- One more time I had to use “ultility / Extract Animation” Maybe has to do with the RIG… as it has some inputs that might cause some weird behavor at the moment I bake it. Will invesitagete and share more Info with Marcus and Jason to find out .
3- The neck… is hard to control… I am wondering if it is because the size of his head, or he proxy mesh…
I added clavicles and also some markers to his scarf, that looks cool !
That looks great. The head facing in the same direction helps give it a lot of extra subtle motion. All that’s missing is some head turns, some eye blinking and maybe a facial expression or two and he’s alive!
I suspect either:
Self-collisions on the start frame
Limbs being outside of limits
If you’ve got a limit for e.g. the neck, but the neck has been rotated such that it is outside of that limit, Ragdoll will try and correct that as soon as simulation starts.
Here’s a general way to debug things like this.
Temporarily disable all constraints
Turn Gravity = 0
Turn Collide = Off on all markers
Turn Limit Range = 0 on all markers
At this point, nothing should move when you hit play. The only thing that could cause him to move would be fields if there are any. Now:
Re-enable (undo) Limit Range to their previous value, if anything moves then it’s because of limbs being outside of limits
Re-enable Collide = On. If anything moves, then there’s self-collision.
Re-enable constraints. If anything moves, you know what to do
Re-enable gravity, and you’re back with newfound knowledge on how to fix it.
Can you elaborate on this? What happened when you record?
Also can you elaborate on this? What made is hard? The size is likely to have an effect since his head is so big and neck is so narrow. Try giving it a Custom Density = 0.1 or less. In the real toy, I’d expect that head to be hollow, whereas Ragdoll will treat it as though it was filled and thus very heavy.
I went and re visit Woody File to re time it a bit and baked it.
Added some tails poses to have better SIM and less Stiffness on the head of the Creature with SOFT translation mode to have a bit of overlap.
Looking forward to seeing the progress.
This could work really well with the head set to 
I take it you’re using normal parentCosntraints vs. ragdoll Constraints. Did you happen to try it out with ragdoll Constraints?