i want to add a kneecap bone to an existing rig... i have done an exhaustive search and found nothing that applies to this subject, i have found mention and seen it applied but no discription of actual technique, a link or brief tutorial would be fantastic...

im dealing with M4 standard i have PP2012, my purpose is to have the new kneecap drag topology around the bend of the knee, as there is a lag when the knee is bent and and half of the kneecap overshoots  the apex of the bend and becomes stretched and distorted...is it necessary to remap the thigh and calf bones or can this be avoided? this may not be do-able but i would like to give it a shot anyway...

 as always help or suggestions are received with great appreciation...

 

:O)

 

You may be better off using a magnet and have it interlinked to the shin bend via ERC code rather than add another bone.

Alternatively try increasing the shin bend right positive bulge setting from -0.0123 to 0.028

I appreciate that you may not understand all the terms used in the above but if you could please indicate which, if any, we can proceed from there.

 

Honestly said, I don't "believe" in additional "helper bones" in a rig.

I rather use a JCM instead. Much more accurate and a morph much less likely will cause problems along the road than additional bodyparts can do.

But anyway:

At least in PP2012, simply enter the SetUp room, select the bone tool and paint your bone where you need it.

Then use the joint editor to assign which bodyparts should be influenced by the new bone and paint a weightmap.

In this case, I added a new kneecap bone between the thigh and shin to one of my figures.

The kneecap movement can then be linked to the shin movement via the dependency editor.

 Thanks Philc..as always you are a fountain of knowledge, i hadnt considered  using ERC with magnets, often times the simplest solution is the best solution and easiest overlooked...

 i am familliar with both techniques and will try both for evaluation, however i still have this nagging need to understand helper bones and will continue the persuit of this knowledge... im sure you have had unanswered questions in the past and understand where im comming from...

I'm in awe of your contributions to Poser and follow your efforts closely...

:O)

Thanks :)

Helper bones tutorial:-

http://www.philc.net/tutorial9.php

Quote -  

Honestly said, I don't "believe" in additional "helper bones" in a rig.

I rather use a JCM instead. Much more accurate and a morph much less likely will cause problems along the road than additional bodyparts can do.

thanks for responding Joe

i understand what you are saying about accuracy, i wish to try applying Jcm after making a new bone , using the new bone to drag verts into rough alignment, thinking it may save a morph or 3, as you well know these verts want to follow the straitest path to their targets requiring multiple targets to round a bend,  perhaps a new bone may lighten the overall load of the figure... im not sure but, i have time and patience to test these assumptions.

:O)

thanks for the link Phil but i kinda slipped in there and read that Tutorial while you were sleeping last night, surprised your dogs barking didnt wake you up...LOL

 i made a new bone and found it messed up the zones that were already applied to the figure, was hoping there was a shortcut to adding a bone that didnt require reworking what was already in place, i have seen figures being worked on by Phantom3d where he added a helper object, whether he added it before or after weight mapping is something i dont know,  perhaps he anticipated the need and added them beforehand i asked him a couple times but he stays pretty busy and i never got a clear answer...

 :O)

 

The way I added the new bone didn't mess up the original joint.

When I zero the new kneecap bone, the leg behaves exactly as before, including the JCM I added to fix the joints.

Perhaps weightmapping the bone instead of using falloff zones will make a difference ?

thanks again Joe...

ill try converting to WM before adding the bone , this may be the answer, i was using the standard falloff zones before and i can see where adding additional zones may crowd existing zones...perhaps forcing sharing of verts between existing and new zones?... would be nice to simply inject new features without having to overwrite existing, I'd like to enhance without detracting from work thats already been done if possible...

very nice bend you have there Joe

looking at the screencap you posted , i find myself wanting to click the dependency icon to see where you keyed the morph....lol

 

"looking at the screencap you posted , i find myself wanting to click the dependency icon to see where you keyed the morph....lol"

Nothing fancy. The JCMs are just linked to the bend parameter of the shin.

While you are of course right that morphs can move vertices only in a straight line while a bone can properly rotate, I feel the advantage of being able to move vertices in any direction with a morph far outweighs that handicap.

Of course combining bones and JCMs might very well be the optimum solution, and I'm very curious how well you can fix M4s kneecaps.

(V4 and M4's "weak" kneecaps were one of the main reasons I stayed with the 3rd gen DAZ meshes. The other was V4s gazillion of built in magnets. Lol)

Every additional bone counts as an additional bodypart and thus slows Posers performance down a bit, and as I do a lot of cr2 "hacking", I try to keep my cr2's as simple and robust as possible.

But it's good to see more people trying to achieve better joints and if your combined method works better than what I can achieve by JCMs alone, I will happily give it a try, too.  :-)

here is a frame grab of an animation i did , cant post animated .gif's here and i have no place to link to/from... this is a comparison of the bend i did with the default(right) this is a carefully coreographed dance involving 8 bend morphs and 6 muscle morphs all working together at speciffic keyed times to give the illusion of reality ,quite convincing actually, when presented in full motion. i have a fully working model but am still looking for ways to improve...the kneecap is the only problem, not helped at all by the burnt in texture features

i need to find a way of presenting these fully animated that doesnt require a large investment...

"i need to find a way of presenting these fully animated that doesnt require a large investment..."

Perhaps render it in Poser as an .avi and then post to YouTube ?

BTW, the new knee looks quite promising !

I just loaded default M4 and bent his shin. His knee looks truly awful. Lol.

I also always have the feeling that in order to circumvent the ballooning buttocks problem, DAZ moved the center of his thigh joint too far upwards.

Quote - I also always have the feeling that in order to circumvent the ballooning buttocks problem, DAZ moved the center of his thigh joint too far upwards.

 i agree, seems that their 'workaround' on one problem created several others to contend with, but you use what you have to work with at the time... we have learned quite a bit in the interrum between when these figures were built and now, but i dont fault the original creaters for using what they had, i just feel its time for some enhancements/workarounds of our own...

 

:O)

seems converting to weight mapping was the key... im getting very good results with the Kneebone addition, it will cut down the number of JCM's considerably thus making the twist easier to acheive without having to wire in as many loop back prams to make bend/twist work together ... Thanks for all the help

:O)