Malcolm mesh behaving...interestingly

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AmberLD
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Joined:Wed Dec 05, 2012 5:01 pm
Malcolm mesh behaving...interestingly

Post by AmberLD » Tue Apr 30, 2013 10:51 pm

Hi all! I have a few quick questions regarding use of the Malcolm rig. I've posted several screenshots on my old blog (see below link) - does anyone have any idea as to what's going on here? Thank you so very much!

http://dvorakamber.wordpress.com/animation/

1) Mesh deforming weirdly on Malcolm's t-shirt

2) Weird mouth deformation, although the controllers are all set to 0 and seem to be in the right places (and I don't recall freezing transformations at any point) - any suggestions?

3) I haven't moved the teeth at all - any reason why they might be popping through here?

If anyone could get back to me as soon as possible, I'd very much appreciate it, as I need to have all this rectified within the week! Thanks again!

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admin
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Re: Malcolm mesh behaving...interestingly

Post by admin » Tue Apr 30, 2013 11:13 pm

I haven't seen this problem before.

If you zero out all the controls, does it go away?

Hit the All button, then reset.

Are you using the AnimSchool picker? Those buttons are in there.

AmberLD
Posts:11
Joined:Wed Dec 05, 2012 5:01 pm

Re: Malcolm mesh behaving...interestingly

Post by AmberLD » Sun May 05, 2013 4:12 am

Thank you very much for your reply!

Uh oh - it certainly can't be a good thing if I'm running into never-before-seen problems! :(

Anyway, yes all of the controls are set to zero, aside from the shoulder controls that I rotated to get Malcolm's arms in a more natural position (just for the heck of it, I tried setting these to zero too, but it didn't make a difference). I noticed a few other arm controls were not completely zeroed out, but doing so only adjusted the shirt mesh ever so slightly.

I also unfortunately cannot work with the Picker for this specific project since I am using a Macbook equipped only with Maya 2011, and I noticed the new Mac-based Picker (thank you so much for this, by the way!!) is only for the 2012 version and newer. Believe me, as soon as I update my laptop/OS, I will be downloading a newer student version of Maya and taking full advantage of the Picker. :D However, I will not be able to do so before this project is intially due, so that option unfortunately won't help at the moment.

I have an animator friend helping me look into these issues as well, but I only have one week left to rectify them, so any other possible suggestions/pointers you or anyone else may have would be immensely appreciated.

Thank you!

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admin
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Re: Malcolm mesh behaving...interestingly

Post by admin » Sun May 05, 2013 9:25 am

It's possible some controls' scale values are set to zero. Those should be one.

This looks like the default pose.
If you bring in a brand new reference of Malcolm, the problem should go away.

If you need to, you can transfer animation using dkanim:
http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downl ... /dkanim--3

AmberLD
Posts:11
Joined:Wed Dec 05, 2012 5:01 pm

Re: Malcolm mesh behaving...interestingly

Post by AmberLD » Fri Jul 12, 2013 8:33 pm

Hi, I'm sorry for my super delayed response - but thank you for the insight! You were right - bringing in a brand-new, unedited download of Malcolm did the trick. :) My friend and I came to the conclusion that somehow I messed things up when modifying the Malcolm geometry, perhaps too extremely (I'd edited the face shape without taking into account that I'd have to edit the tongue and teeth as well, or they would poke through the face).

I'm sort of reanimating things now as I've had poor luck running the dkanim script in the past, but perhaps I'll give it another look. I'm wondering if it has different success rates with different versions of Maya...I've been using 2011 and am about to switch over to 2013, so we'll see!

Thanks again!

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