Muscle Buldge
 

Hey experts of Maya, I am wondering if you could help me.

When you attach a skeleton to the skin, and you move the skeleton, how do you make the muscles buldge or react, so it doesnt look like this?

Also, how do you control the skin etc...with the bones.




Anyone know of any good tutorials on the subject as well?

I generally use blend shapes.

Ok, what are blend shapes? (newbie sorry)

You could also use Influence Objects...

I'm thinking this isn't a exactly a "newbie" topic as all the solutions are rather advanced. This tutorial explains one method using a set driven keys, deformers, and influence objects, but even the tutorials states that you should have a good working knowledge of Maya before trying it. I wish you luck.

http://topsoilarts.com/tutorials_muscles.htm

Thank you for your help. I may be getting in over my head and should continue to work on the basics and build from there rather than try and tackle difficult concepts.

I appriciate everyones help, thanks a lot!

Setting up a very basic influence object isn't as hard as it seems from the link mhcannon posted... I'm sure it's a good way to do it, but I've seen (and tried) it done a lot simpler from a tut in the Learning Maya Foundations book... I can read up on it and try to explain it if you'd like...?

Sink or swim right? Obvioiusly working on basics is good, but there's nothing that says you can't work on both at once. And if animating is where you really want to be, you may not need to learn much modeling at all (although it certainly wouldn' hurt). I didn't mean to discourage you.

Something esle just occurred to me... specialization is not uncommon in animation. I took an introduction to 3D animation class recently and the instructor barely had a clue when it came to modeling, but was a whiz at rigging and natural movement. They are people who specialize in lighting and cameras, texturing, etc.

I guess being primarily a modeler (for now) my perception is skewed.

Well, I guess most people start out as modellers, since you've got to have something to texture/rig/animate :)

Having dipped my feet in the pond of texturing, I'd say I'm probably sticking to modelling as well... But there are still tons of areas I need to check out, such as animation/rigging, dynamics and stuff like that... Who knows, maybe I'll get hooked on something else when I get to it :)

I agree that specialization is probably preferred, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with some basic - or maybe even advanced - knowledge in other areas...

I really appriciate all the help guys.

blomkaal,
that would be awesome if you could help me out by teaching me about it. It would be a HUGE help. No worries if you cant, but if you could it would be awesome.

I'll read up on it when I get back from work and see what I can do...

Ok here goes:

1. Create a half-sphere and position/stretch it where the muscle should be.
2. Parent the muscle to the shoulder joint. Make sure that it follows when you rotate the shoulder.
3. Use SDK to make the muscle bulge when the elbow joint rotates (using the muscle's scale and the joint's rotate attributes). Test it by rotating the elbow joint.
4. Select the ARM surface THEN the MUSCLE surface (influenced object followed by influence) and go to Skin -> Edit Smooth Skin (assuming that you've used a smooth bind) -> Add Influence.

That should do it... Hope it's useful... This is my only experience with Influence Obj's though, so please don't rip my head off if it doesn't work :)

That is a huge help. Thanks a lot. I am working on learning SDK more so it will be good. Thanks again for taking the time to help me out blomkaal.

Hi , I'm a newbie and I would like to know what is SDK stands for ? :( I'm interested in learning muscle but I'm stuck at some point ..