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          <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">- <a href="../index.html">Contents</a><br>
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              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC">volume 
                1, issue 30</font></b></font></p>
              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC"> 
                </font></b></font></p>
              <p>  <p><font face="Courier New, Courier, mono"><b><font color="#339900" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Today 
                in loonygames:</font></b></font></p>

<P><font color="#000000" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">New!!</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"> The Archives have been cleaned up, fead links fixed, and printable versions restored! Also, don't miss the new comments <a href="../../../index.html">on the front page</a>!</font></p>
              
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  Vasquez on <b>Omikron: The Nomad Soul</b>.</font></p>
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        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0022A8"><b><a target="" href="../../corner/index.html"><font size="-1">Thinking 
          Outside the Box</font></a><font size="-1">:</font></b></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+3" color="#0022A8"><br>
          Character Studio <font size="+2">(part 2)</font></font></p>
        <p align="right"><font color="#804000"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">By 
          Paul &quot;<a target="_self" href="mailto:paul@loonygames.com">Villam</a>&quot; 
          Steed</font></b></font></p>
        <p align="right">&nbsp; </p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Now think of the tags as 
          representations of, or placeholders for those distinct body parts. Thus 
          the tag at the base of the neck is called ‘tag_head’ to represent the 
          head and the tag at the waist is ‘tag_torso’ to represent the upper 
          body. In a top view the actual tag would look something like this…</font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b><img src="images/tag.jpg" width="218" height="313"></b></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Make sure its orientation 
          and look is relatively the same. Now look at the following…</font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="images/doom211.jpg" width="304" height="540"></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">This diagram illustrates 
          how I place the tags in relation to the biped itself. Since the tags 
          represent the transform pivot point of the area of the body they represent, 
          placement is important in relation to the biped body parts. In this 
          illustration you can see their exact location…</font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="images/doom212.jpg" width="371" height="400"></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Note that the tag_torso is 

          right at the pivot point of the biped’s first Spine. The tag_head is 
          at the juncture of the neck where the head meets. The geometry supports 
          both tag points by intersecting appropriately (torso has curved geometry 
          at the bottom and the neck is a curved stump). I normally try and play 
          around with the geometry, rotating the intersecting pieces to see how 
          they look. Be forewarned that it takes some thought and planning to 
          make your meshes support this scheme.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Back to Physique. Go ahead 
          and select the arms and torso of the object and apply Physique to them. 
          It’s perfectly fine to assign Physique separately to each object, but 
          we can still select an object like the left arm and tweak its physique 
          attributes individually by just selecting it alone. The convenient thing 
          about assigning a modifier to more than one object is that it can be 
          deleted or affected across the board with one mouse click if necessary. 
          Click on ‘Attach to Node’ and initialize with the default settings clicking 
          on the Spine.</font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="images/doom213.jpg" width="218" height="400"></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Now this is where I <i>should</i> 
          explain in detail when you use the default settings of Physique and 
          when you change to something else. Sorry. Read the manual. Seriously 
          though, most of the time I just let it do its thing because I can always 
          go into the vertex sub-menu of Physique and assign individual vertices 
          with whatever rigid or deformable attributes I want. Wait a minute...What 
          the heck! Let’s just go ahead and do that now! (How’s that for a segue…)</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Select just the torso. </font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="images/doom214.jpg" width="288" height="500"></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Now go to the vertex sub-object 
          menu under Physique. Notice how the little stick arms of the Physique 
          linking structure is visible even though we didn’t pick the arms. This 
          is because even if we had not assigned the modifier to all three objects 
          simultaneously, the arm links would still exist since the Spine is the 
          parent of everything comprising the upper body. Now ‘Select’ is already 
          selected under the vertex sub-object menu so go ahead and drag a box 
          around the vertices below the neck of the torso.</font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="images/doom215.jpg" width="322" height="400"></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Note that the verts selected 
          are different colors – red and burgundy. Red verts mean that they are 
          assigned to a link or bone but are also influenced by other links or 
          bones directly above or directly below the link to which they are assigned. 
          Now the burgundy ones are different. They are basically assigned to 
          no particular link per se but have been caught in the middle between 
          more than one link (well they have, but they may as well not have given 
          the amount of influence that can be exerted on it from elsewhere). This 
          gives them all kinds of movement as they haven’t quite committed to 
          any one link. Let’s go ahead and change that.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Since the upper body represents 
          an armored, almost carapace-like physiognomy we can make these vertices 
          rigid and unbending with their parent being the main spine link. The 
          reason why we do this is that if the verts are assigned to different 
          parts of the spine up the spinal chain, a torquing or shearing would 
          take place and detract from the hard armored look. Sooo….</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">With the verts still selected 
          go over to the command panel and click on the arrow beside ‘N Links’ 
          and choose ‘No Blending’ instead.</font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="images/doom216.jpg" width="184" height="240"></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Next click on ‘Assign to 
          Link’…</font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="images/doom217.jpg" width="186" height="146"></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">…then click the green cross 
          at the top of the sub-menu under ‘Vertex Type’…</font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="images/doom218.jpg" width="182" height="90"></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">…and click on the Spine link 
          on your mesh thus assigning all those vertices to the first joint in 
          the spine chain.</font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="images/doom219.jpg" width="284" height="530"></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The last step you have to 
          remember to do when manually assigning vertices is to lock them to that 
          link with the ‘Lock Assignment’ button…</font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="images/doom220.jpg" width="383" height="400"></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">You know this is accomplished 
          because tiny boxes appear around the vertices. This is really useful 
          since even if you’re going through the mesh and select the locked verts 
          by accident, they won’t be affected unless you ‘Unlock Assignments’ 
          first. You can also play around with typing in the weight of vertices 
          with the ‘Type-In Weights’ button, but only if those vertices have locked 
          beforehand. Also remember that you can hide vertices if the mesh gets 
          too confusing and unhide them when you’re done tweaking.</font></p>
        <p align="right"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">(<a href="index4.php">Continued 
          on next page</a>)</font></p>
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      <p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2"> </font></i><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2"><b>Credits:</b> 
        Thinking Outside the Box logo illustrated and is &copy; 1999 Dan Zalkus. 
        Thinking Outside the Box is &copy; 1999 Paul Steed. All other content 
        is &copy; 1999 <a target="_self" href="http://www.loonyboi.com">loonyboi 
        productions</a>. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited, so 
        don't even try it. We've got really big guns, and we're ripped, baby.</font></i></p>
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