Hiring BabylonJS developer (bone animations, blender export)

[Rodrix3]

I am am experienced developer but a newbie on BabylonJS.

 

I tried to solve a simple problem on my own for the last 5 days and no matter how hard I try it still doesn't work.

 

I am looking for someone who can do it for me, and I am more than happy to pay. So.. work for hire

 

Job:

- I have a 3d rigged hand model made in blender with animations through bones.

 

I managed to export it but after doing so, even the mesh looks good the animations look bad. Instead of the hand opening and closing all mesh gets awkwardly deformed. It seems as if the deformers of the bones got all screwed up.

 

I need someone to fix this and show me how can I move programmatically each of the phalanges of the fingers of the hand.

 

Please reply if interested I will post more information as requested.

 

Thanks a million!

I have a really bad headache. I have been trying for days with no luck and I have decided this problem is way above my head. So.. please help. Happy to pay!

[adam]

I can help you with this.

[adam]

@JCPalmer also might be able to help.  He has a cool demo of animated hands that I'm pretty sure uses shape keys.

[gryff]

@Rodrix3:

 Welcome to the forum Rod

If you can post your .blend file - I will be happy to take a look and see if I can find the issue.

cheers, gryff

[Rodrix3]

Guys! Thanks so much for the quick reply.It's nice to receive such a warm welcome to the forum.
I hope so much any of you can help me...! I've been working on this simple thing for five days straight with no luck..

Here is my full source code, including the blender model, and the converted model to .babylon:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cgrs8qb52tnkzry/hand.zip?dl=0

My knowledge on Babylon is pretty weak (I just switched from ThreeJS to Babylon...)
So I basically downloaded a sample and made a few changes, so the source code is really basic.
The hands are UP (looking up). Make the camera look up and you will see them.

..And here is the link to the source of the model, so you can see how the model should look.
Mine look pretty akward after exporting it (textures and lighting look odd).
Sample:

https://sketchfab.com/models/86dff766e51d4f2084a3768be7f08b8c

Thank you all!!!!!

Rod

P.S: Would love to see @JCPalmers demo of animated hands. 

P.S.S: My goal is to be able to programatically move the hand.
Via code I would like to be able to control  a) stretch of each of fingeres b ) curl down each of the fingers individually and move the thumb under the palm

Edited May 29, 2017 by Rodrix3
Fixed demo link (source link was ok)

[JCPalmer]

Looked at your Blend.  I have no idea how you can rotate a finger with only 1 bone.  Here is the scene mentioned by Adam.  It was made with an IK finger rig, but deployed using shapekeys.  It is deployed using shapekeys due to iOSes limitations with large numbers of bones (on WebGL 1 at least).  Shapekeys are not great for fingers, but as long as you move them fast, you cannot tell.  Just up the duration from 200 milli to 2000, and you will see what I mean.

The IK rig, I made as a script to snap-on to either a MakeHuman Default (4 bones per finger ) or Game  (3 bones) Rig.  The script also hides all original bones, except in the thumb, so they do not clutter everything up. 

Assuming your mesh could use one of these rigs, then run the snap-on script, I have already published a .blend with a pose library which has the poses in the demo.

 

[Rodrix3]

Dear JCPalmer,

Thanks so much for your reply and demo. It's super cool!

Quote

Looked at your Blend.  I have no idea how you can rotate a finger with only 1 bone. 

Sorry, I believe I linked to the wrong demo (I had googled so many differnet hand models that I pasted the wrong one). Here is the one I actually used. You can see on the download page, that the author is effectively able to move each of the fingers separately and it contains a full rig. This demo shows the full animation live. If you download my source code provided on the previous message, you will find the original blender file with just one rigged hand from the same author.

(Click on link to see LIVE demo of animated hand)

https://sketchfab.com/models/86dff766e51d4f2084a3768be7f08b8c

Quote

  It was made with an IK finger rig, but deployed using shapekeys.  It is deployed using shapekeys due to iOSes limitations with large numbers of bones (on WebGL 1 at least).  Shapekeys are not great for fingers, but as long as you move them fast, you cannot tell.  Just up the duration from 200 milli to 2000, and you will see what I mean.

The IK rig, I made as a script to snap-on to either a MakeHuman Default (4 bones per finger ) or Game  (3 bones) Rig.  The script also hides all original bones, except in the thumb, so they do not clutter everything up. 

Your approach is super interesting! I had never heard of shapeKeys before, I just googled it. In my project requirements I need to be able to move each of the phalanges of the fingers to precise different positions that I cannot "predict" before hand. Meaning, I will not be able to use "poses" or keyframes to define each of the finger movements, instead I will be creating different hand positions programatically.Given the case, shall I continue with using rigged model animation of 4 bones per finger, or do you suggest I go with shapekeys?

Regarding my converted model from Blender to Babylon, here you can see the difference clearly:

The animation is all screwed up and the materials don't look as nice in the original.

The original was also rendered on WebGL, however, using a propietary engine it seems so I can't analyze the code or get the converted model.

Does anyone know what the problem is and how to fix it?

Thanks,

Rod

 

 

[gryff]

@Rodrix3 : Well I took a look at your model and the .babylon file - "spaghetti monster" heaven

Looking at the blender file, I'm not familiar with the way the fingers are being animated - somehow using scale settings.

Here is an example of a simple hand animation. It has an Arc Rotate Camera so scroll wheel to zoom, LetMouse drag to rotate:

A Hand

This model has fewer bones for the fingers/palms (19 instead of 24) The animations of the fingers are created by rotating the first bone in each finger (it drives the other finger bones)  and by adjusting the rotation of the palm bone associated with the little finger (clenches the fingers together).

The rigging for this model was done by Lee Salvemini  (who worked for Lucas Arts and has a course on animation with Blender). Videos of the rigging process and the download for the finished rig model can be found here (Part 2 goes into the hand rigging process).I created the animation in about a minute - so don't blame Lee if you think it is crappy

The model used is a whole body in this example - but the rigging methods could be used to drive a mesh setup similar to yours

But you maybe going down the shapekey route.

cheers, gryff

 

[gryff]

15 minutes ago, Rodrix3 said:

I have no idea how you can rotate a finger with only 1 bone

By applying constraints that, in the example I gave above, copy rotations from the first finger bone.

cheers, gryff

[adam]

Here is another technique you could use to bend a finger:

https://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#T9C7BA

[Rodrix3]

Thanks guys.

Adam, that looks great.
I was able to move fingers just like that in ThreeJS using bones.

The question is.. how can I export the bones correctly from Blender to BabylonJS?

The bones get broken when exported. Meaning, they don't deform what is supposed to be deformed.

How can I fix that before doing the Blender export?

Thanks,

Rod

[Rodrix3]

2 hours ago, gryff said:

@Rodrix3 : Well I took a look at your model and the .babylon file - "spaghetti monster" heaven

Looking at the blender file, I'm not familiar with the way the fingers are being animated - somehow using scale settings.

Here is

 

Yes, it looks pretty horrible

So basically what you are saying is that I should look for another model that has 4 bones per finger and not just one. Correct?