Mocca

Boning the Mime Character in R8
 
This tutorial is a walk through rigging the Mime Character in R8 with Mocca. You should use it as a companion to the tutorial in theMocca manual , as it doesn't aim to replace it, but suppliment it.In the Cow forum this has been a highly requested topic. Many of us have felt that Mocca for such a powerful tool is under- documented and this is an attempt to bring some info out there. I am not the most Mocca clued in user, so please add to this so that we all can learn how to use this part of Cinema with greater efficiency.
 
I will just rigg the legs and I am sure that from that you will get a clear idea of how to go about doing the rest. Just open mimeleg.c4d from the tutorial files and delete the bone rig. You should be left with an OM looking like (01).
 
If you look at the screen shot (01,02) you can see that the mesh done from diferent parts. All the modeler did is to bring additional parts when he was ready to use them. This is something confuses some people, but if you assign the bones to the top opject in the hierarchy they effect the mesh as if it was one.
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From the deformers choose bone and you will see it in the View. All bones are created pointing in the Z axis(03) so use the bone tool from the Mocca pallet (Plugins, Mocca, Mocca pallet) and position the bone pointing in the direction that the spine will eventualy grow (04).
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Then go to the active tool panel, and while still on Bone tool, click on Add Bone and position that in the root of the hip (05). Control click near the ankle for the shin bone, then foot bone and toe. Go back to the foot bone and Add Bone again and move this bone halfway along the foot bone pointing to the end of the heel, this gives a beter control of the foot mesh (06).
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The OM should look like (07)
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Now drop the Pelvis bone into the Boned cage (bones will effect meshes in the same level as well those above them) and while selecting the Pelvis bone in AM go to fixation and choose fix with children. Then in Mocca pannel click set up IK chain and fix position, fix rotation. Delete the ++ tip effector and ++ goal, since they are not needed. The OM should look like (08). By default you get a tip effector at the lowest bone in the hierarchy. Move the Left toe. tip effector outside the hierarchy.
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Some explanation about goals. Mocca can give you from the Mocca panel two types of goals. A tip goal as in (a) and a root goal as in (b) in the example of the Toe bone (09). Because the tip of the bone has no coordinates as such' a tip effector is placed at the tip of the bone in order for it to be accessed. The root goal on the other hand is attached to the origin of the bone whichobviously has assigned coordinates.
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Sellect the Toe bone and give a root goal, drug it outside the hierarchy and call it Left Foot Controler, and then drop the Left toe. tip goal in it. Select the foot bone and give a root goal and drop that in the Foot controler. You should now have a control that can move the whole length of the foot. However when the goal are created they adopt the coordinates of their bone-parents whch can be all over the place. So go to all the goals and using the Object axis tool zero them out so that you can move them around. Before you can move the rigg you have to press play or the autoredraw button. As you can see both legs will be moving at the same time. We will fix this with the Claude Bonnet tool.
 
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Sellect the Claude Bonnet tool and the Pelvis bone in the OM. Unsellect Only modify visible so that you can paint the backfaces and set the strength to 100. Paint the pelvis like (11). Sellect the Thigh bone and paint like (12). Sellect Shin bone and in the active tool manager click Set reference and chose left thigh to use the same vertex map(13). Select the foot bone and paint like (14). Using Set reference set the same vertex map for bone ++ and Toe (Someone told me in the Cow forum that up to this point they had problems with both legs moving . While I was writing this I faced the same problem and it was because I fergot to paint the ++ bone. Such a silly oversight even though I have done several rigs, but it shows you how easy it is to miss the obvious). Now move your Foot controler and you will be able to move only the left leg.

 

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Save your work, this is crucial because when you work with Mocca and you move things about undo does not neccessarily take you back to the point you were earlier, the only option in such cases is togo to file, revert to saved
 

Now choose Left foot bone and add an Up vector. Up vectors constrain the rotation of the bone to either the y or x axis (15) this stops the bone of rotating wildly as it is moved about. In the OM drug inside the Left foot controler. Again because the constrains are created with parent bone coordinates it is advisable (though not nesseccary ) to zero out the Up vector with the Object axis tool, it makes it easier to manipulate.

Choose the Left shin bone and add a root goal. Zero it out with the Object axis tool and move it infront of the knee. Here there is a litle improvement I have made on the set up. First unlike the tutorial in the manual I put the root goal insede the Foot Controler. This makes sure that it always stays in relation to the movement of the foot. The other change is to increase its strength to about 40% in the constrains tub, in the AM, on the Soft IK tag of the Shin bone. If you look at () you will see that the set in the Manual runs into knee problems (16)when the Foot Controler is moved about at speeed (Auch!!!!), my set up runs much smoother and saves the character the physio bill.

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Your OM should look like (17).
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All we need to do now is to use the Bone Mirror tool to copy the set up to the other side. Just copy the settings on (18) once you bring out the bone mirror from the Mocca pannel. Check the Auto find centre, delete any entry in the prefix box, and have Left to be replaced with Right. All this is in the tutorial Manual so this is only here as a reminder.
Next as in the Mocca manual create two small planes to act as limits and attach to both foot controlers the expression on (19). Again this is in the Manual, so refer to it.
This step is another improvement on the rig. I found this expression on the Maxon plugins page. It is very useful as it centes the hips above the feet, so you don't have to move them while animating. The movement of the feet adjusts the hips automaticaly.
This is how my OM looks now. This is now the moment whan at last we are ready to animate. I will animate a simple walk cycle using some of the new Mocca tools. Namely, the Capuccino, the Key reducer, and the new Fcurve manager.