Stumbling Toward 'Awesomeness'

From Ideas to Reality with XSI’s Cluster Constraints

Thanks to my brother, Mike, for translating  this from the original japanese [here]

When asked about which features of XSI helped the most on this project, Hideki Sasaki (Facial Animation Set Up Lead) came back with the rather surprising answer, “There were many but in regards to facial animation, cluster constraints really saved us.” In our facial rig setups, every point-cluster of your target shape is tied to bones using cluster constraints. Cluster constraints also were extremely useful in the following situations:

Since in MGS4 we were really trying to lighten the processing, on the PS3 we employed a method where tangent colors change only with the rotation of bones. In other words, if simply constrained to coordinates, in animation it will behave correctly, but the tangent color will not change. Basically, you run into a dilemma where shading goes from its default state to a one where it will no longer change. However, by using cluster constraints to constrain both normal and tangent lines the correct rotation values will be input, and that’s how we accomplished the shading.

(this sounds really interesting, i guess they are talking about smoothing angle tangents? In many engines like the CryEngine, the smoothing angle is based on the character’s default pose at export and never changes. This makes it sound like that exported cluster data to ‘drive’ the smoothing angle in realtime)

Furthermore, nearly all fluctuating objects attached to the character’s clothing, in cutscenes and gameplay, are done by the PS3’s simulation engine. That being said, there are some cases in cutscenes with intense action where it’s difficult to simulate. In those cases we use animation simulated in XSI’s Syflex. The basic workflow in those situations is as follows:

1. To express fluctuations in the clothing, make a simulation in Syflex

2. Convert the cached simulation results into shape targets

3. Constrain bones to the points on your shape controlled object with cluster constraints

4. Bone envelope the final model to be used on the PS3 (Basically the same idea as a facial rig)

(Baking arbitrary data to bones ftw!)

The advantage of using this type of control is, even if you temporarily get a little caving in or some kind of flaw in the simulation result, you are able to apply corrections with “Secondary Shape Mode” at stage 2 of the workflow.

It’s possible to edit the shape’s geometry using vertex shift; you can also use smooth and push to fix little imperfections if needed. It goes without saying that the results of these intuitive adjustments will be reflected in the envelope control’s PS3 data as well.

Sasaki explains, “You can set cluster constraints for all components, vertex, polygon and edge. I believe XSI is the only one that comes standard with support for constraining both normals and tangents. Without the help of these cluster constraint functions we could have never accomplished techniques like cross-simulation transfer to bones, or our ideas concerning facial rig set up.”

(they export/sync cluster rig element data to engine)