Setting Bones for Converting to Non-Human Character

When you click the Convert to Character button in the Character Section, you will see the dialog box shown below:

Bone Axis

This setting decides the global direction of the bones. Therefore, it is crucial if you want to use IK correctly in iClone.

1. Click the bones one by one from parent nodes to child nodes.

2. Check the coordination of each node and find the color line that goes along with the bone direction. (R = X, G = Y, B = Z)

   In this case, the red line is the global direction of the bone structure.

   

3. Select the X, Y or Z radio button.

Bone Bounding Size (for iClone 4.2 or above only)

This feature helps you pick specific bones to modify the offset through IK or FK methods in iClone.

1. Select one of the bones in the tree view that has a very small bounding.

   

2. Drag the Bone Bounding Size to decide the size of the reaction range (yellow box) for picking the bone.

   

3. Convert the model to a character and load into iClone.

4. Right click and select Motion Menu/Edit Motion in the right-click menu.

   

5. The bone can now be easily picked in the preview window since the bounding size has been increased.

Bone Building Rules for Converting to Character:

The bone structure must follow the rules below in order to be converted into a non-human character, and successfully modify its motion with the IK method.

• Except the root node, all the translate and scale animations for character bones will be ignored while the rotate animation is kept.

• The bone pivots must be at the proper position. The illustration below shows the improper position of the pivot.

  

• To attain correct results with IK method, the bone structure must be:

  Connected and aligned under one same hierarchical structure
  The bones must be non-mirrored in order to ensure that the direction of all bones are identical.