V4 Arm Length Morph
JoeMamma2000
Posts: 2,615
I was shocked and surprised that there doesn't seem to be a simple morph to adjust the arm length of the V4 character. The morphs++ has leg length, chest size, feet size, and others, but nothing for arm length. Am I missing something somewhere?
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Couldn't come up with an arm length morph either, so I tried creating one and discovered that stretching or compressing the mesh causes the model's "joints" such as the elbows, wrists, etc. not to line up with the rig's joints. I'm not surprised by that outcome.
You can select the forearm bone (for example) in the figure hierarchy and use the scale tool to stretch or compress the bone, which also stretches or compresses the mesh. The rig will still line up with the mesh. I haven't tried to add conforming clothes to a figure distorted in this way.
Wow, that works well...never thought of that. Pretty simple. Cool. Thanks. That do'ed it... :)
And by the way, for those who want to get into the details, if you're gonna re-size the character's legs to make him/her shorter, then do you now how to instantly determine how long the arms should be?
Well, it turns out that the height of a human is almost exactly the same as its ''wingspan"...which is the distance from fingertip to fingertip with arms outstretched. So just insert a cube and size it to match the character's height after adjusting the legs, and flip it 90 degrees and use it to adjust the arm length. Pretty cool. That's one of those Leonardo DaVinci "Golden Number" things.
It does help to pay attention to details like this cuz people notice it, even subsconciously.
Thanks. And those kinds of details can really make your figures individualistic. Real people deviate from the proportional averages and medians, sometimes in predictable ways. You see it most obviously in Olympic athletes, which is not very surprising since they often typically represent the most extreme shapes that can affect performance of a single task. For example, Michael Phelps the swimmer is not "realistic." His torso is too long for his legs. Similarly, the winners of the track events are often not "realistic." Phelps and the winner of the gold medal distance event had the same inseam for their pants, but Phelps was about 6 inches taller. They both deviated significantly from the median ratio of torso length to leg length for humans, but in opposite directions. Similarly, the average wingspan of professional basketball players is significantly longer than their height. Not only are NBA players taller than average, they typically have longer arms than one would predict for their height. While competitive basketball players have gotten taller, female gymnasts have gotten significantly shorter. Might be because of the ratio of power to weight. But all of these athletes are real people. What I am saying is, Joe gives a good tip on human proportions (thanks), and if you are going to deviate from that, do it on purpose.
But if you are trying to trick the human eye into thinking a figure is a real human, you shouldn't deviate much from median proportions, even if real people do. Which is an interesting paradox.
There is a TED technology talk on athletes body shape and performance that I think is very enlightening about human dimensions. I'll post the link in an edit.
Interesting about the Olympic dudes...
And on a more practical side, keep in mind that the standard V4 is something like 5 feet 9 inches, which is very tall for most women. I think most women are in the 5'4" range, and even shorter in some countries. I may be off on the specifics, but your eye is attuned to those subtleties, and if you're going for any sort of realism, or making the viewer "buy" the idea that your character is a real person, those things are important. Heck, just see for yourself, do some realistic renders but vary the leg length, and see what a big difference it makes.
One thing to take into account when addressing height is that merely changing the length of limbs with morphs also changes the ratio of torso length to leg length. If that is the result you want, great. But taller people do not necessarily have longer limbs in relation to their torso or head, which the Phelps and basketball player examples illustrate in a very practical and real way. Similarly, the dancer Fred Estair reportedly had very big hands for his height, which I have looked for when watching old movies. Hard for me to know if his hands were actually bigger, or if the impression came from how he held them.
If I was actually trying to create fake reality, I wouldn't trust my eyes. The images we see every day on billboards, book covers, movies, etc. have been photoshopped, the lighting has been manipulated, and the models generally do not have the same proportions as the median human. In my case, that cultural training has distorted what I think looks real. Remember when Jamie Lee Curtis posed for that cover without all the manipulation? Now in my case, I generally want comic proportions, not "real" proportions, but again, there are a set of conventions for that, which can easily be found on the web.
If want you specific proportions, there is a utility available that might be of help - measure metrics.
Very good points...and the image you posted of the measuring utility is a good example of how a character can be set up to look like a real person if you pay attention to the real dimensions, rather than the "out of the box" dimensions that accompany a V4 or M4 or whatever.
One thing I do is use reference photos for stuff like this. And everything else CG. You can deduce a lot of information about the character's dimensions, especially relative dimensions. As you mentioned, the relative torso vs. leg length can be fairly easily deduced from a photo. Just bring it into Photoshop and use the measure tool.
I'm always pushing for people to consider using reference photos, and this is just one reason. You can also learn about lighting, lens settings, anatomy, texturing, and a ton of other stuff. One of my favorite challenges is to take a photo and decide to reproduce it exactly. I'd encourage folks to give that a shot sometime. It can be fun, and very educational.
BTW, a lot of people focus on rendering technologies for "realism" in their renders. But in fact that is just a small part of making your work believable. It's all the other stuff that goes in to making your work believable. I've seen MANY photorealistic renders of unreal looking characters... :)
Agree that references of all types, including photos, are great. There is a long tradition of artists studying human anatomy, as you correctly point out with Leonardo's golden rule of limb length.
But I wouldn't take this line of reasoning too far.
- A render of a redhead can be realistic even though redheads make up a tiny fraction of the human population.
- Similarly hundreds of millions of women (out of 4 billion) are taller than 5'9", so V4 is not unrealistic.
- Michael Phelps' ratio of torso to legs are not unrealistic even though he differs from the median.
Bringing it back to the subject of figure photography and figure art, Betty Brosmer was a real person. Furthermore, she was more likely to be depicted than a random person from the same era. She certainly was not of median proportions.
http://www.bettybrosmer.com/
Edit to say Michael Phelps ratio of torso to legs is real even though it seems unreal.
And here is a link to the technology TED talk on the body types of elite athletes.
http://www.ted.com/talks/david_epstein_are_athletes_really_getting_faster_better_stronger