Hi all, there are many requests for a version working with the latest blender 2.57. I did update the scripts, but i did not have time for intense testing as i am busy working on another project. Here is the download-link: Norman for Blender 2.57
The spring constraint can be used to get wobbly/bouncy effects on bone chains such as antennas etc. The target bone (the one carrying the constraint) copies the transforms of the source bone and adds the spring effect to it. It also uses a buffer that allows skipping and backwards scrubbing while maintaining consistency, and as the buffer is saved along with the blender file, it should work on a renderfarm too (however i did not actually test that).
There is a windows build for testing available for download here: http://graphicall.org/builds/builds/showbuild.php?action=show&id=1698
An example blend-file: http://ivogrigull.com/blender25/spring_demo.blend
Link to the patch in the tracker: http://projects.blender.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=26825&group_id=9&atid=127
One issue is interactivity though. It is not possible to pose/animate a chain predictably while the constraint is active, because the buffers of the chain’s spring constraints would need to be updated on the fly. I think this goes beyond my coding abilities and understanding of the animation system code. And i gues it would be relatively slow too. Nevertheless i believe it is a great help for animators and certainly nice to have, even if he needs to enable/disable in order to edit it. I suggest to use a python driver expression to control all bones’ constraints at once to ease the pain. In the current state it needs to be considered as a post effect.
Character Animation in Blender 2.5 with the Norman Rig
I worked some more on the Norman Rig and made a video manual, covering Blender 2.5 usage. If you are an animator and want to give Blender 2.5 a try, then this is for you!
Go to the download section and try it, please! It is all free 
If you want to try and play with the rig, go ahead and download it
I did put more skinning work into the fingers afterwards and skinned the eyeballs. Facials still need to be added, but it has to wait until after christmas. Also the controllers sizes still would need to adjusted a bit more, i know. Hope you like it anyway Merry christmas!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
It is a modifier that reads mdd and pc2 meshcache format files. At each scene update it opens the file, reads the current frame and closes the file. So you will see a live update whenever the file changes ( like when you re-export your character animation from 3ds max or maya for example). This way it also uses little memory, but keeps your hard-drive busy too. It still runs faster than realtime on my computer, to my surprise. You can re-time the animation with an f-curve and re-export it to a new cache. It is nice for making it slow motion.
Also supports anisculpting on your cache.
Thanks to krupa and pepeland for their donations and support! This feature is already in the blender patch tracker: Link
Forum thread with more details on the Blender Artists Forum : Link
A quick and easy way to add bounciness/overlap to your bone chains or objects. Note that it is time destructive, meaning you will get random results when scrubbing backwards. You can easily bake the rotation though as shown in the video however. There are animateable parameters to fine tune the behavior as well.
The surface constraint lets you silde an object on a surface using uv values. Currently it does not use nurbs but a given polygonal rectangle consisting of only quads. Free transform on the surface is yet to be implemented. Example uses would be for facials rigs or preventing a button from a coat to distort too much (as shown in the video).
Hi all. In this blog i will show my Blender rigging R&D progress and be highlighting existing features / tricks. Probably also some intros about how to get started with animating in blender in terms of using the program. The videos are in fullscreen, you can increase the resolution in the bottom right of the youtube player. Hope you like it
