Muscle Rigging - Week 3

We have been looking at adding muscle rigs to the meshes. It is not necessary to fully rig up the zombie rig with muscles, but I will be looking at adding a couple muscles to it. Especially to the stomach, so I can emphasise the stomach movements.
To practise, we were given a "Muscle Man" rig.

I took looked around online for some muscle diagrams.

This image is from http://anatomy.askthetrainer.com/ - a training and fitness website.

I chose this image for the simple fact it gives you both front and back diagrams. I also went and printed this out to keep on my wall next to the computer so I can see the muscle system with just the turn of my head! A nice tip for everyone.

The muscles are set up with a series of clicks from the MuscleStrand option, under CAT Objects.

Under the modify tab, there are options for editing the muscle. I have set the muscles to Bones and to allow Squash and Stretch. Squash and Stretch will allow the muscles to flex when they are linked to the CAT rig.

I have named the first muscle Pectoral01, as this will make it easy to keep track of what muscle is what should I need several muscles on the rig. It's a good habit to get in to. 

I placed the muscle over where I needed it to be, in this example, over the chest and leading to the arms/shoulders.

By relaxing the muscle with this setting, I can keep the rig inside the mesh and will allow an impressive flex. I then connected the muscle to the ribcage and the upper arm.

I keyframed some animation, the arm lowers and then raises right up, then back to the starting position. This screencap shows the muscle being stretched.

I also added a second muscle to work as the muscle between the shoulder and the neck, the Trapezoid. 

When the arm was raised too high, the mesh would crumple, like this. I couldn't correct it with weighting, so I lowered the arm in the animation. This sorted it out.

As I had done with the zombie mesh when skinning, I added the muscles to the bone list, then began to edit their weighting. I used the Paint Weighting tool for this as it is a high poly mesh.

This is a render of the muscle rig.

I will want to go back and alter some of the weighting and maybe even the location of the trap muscle slightly. I would also alter the animation slightly, making it more of a Lateral Raise. This would move the pectoral muscle slightly, and the trap much less (unless his form was off, in which case his trap would be being worked more than his lats. Bro, do you even lift?)

To do this, I would be using workout tip videos, like this one by Matty Fusaro who talks you through the yes and no's of Lateral Raises.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=HJG-gvG2N5E#t=177

I wanted to add the Bicep into the rig and have him flex his muscles in the final render.

Sadly, it destroyed the mesh.

It puts me in the mind of the cartoons, where a weak character flexes and his muscle drops down.

The final render with the weighting corrected and bicep removed.