Hey everyone,
Most of us know about Mixamo and how they do auto-rigging for any avatar-based model. (Go to www.mixamo.com if you don’t know it)
But is this something they can only do?
Has anyone found an OpenSource solution? Regardless if it runs on a server or the client’s computer.
most of their models are built using a common skeleton hierarchy.
When you load an animation separately, it already contains the correct references for the skeleton.
Sharing Animation Clips - Three.js Tutorials (sbcode.net)
I’m not wondering how to use their models, rather than use any avatar model and auto-generate the weights.
In Mixamo you can upload your own avatar and it’ll automatically calculate the vertices weights related to every bone of the skeleton.
are you saying that you can just go into blender, create some random model, upload it to mixamo and it just works?
Yes, that’s how Mixamo works. (Not exactly a random model, it should be humanoid shape)
I found this RigNet: Neural Rigging for Articulated Characters but it’s too complex to have it as a solution for what I need. Looks like a headache to implement a server with this setup.
Perhaps it uses some kind of pose estimation.
Sounds complicated to build, but not impossible.
There are lots of projects on GitHub about it
pose-estimation · GitHub Topics
I also found these guys using RigNet: 3dconvert.me — 2D image to 3D avatar creation | by Alex Ionkov | Medium
To add to this discussion:
Mixamo has some kind of algorithm to auto-rig models, however it’s not completely automatic.
It requires:
So we know that it’s possible, but at least this information is required for it to work. Then it re-purposes animations users have submitted that match the typical generated skeletal rig.
Chris
Yes, in Mixamo you need to place these points over a 2D image of the avatar, this is something I wouldn’t mind adding as an UI to generate the weights/skeleton automatically.
Try your auto rigged mixamo avatar at ThreeJS #Threeverse avatar load and play. This way you can see right away your avatar animate and move around ThreeJs scene
Mixamo’s uses a machine learning solution for auto-rigging.
I haven’t seen anything like it for threejs in the wild, though you could possibly implement something via a node back-end + blender, and some python scripting.
It’s a complex topic. Likely not something you could whack out in an afternoon.
It’s the kind of thing that sounds easy but is actually an entire sub discipline of a “technical artist”.
There are people that are employed to do rigging almost exclusively, since doing it well is an actual art in itself.
https://www.google.com/search?q=hiring+animation+rigger
I highly recommend going through a youtube tutorial for rigging a simple humanoid, just to get an idea of how complex the process can get. Auto-rigging is often just the starting point of the whole process.
Weight painting is hard, and then it’s one thing to weight paint a body, but then you also have to do it for clothing/cloth/hair etc.
