cMuscle deformation system for Alias Maya 6.0/6.5
by Todd Widup
As a creature TD, I am always looking out for new and useful tools for things from rigging, to helping create a better deformation faster and easier, to simply utilities that save me from having to write an expression 1000 times (been there, done that..blasted tanks). I have been waiting to see what Michael Comet came up with when I heard he was developing a new muscle system last year. I can say now, that the wait was definitely worth it. cMuscle comes from Comet Digital, and is written by Michael Comet, a creature TD supervisor at DNA in Dallas, TX.
First off, lets start with installation. Installation is real easy, and is typical for most Maya plugins. Licensing is either node locked or floating, Both of which are relatively easy to get going with. The installer installs the plugin to your maya plugin directory, and also creates a cometdigital/cmuscle directory in your program files dir. Here, there are several tutorial files along with all the help files. Once cMuscle is added to Maya, it also creates a very HEAVY shelf, as there are scripts created for automating a lot of the features of cMuscle. Luckily, the icons are color coded for different functions.
Now that its installed, let us move onto the tutorials and documentation. First, the documentation does a great job of covering the basics of the GUI and a few additional tricks, such as setting up muscle on muscle connections (great for doing things like abs, and occasionally tails). There are 8 separate tutorials, and each one covers a different part of setting up a character with cMuscle. They start off with setting up the bones, and then takes you through skinning, adding skin slide, muscle controls, etc. The final couple deal with muscle jiggle, skin jiggle, and caching all the data out.
Check out these 2 videos showing with and without Jiggle:
Dragon No Jiggle
Dragon Jiggle
I have to say, at this point, having worked thru the tutorials, I am really impressed with cMuscle and all the tools that Comet Digital have included in the system. I know several other users of it and all seem to really like the workflow and features.
Now, to compare it to other systems out there. I have used several of them, owning a couple of the other commercial ones and having used some proprietary ones on various shows that I have worked on. I can honestly say that cMuscle performs better than some of the proprietary ones without a problem, and just seems like its more well thought out and implemented than the other commercial ones.
After finally getting some time to test it out on one of my own characters, I can give it a full thumbs up. Between a better visible system for painting weights, the ability to paint what parts of the skin will jiggle and what wont, what will slide and what wont, this is definitely the skinning solution I want to use from here on out. It does take a bit of getting use to, and some time to get accustomed to the workflow of laying out a skeleton and then converting all the joints to capsules, but it does run smoother, and the results are great. One of the nice things, is that Comet Digital has included a way to convert existing maya skin cluster rigs over to a cMuscle skin system. This is great as you don’t have to totally reskin an existing character to add muscles to it.
Buy it. It is without a doubt, the best commercial muscle system for Maya right now. Comet Digital has some great ideas for its future and its something I strongly recommend to anyone doing creature setup work, or those animators that are looking to as a little extra realism to their animations easily. Actually, the included shrinkwrap tool is great for modelers, as you can create a cylinder of skin, and then create some nurbs cylinders as muscles, and just shrink wrap the poly mesh around the nurbs, and then start connection that back into the main model.
So, yeah, go buy it, support the little guys that help to push Maya along.
