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Using M & V muscle maps and skeleton in animations

johranshadijohranshadi Posts: 142
in The Commons

My question is about the anatomy 4 pro bundle for Michael 4 and Victoria 4. What I want to do is animate Michael 4 performing an exercise, then after a few repetitions, I want to highlight the targeted muscle/muscles. I just want that specific muscle to be visible after about 10 frames, not the whole muscle map (which I know can be done by playing with the opacity slider). I couldn't find any straightforward way to do that and I really don't want to go through the long process of manually hiding muscles in the scene tab. Am I missing something or is that a dead end? 

Thanks in advance! 

Comments

  • wizwiz Posts: 1,100

    Easiest thing I can think of:

    1. Create an object shell, with negative displacement so it's invisible under the normal skin.
    2. Texture the object shell with the muscle map.
    3. Select just the region you want on the scene map for the normal skin.
    4. Reduce the transparency of just that region, revealing the muscle underneath.

    Fair warning, neither the muscle map nor the normal M4/V4 maps really have any sort of region mapping that corresponds to the individual muscles, and so if you select an upper arm, for example, you're going to get a kind of ragged cut away at the wrist and elbow. To really do what you want, you'd have to paint a bunch of trans maps, each highlighting one muscle group you want to highlight (paint on a layer above the muscle map) and then use that trans map on the main texture, not the muscle map, to fade it out appropriately. I've done this before for a medical app, and that's exactly what I ended up doing.

    Now, what did you want to know about skeletons?

  • johranshadijohranshadi Posts: 142

    Thanks for taking the time to reply wiz! You mentioned some new features that I didn't know about. I googled the object shells and they sound easy and straightforward. The problem I had with transparency is that I can't make one region transparent but it only works on a figure as a whole. I don't know if you can do that with object shells? The painting seems like a new area I have to figure out. I know that it is located on the left panel, along with a content library and renders, but I haven't used it before. 

    As for the skeletons, eventually I want to do the same with them, but highlighting an injury (resulting from bad posture for example). My project may also involve moving bones to simulate injury. I imagine that would be easier as I won't need to do any painting? 

    Thanks again! 

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