Fullbody demo video is up... I had hip tracker problems for a second while on my back, and then worse ones while trying to get on all fours at the end... that's my tracking squirreling out, not any failure of the rig. My playspace has significant limitations ;_; But, haha, yeah--these work best when worn at standing height. x)
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Coming soon: improved documentation (documentation consists currently of a combo of this Google Doc and atting me for help on twitter @manyblights) and presets (simple example models with minor adjustments to their constraint values)!
Planned presets:
- Horse
- MLP
- Wolf COMPLETE! Set up for maximum ease of use, but read its readme.
- DragonBut, for now:
The AnyTaur!
AnyTaurs are the closed species that can look like absolutely AnyThing! No, okay, I'm joking. They're a wearable animation rig base for translating Humanoid animation (and full-body tracking, including lying down and rolling all the way over!) onto four-or-more-legged "nonhumanoid" avatars, not their own species. And they can really only look like things whose legs move straight forward and back (the mammalian bauplan is generally fine; Final IK would be a better fit for crabs, accurate crocodilians, etc.)
Now in V.4 flavor - a bunch of things that were broken in V.3 have been fixed!
Past versions remain up in case I catastrophically break new things.
Already have a taur or quad model? The Avatar Creator Kit is and will always be FREE+*!
There are two parts to making your preexisting 4-legged avatar or 4-legged 3D model into an AnyTaur: fitting it to the Armature (and the Armature to it) in Blender, and then using Pumkin's Avatar Tools to copy all sorts of things from a special Deactivated Anytaur over onto your new one (well, and then you do have to open up the avatar's Hierarchy and press the Activate button on each copied constraint). (It will be staggeringly obvious if you've missed any!)
Anyway, an AnyTaur_Base.blend file and AnyTaur.v4.unitypackage (Pumkin's Avatar Tools included, for the copy step) are both provided here. There are various fiddly little considerations to take into account when working with this base; while you might get lucky just doing whatever, and you'll certainly get, uh, something, it is highly recommended that you read the Google Doc first and/or talk to me.
*The "+" stands for me doing it for you. I really enjoy porting these to see how they turn out. If you've got a WEIGHT PAINTED, NOT MMD (so, absolutely not .pmd or .pmx) model, there's a chance I will simply do it for you--especially if you've tried to do it yourself. DO NOT "TRY HARD" TO DO IT YOURSELF--if you have even minimal Blender skills already, you should not need to try HARD. If you're trying hard, you're probably doing something suuuuuper incorrectly, so contact me for help sooner rather than after hours or days of frustration!!!
Like what I do?
If you wish neither to read nor to talk to me want to tip me for the ~7 months and change it took to figure this method out (and tidy it up for use by others), calibrated and finalized double-gryphon AnyTaurs are available for $40 USD!
They sport:
3 material slots (eagle wings-and-quadbody, lion forelegs, anthro lion body)
Backwards compatibility with gum.co/kIFUB gryphon textures (needs minor revision between lion shoulderblades and around "seams")
CATS-generated speaking visemes + four facial expressions
Basic MMD visemes for dance world lipsync & expressivity
Full AnyTaur feathered wing rigging--yes, your hands are the wings!
Flight collider!
Dynamic-Bones-driven sit
Retractile claws (double openhands to extend, double fists to retract)
24 Mixamo dances
L/R forefoot pickup on L/R rockout gesture. :3
VRLabs' Particle Driver-driven "step on swivel" action in the hind feet to help them ice skate less when you twirl or turn (see video).
NEW! VRLabs' Particle Driver-driven AUTOMATIC GAIT TOGGLE! Hind legs now make their own decisions (you can still override them manually! ...they spend a lot of time same-side in dances, but it's worth it for the moments they get a chance to go opposite-side.)
Modified version of Splinks' Fixed Chair controller for the avatar station on their backs + broadly compatible custom ride pose!Also included is a special, wingless, extra-less (no sit, no flight collider, no step-behind-on-swivel), EXCELLENT-performance base, atlased down to one material (plus eyeball glow emission) and with its own adjusted expression menus and FX layer. It's also got its own MUCH SIMPLER .blend file, and the 0.2-scale .fbx you can export from it is also hot-swappable with its corresponding .fbx in the Unity project! AFAIK Quest users still aren't permitted rotation constraints, but, as soon as that changes... this Excellent base, and any taurs made with it, will be ready.
Video credits:
recorded in "iY MMD World 1.1a"
Song: Hibikase
Music Artist: Giga & Reol
Dance motion: Awoomachine
Camera motion: Ayuchan513
The constraints that run these AnyTaurs are FRAMERATE-DRIVEN, especially the Damping Rotation Constraint that keeps your body behind you properly in worldspace. If your computer struggles to run VRChat, your AnyTaur may struggle to keep up with you when you turn too fast (especially in MMD worlds). But even on the worst hardware, you should still get tolerable results if you take care to stay facing forward/not spin around much (which, if your FPS are THAT dismal, you're probably doing already).