I downloaded Kinboat's paperdoll for Bryce and also some props. I fitted a shirt to the figure but then when I go to move the arms, the shirt looks like someone ripped the shoulder off. Is there a trick to making arm and leg movements without distorting clothing? :confused:

Thanks for any help.

Here are before and after pictures to show what I'm talking about:

http://img463.imageshack.us/img463/324/paperdollbeforeel3.jpg

http://img463.imageshack.us/img463/948/paperdollafterlt2.jpg

General comment:
First off, Posing PDM in Bryce is a boooger. Posing any human(oid) character in Bryce is a booger. It can be done. I have done it. Hikaro Takayama and Wyrmshadow has done it (he probably has done the best job of humans in bryce).

Appearance
Use smoothing to improve the look slightly. This will give a look nearly identical to the Poser look.

Rigging
use primitives as joints (I like to call them animation controllers, but they are a crude bone'ing/rigging system for Bryce). This will improve your ability to pose him, and it will also serve as a smoothing prop to go at the seams. Do this as follows:
In a otherwise completely empty scene (not even a stray box, or a ground plane, EMPTY)
at every joint add a small sphere. The size of the sphere should more or less match the the surounding mesh. Or be small enough to be completely hidden Hidden would be hip, abs, etc.. while same size would be shoulder, elbows, knees, ankles.
The color of these should match their location. In other words you must color the shoulder the same color as his shirt. His wrist will most certainly be skin. and so on.. Every joint.
This rigging is accomplished as follows.
place all the contollers/bones. Name them well (elbowR kneeL neckBone headBone hipBone Finger1RU finger1RL (each finger has two joints upper and lower)... use a naming convention that makes sense to you.
Once all the animation controllers are in place, you go to every joint and ungroup it. You can do this either globally (ungroup everything) or joint by joint.
You begin at the extremities and work in. So fingers, toes and nose :p
Take the finger tip parent it to the finger joint. parent the finger joint to the knuckle joint parent the knuckle joint to the hand. Do the same to the other finger(s) (amount of fingers varies with model used). Hand is parented to the wristjoint, wrist joint to the forearm, forearm to the elbowjoint, elbow joint to the bicep/upperarm, upper arm to the shoulder joint, should joint to the chest, check the abs, (or ab joint if you want to bend him there) all the way to the hip joint. The hip joint must be the base of the figure.
Once all the limbs are rigged test it. Select the hip and move it up exactly 20 units.
What got left behind? Go back and fix it.

Model correction
You may have to add some primitives in some areas to smooth out issues. For example, make a cylinder with a sphere on top of it. and another similar shape to make a lower sleeve.. and group them all. and squish it sideways to fix an upper arm or a pair of shorts.... parent just add ones to the appropriate place. Remember humans are tiny at civ scale. Humans used in vehicles are microscopic. Look at the tank commander in my JS-3m tank. Very hard to see him burning to death unless you look really really close. Most of the details are lost due to scale. You can use this in deciding what to fix and so on. Tearing is important to fix, because the background color will poke through. If it results in a very small bulge in his shoulder, that is probably not so important if he is going on a vehicle.

I assume this is a driver for your bulldozer? Or are you gonna try making infantry with Bryce? A bad idea for your 2nd full unit... make some regular stuff first. The bulldozer was a good idea. Get something fully animated, do the rigging, and so on... Going straight from there to a human in Bryce might be a little frustrating. It will require a lot of TLC from you to keep him from looking robotic.

Here is an example of the arm I was talking about.
http://img53.imageshack.us/img53/7844/examplesx2.jpg
It is a cylinder topped with a sphere. Group, make larger in x an z by 1. Grab the top and pull down. Add a bicep sphere.... make it longer and thinner. Then take and group everything there, and make it slightly smaller on X axis. Add a should smoothing sphere for the should joint to look good as it moves around (which is round and not flattened, just slightly offset).
modeling time.... 1 minute.

I've made a basic rigging, and I can post it if you want, it's done much the way Bjorn mentions so, but it's not 100% neat. It works at civ scale though.

I've made a basic rigging, and I can post it if you want, it's done much the way Bjorn mentions so, but it's not 100% neat. It works at civ scale though.

I think there should be a thread on making / rigging and using humans in Bryce. I think such a thread should have a rigged PDM (or equivalent). It comes up from time to time.

Unless you're a glutton for punishment, I highly suggest you do NOT use bryce for human animation. I was loath to even try it for years. As a beginner, it's basically going to be like Sysiphus and his boulder, a real uphill battle.

You have to animate it just like a marionette. YOU are in charge of all movements.. not like in Poser where you can get some premade poses and kinetics.

I started off trying to make a driver for my bulldozer. At that small a scale I'm not too worried about the little things, however, after I started downloading some of the pre-made props in the download database, I got sort of carried away and decided to try to make a full scale soldier.

I did figure out the basic mechanics of it a couple days ago. I gouped body parts and clothing and linked them to joints. I put little spheres where the joints were and I'm now trying to fashion a shoulder replacement out of the knee joint of a pair of pants I downloaded--so that when I extend the shoulder the "knee joint" will fill in the gaps.

Wyrmshadow is probably right, I think it can be done, however, it's going to take an enormous amount of effort to get a decent animation out of it. :(

Still, it's been a lot of entertainment working on him. :)