Hello people, ImAFutureGuitarHero here.
Welcome to Part 2 of my anthro tutorial, in which I attempt to show you how to put
these on your anthro character.
If you haven't already seen Part 1, do so by clicking the link
right here.
If you already have, let's begin.
Before we start, I want to mention that
over time, my method of setting up unguligrade legs has changed.
Originally it used to be that I would replace the entire leg from the hip down,
such as in this picture,
and I used the same approach for the Soup Store animation.
The downside with this is that often the legs look too thick for the rest of the body proportions.
The second method I tried was to replace the leg only past the knee,
which does work, but still does require a lot of post-processing to hide the clipping.
The method I'll go over in this video is where only the foot is replaced,
and the advantage to this method is that,
while it may still require some extra work to blend in with the rest of the leg,
it shouldn't be as bad as the other methods.
The big advantage, however, is that this method can be used with an IK rig,
so it can be animated even easier than the other methods.
With all that out of the way, let's begin.
Alright, continuing from where we left off in Part 1,
we have an anthro set up with the head and hair swapped and the tail added,
and our goal for this video is to replace the feet with the hooves from the pony model.
For this, we need to spawn in two instances of the pony model, because we'll be using one for each hoof.
We also need to remove the boots from the body model, as she'll be barefoot--
...
...Barefoot? Barehoof? Bare...
Whatever. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Barefoot in the finished result.
Right-click the model, go into "Set Body Groups", and then "LSock", and click "none".
Do the same for the "RSock".
Because of the way unguligrade legs work, they'll need to be rotated down a little bit as well,
so select both of the feet, then press Shift+E to enter world rotation mode,
and rotate the feet down approximately 45°, give or take.
Now we can start adding the hooves, and we'll start with the left foot.
Go to the leg controls for the pony model that you'll be using for the left foot,
and lock the "LeftLeg1" control to the "bip_foot_L" control on the body model.
And then use the Zero slider on "pos" to move it to the general position.
Do the same with "LeftLeg2", lock to "bip_foot_L" again, and using the Zero slider.
Next, you want to re-lock the "LeftLeg1" control, this time to "bip_knee_L";
this will make it better for moving around later on.
Now you lock the "Pelvis" bone to "bip_foot_L" and Zero.
Next, you want to add a scale control to "Pelvis" and scale it down to zero.
I also forgot to re-lock "Pelvis" to "bip_knee_L" before, so I'm doing that now,
as we need to move it further up to blend in to the leg better.
Now you can add scale controls to the "LeftLeg1" and "LeftLeg2" controls, and also to "bip_foot_L" on the body model.
Set "bip_foot_L" to 0.05, and then set "LeftLeg1" to 0.075, and then "LeftLeg2" to 0.13.
Next is the slightly annoying part, because you need to align the "LeftLeg1" and "LeftLeg2" bones
in a way that it covers the foot, but it doesn't show the foot when you rotate the "bip_foot_L" control.
Generally with "LeftLeg1", you want to move it up a bit
- the end of the jeans on this model is a good indicator of where to move it to -
then move it back a tiny bit and rotate it forward to cover the leg.
Check it over in other angles to try and eliminate as much of the clipping as possible.
For "LeftLeg2", you want to rotate it forward to cover the toes, and then move it down so it covers the ball of the foot.
You also want to rotate the pony model's "LeftFoot" control so that it becomes parallel to the floor;
and I also move it up a bit so that the hoof is shorter, mainly just for better proportions and look.
Now you should test the rotation of the foot, and in this case the ball of the foot is clipping through the back of the hoof when it's rotated,
so it still needs to be moved down and back a bit more.
So when it doesn't show any of the foot when you're rotating it, you can move on to the right foot,
going through basically the same procedure, and comparing with the left foot.
Basically, the majority of this process is trial and error with how to align the hooves over the feet.
However, I will mention a set of numbers a little later that you can type in for the position and rotation of the "Leg1", "Leg2" and "Pelvis" bones
that I've found seem to work very well in hiding the clipping.
What I'm doing here is just posing the rest of the body and legs to make her stance look a bit more fitting for the unguligrade legs.
Generally, the knees are bent forward a little bit, as is the upper body.
If we add a rig to the body model, we can see that the unguligrade legs respond to the rig like you'd expect them to,
and because the hoof is locked to the "bip_foot" controls, manipulating "bip_foot" affects the hoof as well.
Meaning, really, the only thing that would need to be controlled from the pony models themselves are the ends of the hooves.
At this point I'll show you the numbers that I've found work well for the position and rotation values of the hooves.
For "LeftLeg1", pos should be set to 0.4, 13.75, and 2,
and then rot should be set to 90, 65, and -90.
Then for "LeftLeg2", pos should be set to 0, 0, and 2.5,
and rot should be set to 90, -45, and -90.
The "Pelvis" pos values should be set to 0, 14, and 1.4,
and the rot values don't actually matter since it's scaled down to zero, rot doesn't take any effect there.
"RightLeg1" and "RightLeg2" have the same numbers as LeftLegs,
but for the pos, the first number is inverted, and for rot, all three numbers are inverted.
Depending on how you've set the legs up, comparing the plantigrade version to unguligrade should show that
not much height difference has been made between the two.
Now I did mention before that the finished model will be barehooved/barefoot/bare-whateveryou'dliketocallit,
but there is a way to put the boots on the unguligrade legs;
To make it work and look right is another thing, though.
AeridicCore made a set of EQG outfits for the pony models, which include the boots,
and so what we can do is lock the boots from this model to the models used for the hooves,
and then sizing down the "Pelvis" bone to hide the rest of the dress.
One might think this works in theory,
but if we do so, we can see that there is a gap between the top of the boots, and the bottom of the pantlegs.
It's because of this gap that it looks weird, at least to me,
I don't know if you think the same, but at least to me it looks weird,
because on the default Equestria Girls model with the plantigrade legs,
there's no gap there. The jeans go all the way down into the boot.
Instead of trying to manoeuvre the boots up to cover that gap, because it's nigh impossible,
we can give the illusion of the boots going up further than they do by covering that gap up.
The model for Wallflower Blush, also made by Sindroom, has jeans that have loose cuffs on them,
unlike with the skinny jeans on Sunset's model.
We can utilize these jeans to cover up that gap above the boots.
To do this, we need to lock the Wallflower model to the Sunset model,
using the Zero slider on all the bones and flexes and such,
and because we don't need anything above the legs, we can unlock everything above the "Pelvis" bone,
and then size down the "Pelvis" bone to zero.
Turn off the shoes on the Wallflower model bodygroups, because they'll most likely clip through the legs,
and then add override materials to the model.
Go into materials and look for "jeance", it'll be misspelt with a "ce".
Right-click, "Add Attribute" and click "string", and type "$basetexture".
Copy the directory next to "mtlName" and paste it into the "$basetexture" line,
replacing "wallflowerblush" with "sunsetshimmer", all one word.
That'll give the jeans the same texture as what's used on Sunset's model.
Other than making the boots look more fitting with an unguligrade anthro setup,
it just generally looks better overall, because it hides any clipping that the hoof makes with the original skinny jeans.
And with that, the anthro is fully set up, including unguligrade legs.
Now this video is only about 6 minutes, 7 minutes, however long it is,
but it took me 20 minutes in real time to get to this point.
However, it is obviously much easier and quicker to do it if you know the numbers for the pos and rot values,
so I'll also put those in the description below.
I want to thank all of you for watching this video, and if this is your first video of mine,
click the link here to have a look at my other videos.
Until the next one, have a good one.