"Rapid Rig: Modular" - Procedural Auto Rig 2.4.8 for Maya (maya script)

Comments on this feature request:

• Chirkez said over 10 years ago:

  Hi, I agree with alfsici, Re-Orienting tool would be nice thing to have. I'm having problem with pair arms and pair legs. I'm used to animate when Left and Right rotation values are the same, that gets my pose symmetrical. With RRM 1.2.2 I have to have 1 and -1 rotation value to get that symmetry. cheers
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• alfsici said over 10 years ago:

  I tought about this a bit more , sometimes you want certain type of controls to be "oriented " into a very specific axis , especially in non bipedal creatures. A tool like this could make things very procedural especially if it is scriptable, for example would be an awesome thing to finalize a rig after being created . Something like SetCtrlOffs ( ctrlName , worldspace coordinates ) ; making a list of controls that needs reorienting ,then execute it ... 1. capture the inputs and outputs objects and save out their world space positions 2. set the Input object top group (the one that you want to reorient) to the worldspace coords that you need (or either based on another object world space for example) 3. once you are happy with it, you apply world space coordinates that you previously saved to the output objects being driven by such control and then you update their ConstraintOffset. the way the tool could work is something i need to experiment a bit more especially not knowing exactly all the modules structure ,so i leave this to Dusting to say . Maybe there is a better way, but this does not require any Disconnection/Reconnecting of nodes and no matrices interpolations .. -a
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• Dustin Nelson said over 10 years ago:

  Hi alfsici, Sorry for the late reply, I just got back from holidays and am now catching up on emails. I think trying to come up with a way of disconnecting everything to adjust the orientations and then reconnecting it all will be a massive undertaking. There are so many special cases for controls where some things are driven by constraints, nodes, connections and SDK's and many of the connections are dependant on how these controls are oriented. Especially when it comes to joint scaling, IK/FK matching, etc. And then there is the problem with saving animation data that may have already been applied to the rig and being able to convert that to the new local space. One thing I have been considering is an extra layer of gimbal lock controls which would by default be hidden. These would influence the existing controls and could be oriented independently on rig creation. I think this would gave a best of both worlds, as a lot of animators have asked for this. I don't have a timeline for this, because it would be a large amount of work and there are more features that I think have more value that are simpler. I would also like to start tackling a face setup soon. @Chirkez, You can use the Modular Selector script to mirror your controls. Rapid Rig Advanced is set up with auto mirroring but I decided to not use that approach for Rapid Rig Modular because there is a lot of translation that wouldn't mirror properly and this way is much easier to maintain and update. -Dustin
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• alfsici said over 10 years ago:

  Hi Dustin, thanks for the reply, i have only one thing to say , "I just cant wait!..!". I think in the meantime we could do it manually i guess, the extra layer of controls is something that would be very useful(is something i constantly use while animating) , also maybe an extra layer of "offsetting groups " would be ideal, so the extra controls are going to be at "zero" as well. Great ideas Dustin, looking forward to the future :), is the facial setup going to be integrated into the modular rig ?. -a
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• Dustin Nelson said over 8 years ago:

  Version 2.o has the ability to set a rest pose for your controls. You orient the control to how you would like and press "Record Rest Pose". The controls will now have their default values at that position/rotation.
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• alfsici said over 8 years ago:

  Hi Dustin, thanks for the update! I was having a look at the Record Rest pose, altho i might be using it wrong, i simply created a rig using the preset moduel ( quadruped), then i was trying to re orient my pelvis control to be at an angle, altho by moving it, it also moves the spine, then if i record that pose, it does go in rest-pose, altho having the rig broken .. which is not quite what i wanted to do. Is there a way to create customized orientations for specific controls? so that when i create the actual rig,the control is oriented to my animation needs while the rig stays as its created pointing in the right orientation ? (basically without manually deleting the constraint hierarchy adding offset groups and re doing it..) Less priority alto It would also be useful if i could point the whole rig X forward instead of z ?(the main is locked currently) cheers -a
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• alfsici said over 8 years ago:

  Basically, sometimes, for animation need we would like a specific control to have a specific orientation, without affecting the shaped joints/module/rig underneath . Hope it makes sense. cheers -a
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• Dustin Nelson said over 8 years ago:

  In that case, you will want to orient the Root (pelvis) the way you want it to be in the proxy stage, before generating the final rig. Adjusting the rotations in the way you suggest after the rig is built is extremely complicated, unfortunately. To do that would require disconnecting anything and everything that is affected by that control, and then rebuilding all the connections, and in some cases, rebuilding nodes like IkHandles, constraints, locators, groups, etc. There are just too many control types and connections to make something like that possible.
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• alfsici said over 8 years ago:

  Hi Dustin, i find that sometimes changing orientation in proxy stage, can be a little tricky due to the way some proxy are oriented while being created , i have to give it a better try on the latest version , altho i had few issues in the past( spine flipping because of some controls where oriented at 45degrees, and the autorigging script didn't like it much..) Anyways, my suggestion was something quite simple in principle, i made a quick video today, to explain the concept , if you have time, you can find it here . https://youtu.be/YRDoLiFpGII This can be scripted and automatized, and also those offset values, can be saved together with the rig, on a more complex system we use this after creation of the rig so that any modification can be created in a modular way after any rebuilt(if we need to), since many different cretures require specific orientation in some of the controls, which are "at times" different from how the joints/rig are. Hope it makes sense. -a
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• Dustin Nelson said over 8 years ago:

  This system can work in some cases in the rig, but there are a lot of systems where this would break functionality like mirroring poses, Ik/Fk matching, custom attributes, scaling relying on control orientations, etc as well as the myriad of other connections that are pumped in and out of the controls to have the systems working properly. It also means an overhaul of a lot of code to support this on every control, and adding an additional transform for every control. At this point, the biggest complaint I get about the tools is performance, so I am trying to optimise and strip out unnecessary or rarely used features. Adding more nodes is what I am trying to avoid at this point. Additionally, it would break backwards compatibility with the rig rebuilding for storing shapes which is based on full path names This is not something that has never been asked for before, so it is a low priority at this point. I appreciate that it is something you would like, but I would like to avoid it for now. I will keep it in my backlog and if I have more requests for it, and I can get the speed of the rig up, I will revisit it. Hopefully my reasoning makes sense.
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