Looking for rig + pose lib recommendation

Rigging
1

Hi,

I’m looking for suggestion on good free biped auto riggers and pose lib tools for Maya.

Poselib should support pose mirroring (on a rig/not just on a joint hierarchy). Also pose matching by limb, similar to MotionBuilder & the new match clip function in Trax.

Auto rig should support most of the features that are standard now a days (fk/ik arm/legs, space switching, fk/ik stretchy back and so on) and must be decently fast.

Both should be “open/generic” so they work an array of other tools/assets and not just within a very specific system.

Also something that’s coded well, so that we may debug, change and extend. Ideally in Python or even with PyMel.

Thanks for reading!

(Also posted on CG talk
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=88&t=1068732)

2

“Free”, you say? What you describe is the job of the character TD and I’m pretty sure that costs money.

3

I’m with CGJedi here.
From your website it looks like this would be something that you could far more easily get all the functionality, that it sounds like you’re looking for, by scripting it yourself.

4

@cgjedi

No no, I am one (A character TD, not an Auto Rigger) and I’ve already build my share of Auto rigs/Rigging systems :slight_smile: Alas I don’t own any of them, they are property of the companies I worked at at the time… Also I feel that once you’ve built a few, the appeal or re-inventing the wheel every time you go to a new shop diminishes. Besides realistic game rigs are more or less to the same recipy no? Mostly though I just think I can spend my time better at this point, like facial setup and pipeline. And it might mean the difference between moving character and animation into Maya, or staying in Max/MotionBuilder… A no brainer really :slight_smile:

5

Yeah I hear you Sune, and this is something I have been talking with the RD crew again lately.

There are a few systems out there but one that might be the closest jumping off point for you would be to look at. Not a perfect solution out there but starting with the most complete to the most work or not open.

and of course the one I think has the most promise but hasn’t seen an update in a while is GEAR
http://jeremiepasserin.com/gear/

For something that you might want to review if you haven’t is http://red9-consultancy.blogspot.com/ the latest pack allows for meta connections, has support for pose/animation transfer, library etc.

I also think that the CG Monks are working on some new tools and have hinted at working on a custom rigging solution http://cgmonks.com/

And there is always the zooTools that have started to be ported to python that could be extended adjusted as needed for your own situations,

Not opensource that I am aware, but if you haven’t seen the work on Ultimate Rig from Neo Reel you might be interested in talking with Marc-André Guindon about it since it is designed for mocap work and he knows what he is doing in that area. MoClip Help

The problem is that almost none of this stuff takes full advantage of the newer systems in Maya, HIK, Layers, ATOM etc, some have updated parts or are not entirely moved to python etc.

If I had to do this from scratch and it was a mixed mocap situation in 2013, I would lean heavy on the systems in place for HIK and ATOM, they have an auto skeleton builder, the character GUI is customizable now, the animation tools are more robust etc… and as much as I have been beyond frustrated with how badly done the 2013 releases were from Autodesk, the Idea of having something so close to working and just throwing it out to build it back up is not to be taken lightly.

Animation layers + red9 tools + HIK and mobu interop should be enough for 98% of uses. Just something to think about… and you can always layer over the top of HIK some custom controls and systems and still use Trax if you need the clip matching.

Good luck,
Brad

6

Thanks for the plug Brad. This is something that to be honest has been discussed at many a Tech beer session, an open source Maya pipeline to cover all. Unfortunately in the real world of production it’s really tough to nail now a pipeline from open source stuff as each implementation might have a different method of processing rig data. One of the reasons I’ve jumped to MetaData is that it means it’s rig independent so you can hook any rig to it and the systems all run off that. It also makes coding a doddle as lots of the calls for finding stuff are just via autocompletion. Now you can still run everything without, there’s a really detailed filter that I use to ID RigControllers in a hierarchy and to be honest that’s half the battle, knowledge, once you’ve found a stable method to ID your controllers the rest is relatively easy.

As for tools, well the poseSaver went in the last public release and there’s plans to extend the support for that. I’ve also just added full system Mirroring for Pose and Animation but then you’ve got the latest build so dig into it :wink: The MetaData at the moment is a code only implementation, I’ve left it wide open for people to dig into but put enough hooks in there for all the rest of the tools to run off it.

As for Maya internal systems, HIK is a strong contester and definitely worth spending time looking into. ATOM again, is something that’s worth checking out, I’ve been wondering about wrapping that into an animation library tool in future releases. One thing I would say with HIK is that for tools it does need careful handling as there’s so many callbacks running. I’ve wrapped all the calls in the pack with a HIKContext manager that deals with, and manages these callbacks so that the tools function correctly. Honestly, you can’t just drop a pose on HIK, you have to turn off the hikmanip callbacks first then reset afterwards, you also have to manage the keyingGroups!

But, I do strongly believe in not re-inventing the wheel, we’ve all built code rigs, all written poseSavers and all the rest of the systems that goes with them. One of the reasons for doing the Red9 Pack and making it OpenSource is so that others could build on it and I’m always looking for feedback. It’s hard being generic for all without forcing people to go down a specific route, but it’s fun trying!

enjoy

Red

7

Kees needs to re-implement something like PuppetShop into Maya. Open, flexible rigging systems can be done, and Kees did it, in 3ds Max of all places. And a decent coder could extend it however she wanted. I hope when EVE goes back to characters we’ll have a good existing rigging system to work with :slight_smile: