Rig using script

Rigging
1

So I’m working on a script, in PyMEL, that will create an auto rig as practice to learn PyMEL and the basic of Maya and 3D (Graduated a programmer, so I’m basically dumb when it comes to Maya). Right now I have joints being created, with a pelvic as the root, and it all the way down to the tow_end.

I realize every rig will be shaped slightly different depending on the model that the rig will be skinned to (I think skinned is the correct term :?:);

So here is my question: Is a tool like this not useful unless it actually forms/shapes to model. I’m designing this in a sense that the artist can just move joints to make the rig fit correctly withing the mesh.

Of course the finished tool will hopefully already have point and orient constraints.

Thanks for your help.

2

Most auto-rig scripts/tools I have seen have some sort of system that you use to set the joints placement through the use of locators/pieces of geometry. Then you use the locators to actually draw the joints and build the rig.

3

That’s what I figured. I think I’ll go about doing it my way for now since I’m completely new to PyMEL and 3D stuff. Once I get more comfortable I’ll research how to look at geometry to create “locators”.

Thanks for the piece of info.

4

for the ones I’ve written, I have a “joint mover” tool I wrote that uses our base skeleton and allows me to quickly re-position the joints on a new mesh.
The reason I don’t use the locator thing is because the mesh still needs to be skin weighted and once the bones are in place, the autoRig will build from that. I do use some simple locators to denote the height of the character so I can work out a scale factor for determining how to scale the controls so that a tiny character doesn’t have huge controls, or a huge character doesn’t have tiny controls. For example, our standard height for Gears is 162 units(who knows why haha) and from there I compare distance between locators and work out a scale factor from there.

5

Hey Jeremy, so you have a base skeleton that is positioned inside the model, and then you rig it using the script?

6

kinda. this might help:

http://vimeo.com/11152038 (password = techArt)

i wrote this tool to bring in our base skeleton, but be able to position it quickly and easily for other meshes. Once I’m done, it creates the “final” joints based on that information. and then I can add it to the autoRig too. (seen on my reel on vimeo) which will just build on top of that.

7

That’s sweet man. I wanna figure out how you replaces the bones with boxes and lines.

Can you explain to me what changing the size of a bone would do? (I’m guessing when you changed the size of a box it is changing the size of the bone)

8

What IreadI really liked it.Thank you foryour information!