Saturday, April 02, 2011

a basic intro to IK spine type setups (IK spline/Ribbon)

Here are a couple of videos that start to outline a couple of different approaches to IK "spine" systems, how they work and what are the pros/cons of each. The two main things are the IK spline setup (video 1) and the ribbon spine (video 2). Again, no great detail (they're both a bit tedious to build), but enough to get you started in looking for more info.
BTW, the tutorials I mention in the videos are 1) the "divine spine" in vid 1 can be found at http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=102262&seqNum=4. In the second vid I mention 2) Aaron Holly's videos (http://www.fahrenheitdigital.com/dvds/rigging/feature-animation-rigging-dvd.php) which may not even be available any more (I've never actually seen this specific topic covered by him, though I've seen other stuff and he's awesome) and 3) Jose Antonio Martin Martin's tutorial on Creative Crash (formerly HighEnd3D) (http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/tutorials/character/c/ribbon-spine-rig). I never noticed the comments before now where everyone's referring to Aaron's videos. Funny (though if he's directly ripping Aaron's techniques, he should at least credit him, IMHO. Just saying).


Maya/Rigging: intro to IK-type spine setups part 1 from zeth willie on Vimeo.


Maya/Rigging: intro to IK-type spine setups part 2 from zeth willie on Vimeo.

scripting your "bind" joints into a Quick Select Set

As I mentioned in the videos in the previous post, here is the basic idea of how you'd create a Quick Select Set from your "_BIND_" joints. (thought I'd break it out into a separate post to make it easier to read) . . .
{
string $bind[] = `ls -type joint "*_BIND_*"`;

sets -text "gCharacterSet" -name BindJoints;

for ($obj in $bind) {
    sets -edit -forceElement BindJoints $obj;
    }
}

(it's MEL, btw)
The weird bit of that is the syntax for creating a QSS (sets -text "gCharacterSet" etc). Not sure what that's about . . .
You'll have to change stuff for your own setup (the name you're looking for), but otherwise it's pretty straightforward. It looks for joints, then within that selection, looks for the name you've got (in my case "_BIND_") and adds those to a QSS called BindJoints. I find the QSS a bit easier to use for this purpose than a regular set.
Now if I want a selection that isn't easily grab-able (like in the ribbon spine) I can just grab the QSS from the "Edit" --- "QuickSelectSets" menu and then grab my geo and off I go to binding-world. I'll usually end up adding some code to remove any joint that I don't end up wanting in the bind afterwards (though I try to name things with this in mind, so the end joints on toes, for example, WON'T get the "_BIND_" added to their name, as I don't need them bound.) I'll just add this code to the tail end of any rig I'm scripting (or as a stand alone chunk of code for a custom built rig) and the QSS will be there waiting for me every time I build the rig or want to bind/unbind. Definitely makes things faster to test things out in your rigs. Hope this helps!

Cleanly transferring UV's to a skinned model

Why does the transfer attributes node sometimes resist getting deleted on a rigged model? Doesn't it know resistance is futile?
I've had it happen many times that a UV set has to get transferred onto a skinned model via transfer attributes operation. And then refuses to go away. Which sucks cuz cleaner history is better. This a quick vid about why that happens and how to kill that history. Thanks to Christina Sidoti for pointing it out to me!

Edit: Oh yeah . . . Here's a script to help you do it faster! Download it HERE (rt-click, save). Put it in your scripts directory, start Maya (or type "rehash" in the MEL command line if it's already open). Select the obj with the new UV's, then the rigged object with the old UV's and type "zbw_cleanTransferUV". (catchy name, right?). It seems to work fine for anything I've tried it with. If you've already got some UV changing history (polyTweakUV or transfer UVs, etc) you can delete those, you're new UVs are coming straight from the source and any previous tweaks will get weird.

Carry on!


Maya/Rigging: Cleanly Transferring UVs to a Bound Rig from zeth willie on Vimeo.