Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Space Switching and Space Matching

I created a couple of new videos to talk about space switching and space matching. I think they're pretty self-explanatory, just going over the basics of what they are and some ways to set them up. Nothing too crazy, though the space matching one is a fair amount of python scripting (though again, nothing terribly hard if you're already using python).

But if you're into the more complicated bits, here are some links to info about them:
Charles Looker - http://charleslooker.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/multi-directional-constraints/
Hamish McKenzie - http://www.macaronikazoo.com/?page_id=413 (very illustrative, but be warned, some of his matrix math stuff used his own scripts to deal with the matrices, so it can be a bit confusing if you try to do it without installing his scripts first. But the principles are the same, I just use the API to do the matrix-y bits, which can be hella confusing in it's own right)
TD Matt - http://td-matt.blogspot.com/2010/12/broken-hierarchy-rig-and-space.html

Oh yeah, and the vids by Jeremy Ernst are here: https://vimeo.com/jernst. Good stuff!
And I'll say it just so you don't have to. . . My god am I long winded! Not sure how explaining space switching could possibly take that long. But what can you do? :)

Maya/Rigging: The basics of space switching from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Maya/Rigging: Space Matching from zeth willie on Vimeo.

9 comments:

  1. Man i love your tutorials , they are sooo much informative , and love the way you explain in drawing feels like virtual class room :D Thank you very much again!

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  2. Hey Zeth,
    Does the group nodes follow and attach have matching orientations to the jnts? So if your rigging an arm, the attach grp would have pivot and orients matched to the clavicle joint and the follow grp would have pivots and orients match to the shoulder joint to which that joint hierarchy is parented to.

    Cheers

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    1. Stephen-
      No I don't worry about that too much. You can run into issues with constraints (especially if you have multiple constraints) if the transforms aren't lined up. But if you have one parent constraint, say, it shouldn't be an issue. I just line em up out of habit. Should work fine without that step.

      Z

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  3. Zeth,
    Thanks for your time to reply.
    I think you have answered my following question. Why do you use constraints on each target (world,root and head) and not use a single constraint for all target Grps. For example your head follow grp could be constrained to targets root grp, world grp and neck grp all on one constraint node.

    Thanks

    -Steve

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    Replies
    1. Hmm. that's pretty much what I'm doing no? If you apply the same kind of constraint to multiple targets, it doesn't create new constraints, it just adds the target into the existing constraint as new attributes under the constraint (though usually I just select all the constrainers, then the constainee and apply all in one go). Am I misunderstanding the question?

      Z

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  4. Zeth,
    You answered the question correctly, it is I who was confused.I should watch the tutorial more than once :0), lesson learned. Thanks again for your time to relpy.

    -Steve

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  5. Not sure if you're still watching this page, but thanks for the tutorials :)

    I'm curious though, why use a parent constraint on the space groups, instead of parenting the group under the joint (or whatever) whose space you are trying to match?

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    1. I watch it like a hawk, awaiting your every word! :)
      I suppose I COULD parent the groups, but I tend to not like to do that (assuming I don't have hundreds of them or anything crazy) because it becomes really difficult to find things. For example, if I had a chest space group, a head group and a world group, I would have to know ahead of time which groups I had in order to find them (or really look under every object to see if there's a group there. Just finding, say, the chest group to hook up both hand, maybe the feet, the neck, etc would take forever because I'd constantly be having to roll down the outliner, etc. So I just stick me all in a group under the main rig node somewhere and don't have to worry about it when I need to, for example, rebuild an arm or leg setup and hook it back into all the spaces.

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