Tag: free

Compiling C++ Plugins for Maya

Post author By Rigging Dojo
Post date June 2, 2018
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Get a taste for the basics of plugin compiling from Raf and The Cult Of Rig then check out our courses both the Maya C++ API 101 mentor led course and our more advanced 201 on demand plugin coding course.

You can also check out our free API compiling guide book to pair with the Cult of Rig video. https://www.riggingdojo.com/2019/12/24/free-maya-api-training-ebook/

Tags #cultOfRig, api, c++, character rigging, character td, education, elarning, free, rigtip

Blog Post rigtip tutorial video

Mocap Online – Motionbuilder UE4 Root Motion Animation Retargeting

Post author By Rigging Dojo
Post date November 5, 2017
No Comments on Mocap Online – Motionbuilder UE4 Root Motion Animation Retargeting

Something that comes up often is dealing with hip vs root bone motion and having to either add or remove it to work with diffrent game engines or mix and match move sets. If you are a AAA team and have tech artists and experienced editors it is a challenge but if you are an independent game studio or a lone artist, this might simply be impossible as was the case for the people who reached out to us.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/motionbuilder-forum/working-with-root-translation-in-motionbuilder/m-p/7517630

I passed this on to Crispin and he worked up a great and clear tutorial on how to get motion ready for Cry Engine using their Motus Mocap online animations.

Click the image and check out the video on their blog post

A Motionbuilder tutorial discussing how to re-target animations from one character to another, and transfer the full Root motion correctly and accurately – even if there is a scale difference between the two rigs.
INDEX is below to jump directly to any section. The question came up on the Autodesk forums. Shout out to Brad Clark with Rigging Dojo, our friends at Crytek and CryEngine, and Epic and the Unreal Engine.
INDEX: 0:00 Introduction
01:49 Basics – Settings, Extensions, Constraints and Match Source
07:41 Plotting and Results
08:16 Scaling – Why do it and problematic results.
12:25 Some things are simpler than they first seem… Doh
13:40 Scaling – The Simple Fix and Results
17:00 Vertical Root Motion – Yes it works, an example.
19:57 Plot All Takes and Editing afterwards.
Rigging Dojo – http://www.riggingdojo.com
CryEngine – https://www.cryengine.com/
Unreal Engine – https://www.unrealengine.com
https://www.MocapOnline.com
http://www.MotusDigital.com

If you are needing more MotionBuilder training and help you can check out our other free tips and tutorials, dig in with our paid on-demand workshop or get custom studio training and consulting like Epic Games, EA and Sony have (contact us for information).

Tags #animtip, #rigtip, animation, Autodesk, education, free, Motion, MotionBuilder, Pipeline, Rigging Dojo, tutorials

rigtip tutorial video

Skinning Rigtip for a little known tool

Post author By Rigging Dojo
Post date August 25, 2017
No Comments on Skinning Rigtip for a little known tool

Move Weights tool, a little known tool that you should be using to make skinning easier and allow for added control in a pinch. TDs can use it to speed up skinning by copying good weighting to new joints for twist, like shoulders to a few new twist joints in the upper arm for example.

Mesh and Rig from 3dfiggins.com/Store/ AnimRig – Amazing Spiderman – Free Download

Rig free from 3dfiggins.com/Store/ that we used for this #rigTip video.

Tags #animtip, #rigtip, Autodesk, character rigging, deformations, education, elarning, free, Maya, rigging, rigging 101

Blog Post rigtip tutorial video

Cult of Rig : Season 00 Day 010 Finishing Pedals and GodNode Components

Post author By Rigging Dojo
Post date July 21, 2017
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Season 00 Day010 Stream – Finishing Pedals and GodNode Components

Downloads:

Pilot Season – Download

Rigging Dojo Notes:

This week we are not doing much of a breakdown, there are many details and things that you simply have to watch through the video to understand and get the most from. We will pick out a few things that we want to explain or highlight. Enjoy!

Part one is hooking up the pedals to use the “gravity” effect, where they stay world aligned. This was a quick adding of another composeMatrix node for an offset and mixed it into a the exiting matrix multiplication in an order to allow offset the pedal.
a quick note on using unitConversion nodes to – a value of an input, while you don’t want to have unitConverts all over the place, using them this way has been a favorite use of ours.
Hook up the animation attribute once more to get back to the same feature as before all the re-structuring the rig.
work off world tip- use the offset of the rig in the world as a “testing” process to help catch problems in the rig before it gets to far along

God node (Master control)

Drive the whole rig but doesn’t have to be in world space
top_top_world_ node, hidden, used by only shot final, this is the world space of your rig, the GodNode would be under it

Building the component

Building a non-cyclic constraint

Connecting the God Node component in to the rig

there is a good few bits of trouble caused by the node editor not being set to sync… jump to here to see the hook up of the offset nodes

Maya name space : “underworld” and all the connective nodes between SRT nodes get assigned that name space.

On to the next video!

Get involved:

Scene used to display the functions is available at:
http://www.cultofrig.com/resources/re…
Maya 2016 and up.

Follow me on twitter for announcements and news
https://twitter.com/ThE_JacO

Check out the calendar for up-to-date information and times
http://cultofrig.com/streamcalendar

Follow the Streams live on Twitch
https://www.twitch.tv/cultofrig/

And keep up to date with news on the website
http://www.cultofrig.com

Tags #animtip, #cultOfRig, #rigtip, education, free, Maya, rigging, Rigging Dojo

Blog Post tutorial

Cult of Rig : Season 00 Day 009 Applying Math to Fix Components

Post author By Rigging Dojo
Post date June 30, 2017
No Comments on Cult of Rig : Season 00 Day 009 Applying Math to Fix Components

The rig as you see it by the end of this session, plus a little bit of crud cleaned out, is now available at
http://www.cultofrig.com/resources/re…
If you’ve fallen behind but still want to nodel with me, now you can catch up. Or just take it apart 🙂

Season 00 Day009 Stream – Applying Math to Fix Components

http://www.cultofrig.com/2017/06/18/pilot-season-day-8-applied-math/
“Building upon the theory established the previous day we can now flatten the rig hierarchy some more to extract the pedals from their FK only position, and complete the transform for the staff to inherit rotation.”

Rigging Dojo Notes

Why not make everything flat? While keeping the controls not in a deep hiearchy helps with flexablity but making a flat “component” limits the amount of control you get out of the component, in Maya you can always get worldspace from a node so making everything worldspace/flat you loose any local data you get from a hierarchy.
Fix the rig:
- Graph from the output or forward from the input of the component to start walking the graph and troubleshoot the rig.
- Matrix multiply pedals_M_staff_ctrl by pedals_M_staff_ctrl_srtBuffer (order matters)
  - decompose the matrix and and drive the rotation of the staves_srt to fix the current rig bug.
Fix IK control

To get the IK FK blend, need to make sure both are in the same space
Here Raf blasts away chunks of the rig instead of trying to fix or figure out what they were doing.
He explores getting the pedals_M_ikPedals_projectedAngle_fnode hooked up to the same space as the FK driver.
There is some discussion as he rehooks up the nodes so it is a good point to watch from here
Tips: expression vs. nodes? try both and see what is faster in your rig but stay away from Python Nodes so they don’t play well with parallel.

Pedal settings of the IK FK attribute

If you name the attribute FK IK switch, then that is the order it should blend in, pay attention to those details.
*Q: do you alias attributes? No Raf hates them and it complicates things later on, don’t bother.
Some left over logic nodes from past videos Raf hooked the nodes back up to the animBlendNodeAdditive weights to hook it back up like before.

Question: What about rigging like this with so many nodes vs. constraints etc, does it become complicated, but the point of this is to learn to rig with CLEAR input and Output of each component. It is easier to refactor for complex rigging.
Maya needs compound nodes (if they do) this style of rigging will scale better as it gets more complex (parallel processing for Maya)

Request: Node editor: let us grab a connection line and drag duplicate to another node for connection instead of having to click on the source node and drag the connections.

Change space of the pedals and update the rig

We want to drive the rotation of the pedals srtBuffer much like we just created the blend for the IK and FK system for the staves
Want the pedal to stay world align spin but follow (translate) with the staves.
Taking the rotation from the IK/FK animationNode blend output in to a new composeMatrix (New node)
The pedal jumps to be offset from the world center, correct as it is but it must get fixed
- another composeMatrix
- resist cheating by using another node that isn’t an output
- take animblendNode rotate X from IKFK into the composeMatrix and the Z from decompose from the pedals_M_staff_ctrl_buffer and translate from pedal_M_staffworldtx_fnode
Order matters in your matrix multiplication as you correct for the offset
Test and debug with the rig in an off axis pose so you can see and catch problems early

Fix a pedal offset bug

RDNotes:At this point in the video, Raf has to explore and troubleshoot the graph- he knows what he is doing and build the graph and still hits a problem. This is how rigging goes, it isn’t a perfect straight path to a working rig. This is what the job is, and worth watching how it works through how to fix the problem.

….to be continued in the next stream