Anyway to Save and Reuse my Rig?

Community Community & Industry Discussion
1

Hey guys,

So i finished a rigging a model in Maya and was wondering if in the future I wanted to use the same rig, how can I do so on different models?

I mainly model in Zbrush and was thinking to export to zbrush model the existing mesh and bring it back and while retaining rig but it dissapears…

Is there anyway to save and reuse the rig?

2

I would save as, then delete mesh and skinning, save the rig only.

Then, you can import a mesh on top of that rig, but make sure to save as a different file as to not override your rig only save.

3

so basdically i would delete my weight and model and only leave the bones to be in the same location>Import new model> and adjust bone locations slightly>Then redo weighting?

4

That’s what I do and that’s only because of Geodesic voxel weighting that was introduced in Maya 2016-17.
It’s GREAT for skinning.

You can probably transfer weights from one skinned mesh to another, but I don’t know the process.

I am a programmer.

5

okay so i guess the plan rn is

1)Import the new model into the scene(Where you still have your previous rig and joints)
2) delete old mesh and weight and only leave the bones to be in the same location>Import new model> and adjust bone locations slightly>Then Geodesic voxel weighting use to skin
OR

  1. if you want to transfer the skin weights…

refer tohttps://youtube.com/watch?v=38RNq_8Fvw4
Then delete the model after transferring weighting>And reskin the new mesh with the leftover joints from previous mesh>Done

Hows that?