Animation and Rigging Tools: FAQ, Known Issues and Feature Roadmap

[ihavenick (Ata Çetin)]

@;92726

Yep! is correct, it may not be in Dynamic mode. Also if it is in Dynamic mode, make sure the chainStartEnevelope attribute on the control isn’t set to 0!

but i trying to make jiggle bone not chain bone

http://oi58.tinypic.com/oaq7gi.jpg

if i add 1 jiggle bone it doesnt jiggle but if i add 2 jiggle bone connetted to eachother jigles but i need 1 bone not 2

http://oi61.tinypic.com/ethddw.jpg

[ernstAlert]

@ihavenick;93244

but i trying to make jiggle bone not chain bone

http://oi58.tinypic.com/oaq7gi.jpg

if i add 1 jiggle bone it doesnt jiggle but if i add 2 jiggle bone connetted to eachother jigles but i need 1 bone not 2

http://oi61.tinypic.com/ethddw.jpg

continuing this discussion here:

Jiggle bones A.R.T problem

[ernstAlert]

This is just a little video showing some progress on the new style of UI:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10939513/ART_Outliner.mp4

The video shows a couple of things:
-channel box working properly when docked/not docked/ and UI deleted (this is a bug that currently exists in the current version)
*if UI is docked -> channel box goes into UI
*if UI is floating -> channel box goes back into Maya’s UI
*if UI is deleted -> channel box goes back into Maya’s UI

-outliner button color changing to show selected/unselected items whether they were selected with the button or selected in the viewport

Next week I’ll be populating that first tab with all of the modules (arms, legs, head, spine, leaf, jiggle, and chain) and getting their respective settings UIs implemented.

Have a good weekend all!

[_neo]

Hi,

I seem unable to properly import an Animation, that was previously exported.

• I add my character for animation
• Within Import Animation UI I select previously exported animation
• The character assumes the imported animation correctly
• Selecting bones etc, and moving/rotating them does not work, I drag a bone and it does not change my character pose

Using Maya 2015.
Any idea of what I’m doing wrong?
Thanks in advance.

[Kettun]

@;92728

This is the correct behavior, by design, if you will. It is only supposed to export what the engine needs to get your motion data in. In this case, the bones, and the cube which holds all blendshape curve data.
Looks like that error you’re receiving has something to do with a control with no keyable attributes. Did you by chance lock down attributes on a control?

Thanks that was indeed the issue, I unlocked them, but added constraints instead to get what I needed, it worked!

All things accounted for.

Now… I’ve got a much different error after exporting animation.

If I export an animation, and then save it… it erases the .ma file. completely. and says “unable to save <path>”

-luckily- I back everything up enough so that’s not a problem but the first time it happened it caused a panicattack. does that have something to do with the same thing?

I’m running Maya 2015 SP1 - Student, by the way.

New UI looks great by the way, much more in the style of the actual face-lifted engine!

[ernstAlert]

@_neo_;94511

Hi,

I seem unable to properly import an Animation, that was previously exported.

• I add my character for animation
• Within Import Animation UI I select previously exported animation
• The character assumes the imported animation correctly
• Selecting bones etc, and moving/rotating them does not work, I drag a bone and it does not change my character pose

Using Maya 2015.
Any idea of what I’m doing wrong?
Thanks in advance.

hmm, hard to know without seeing a file. Feel free to send it to .@epicgames.com and I’ll get back to you. Sounds like possibly something is erroring at some point during the import, leaving all of the controls still constrained to the skeleton with the data.

[ernstAlert]

@Kettun;95044

Thanks that was indeed the issue, I unlocked them, but added constraints instead to get what I needed, it worked!

http://i.imgur.com/HBAXqhq.png

All things accounted for.

Now… I’ve got a much different error after exporting animation.

If I export an animation, and then save it… it erases the .ma file. completely. and says “unable to save <path>”

-luckily- I back everything up enough so that’s not a problem but the first time it happened it caused a panicattack. does that have something to do with the same thing?

I’m running Maya 2015 SP1 - Student, by the way.

New UI looks great by the way, much more in the style of the actual face-lifted engine!

o_0

That’s, uh, not good. Sorry about that. So, when you export an FBX with the export motion tool, and then save the maya file, it erases it? (Just making sure I have that correct)
Looking through the code, I’m not seeing any reason such a thing would happen. I thought perhaps the file name was getting renamed during the process, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in the code. I also looked through the code to see if I was at any point spitting out an error like that, and no dice. So, I think whatever is happening there, it’s on Maya’s end. The tool might be causing it somehow (no clue!), but the error is coming from Maya and not from the animation tools. If you can provide any further repro steps, let me know so I can test. I have 2015 now, and all of the new work is being tested in multiple versions of Maya on Windows and Mac, so hopefully that will really help!

[anonymous_user_1a500d7e]

Hello first of all thanks for this amazing tool, but i have a problem, every time i replace the userSetup.py my output window says that it can’t load the Python script, Don’t know what the problem really is, I would be realle thankful if you can help me

Here’s what the output window shows:

Failed to execute userSetup.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
UnicodeEncodeError: ‘ascii’ codec can’t encode character u’\xe9’ in position 12: ordinal not in range(128)

Thanks and keep it up

[Kettun]

Heya , it seems it has something to do with incremental saving which I have defaulted on.

// Logfile: “C:\Users\keits_000\Documents\maya\FBX\Logs\2015.0\maya2015exp.log”
// Performing Incremental Save:
// master file: D:/# Portfolio/3D/Mag/Maya/Mag/scenes/animations/walk_01.ma
// increment file: D:/# Portfolio/3D/Mag/Maya/Mag/scenes/animations/incrementalSave/walk_01.ma/walk_01.0011.ma
file -force -save -options “v=0”;
// Error: line 0: Could not save file “D:/# Portfolio/3D/Mag/Maya/Mag/scenes/animations/walk_01.ma”. //

for some reason something with the plugin causes the original file to be deleted because it “cannot save over it”. but clearly it saves the incremented save. So really there’s no real problem, except that I’d panicked quite heavily the first time it happened.

Regardless, I have both autosaving and incremental saving on. because i tend to forget to save otherwise.
I tried a similar thing when outside of the plugin and it works fine.

Keep it up!

[ernstAlert]

@Kettun;97782

Heya , it seems it has something to do with incremental saving which I have defaulted on.

for some reason something with the plugin causes the original file to be deleted because it “cannot save over it”. but clearly it saves the incremented save. So really there’s no real problem, except that I’d panicked quite heavily the first time it happened.

Regardless, I have both autosaving and incremental saving on. because i tend to forget to save otherwise.
I tried a similar thing when outside of the plugin and it works fine.

Keep it up!

Awesome, I’ll be turning that setting on to see if I can reproduce and fix!

[ernstAlert]

@Kettun;97782

Heya , it seems it has something to do with incremental saving which I have defaulted on.

for some reason something with the plugin causes the original file to be deleted because it “cannot save over it”. but clearly it saves the incremented save. So really there’s no real problem, except that I’d panicked quite heavily the first time it happened.

Regardless, I have both autosaving and incremental saving on. because i tend to forget to save otherwise.
I tried a similar thing when outside of the plugin and it works fine.

Keep it up!

I’ll carry this over to the support thread you’ve started. Thanks!

[ernstAlert]

Big update

Hey all!

The dropbox location has been updated with quite a few fixes and new features. Check it out when you get a chance. It should all be included in the next release of UE4 as well if you’d rather wait!

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/e49zvu9btm55o3t/AABpoQgQ1gydFSLFroq3LXeDa

Check out this thread for one of the new features, an FBX Export Batcher:

https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/69888/how-do-you-export-multiple-animations-from-art-in.html#answer-70274

Also, if you get any errors using tools on existing characters, try rebuilding that character with the latest code. There were a ton of changes that went into this drop that may affect characters built on older versions of the code (specifically, matching in the anim UI will error until a character has been rebuilt due to new rig additions to make the matching exact.

[_aCe_Total]

I have updated to the latest version of the Rigging and animation toolkit, but I have a problem. All popup windows are too small and I can’t scale/adjust them. Any way to fix that?

http://bildr.no/image/UUtYc3hR.jpeg

[ernstAlert]

ah ****. 2015? I’ll update that in a bit. Sorry about that!

edit: wow, can’t say c r a p!

[_aCe_Total]

Yep, I’m using Maya 2015

[anonymous_user_1a500d7e]

Could anybody tell me how to fix this?

Failed to execute userSetup.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
UnicodeEncodeError: ‘ascii’ codec can’t encode character u’\xe9’ in position 12: ordinal not in range(128)

Thanks

[anonymous_user_bb0e176f1 (anonymous_user_bb0e176f)]

Hey ,

Is there a work log so we can see what fixes have been implemented? Does your update also work in Maya 2015? If so, what service pack(s)?

Thanks.

[ernstAlert]

@LuigiGT;97873

Could anybody tell me how to fix this?

Failed to execute userSetup.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
UnicodeEncodeError: ‘ascii’ codec can’t encode character u’\xe9’ in position 12: ordinal not in range(128)

Thanks

what’s your user name on your machine? Does it have any non US keyboard characters? If so, that would cause this.
That’s really the only thing that makes sense here.

[ernstAlert]

@AdamZ;97878

Hey ,

Is there a work log so we can see what fixes have been implemented? Does your update also work in Maya 2015? If so, what service pack(s)?

Thanks.

I wish, but currently there is not. I’m actually going to contact whoever sends out those nifty UE4 patch notes messages and see if I can get a section for ART on there. (See, rigging gets no respect!)

[ernstAlert]

@'[aCe

Total;97839’]Yep, I’m using Maya 2015

first thing in the morning, I’ll have this wrapped up. Had some other tasks to work on today. Sorry for the inconvenience!