I run maya 2011 on Linux (CentOS 6) for my personal use and have been running the maya 2014 trial on windows to play with your ToolKit.
I wanted to find out and see what it would take to get it working in maya 2011 (I read it was tested and works on 2012 witch is just my luck always being one version behind the requirements.) Here is what I came across, tested in maya 2011 on Linux (CentOS6) and Windows 7.
Upon installation the window pops up to locate the MayaTools dir and everything seems to work all fine and dandy, however the “Epic Games” menu does not appear and the script editor does not read any warnings or errors. I eventually got the “Epic Games” menu to pop up when I commented out:
scriptJobNum2 = cmds.scriptJob(event = “PostSceneRead”, autoOpenAnimUI]) in customMayaMenu.py
I created a mel “EpicGames Menu” so I could have access to the menu items via mel so i could add to a marking menu (and because the original wasn’t working). It gave some error about PostSceneRead so i commented it out and it and to my surprise it appeared.
The character creator opens up and you can play with the Skeleton Creation Settings. Everything seems to work fine.
As soon as you click on “Skeleton Placement” a warning pops up saying “Errors have occurred while reading this scene that may result in data loss. Please check the Script Editor for details.”
Nothing gets loaded and the UI does not change to Skeleton Placement UI.
Script editor: “# Error: KeyError: treeViewWidget” I attempted to debug the code and found several treeViewWidges in the ART_skeletonBuilder_UI.py, however there is a lot of code and I’m not much of a python guy. The scene not loading should be understandable due to backwards compatibility issues, especially with mb files.
The Edit Character window pops and seems to work but the Mannequin.mb is an unrecognized file and due to the Character creator not fully working I cant create and test my own. Same goes for the Add Character and Animation Interface. Again mostly due to backwards compatibility issues.
Settings and Help all seem to work just fine.
Haven’t had a chance to play with Perforce.
May/Could I put in a request further backwards compatibility with maya 2011? and possibly the option of using ma files? maybe have an option box of what you would like to use in the settings. Either in this current version or in your next iteration of Toolkit.
I was successful in saving out the Mannequin.mb as an ma out of maya2014. I changed the recommenced version from 2014 to 2010 and was able to open it in maya 2011 with no data loss. The rig works great with the exception of not having accesses to things like switching between ik/fk due to not being able to use the character control UI. Why did you choose not to have those accessible on the rig? If they are accessible where are they?
Crazy! I don’t use 2015 as my primary version yet, but I’ll do some tests. Haven’t had anything like that in 2013/2014. Must be a memory leak when using a custom artisan tool. Sounds like, with your edit, that it must be a garbage collection issue. Like, the undo stack is getting ridiculously large until a garbage collection happens. I’ll check to see if I can do a force flush or limit what the undo stack saves for that paint weights tool.
I’ll see what I can do with the next version. The biggest hurdle I see is the python version for 2011 is behind that of 2014+. So certain python commands may not work. I’m also not sure how many Maya commands have been added or changed that wouldn’t be cross-compatible. It always kills me that Autodesk removes commands from newer versions!
Btw, you can access switching by selecting the Rig_Settings node(should be pretty near the top of the hierarchy in the outliner). All of the settings are there for everything. Only thing that will suck is without the UI, you won’t get the match function.
One other thing, if you use the normal paint weights brush to weight the mesh, no issues then? If so, for the time being, I’d definitely use that. I added a couple of small features to the ART version, but probably nothing that you could live without. I’m definitely re-thinking the “Deformation Setup” phase for the new version. I’m not sure I am totally fond of that workflow. If you have any ideas (from the moment you hit that button currently to the build rig process) of how to make that smoother, please let me know!
Current ideas:
-weight paint tool is separate and not built into that interface
-why? So that you can use the paint weights tool anywhere, even in the rig file. And then have tools to transfer weights automatically to the export file.
-clean up/clarify the whole rig pose process. New UI, much more robust toolset for creating rig pose. Better explanations as to why.
Cool stuff!
I did manage to get my rig finished after much playing around, but I’ve also run into another issue that prevents me from getting any further. Maya 15 crashes hard on building the control rig after I take the screenshot. It sits there for a second at 52% before closing and bringing up the error reporter. I made sure to export weights before testing it so I didn’t lose any progress ( I love you for adding save states/export stuff for each tab). I should also mention that it does it with the default proxymesh rig as well.
If you need me to dig up any logs I’d be more than willing to help out ^^
—edit for add—
I just used the ones in ART because it wasn’t too much of a problem through out the day. One thing I’d like to mention is that in maya 15 the flood option does not take into consideration the current vert selection and instead will flood the entire mesh. I can try and recreate it and show in a video if you need to see it.
I really do think using the standard weight tool is nice, I like some of your additions though. So if you keep it separate but have your additions as well that would be cool. I’m not very biased as far as the UI goes. functional = good imo
—Edit Two for Additions—
when maya crashes during the build control rig process it does create the proper export files, though they are all empty ( 0 kb) and cannot be opened.
–Edit Three for adittion—
I did manage to get maya 14 from work so I can continue working from here on out with that
I have Maya 2015 Student and when I first set it up it seemed to work fine, but since I had to leave I decided not to save my first attempt to mess with the toolkit and get familiar with it. Ever since then Maya no longer has the Epic Games tab at the top. I tried re-installing Maya and now I am stuck trying to get it to recognize the Maya Tools directory. When I open Maya it asks me to locate the directory and when I select it it tells me that it is not correct. I have also tried 2014 just to see if that would be a better option but I am having the same issue. I have downloaded the newer version you provided from Dropbox and followed the instructions exactly but am still stuck at that one part. Any advice would be great. Thank you.
Understandable and greatly appreciated if you were able to make it work. It would be amazing if I could get a version up and running with my current setup, your tool is by far the best I have come across.
Ok yeah I found them, I was looking only at the nurbs controllers and couldn’t find them. Thanks for the heads up, I can probably jerry-rig something up to handle the switching.
Check to see if you have a userSetup python file in more than one spot. Sometimes, people might have one in maya/scripts, and also in maya/versionXXXX/scripts and these will conflict.
Also, in your maya/versionXXXX/scripts folder, check to see if you have a mayaTools.txt file. If you do, open it and make sure the path there is correct, or delete it and it will prompt you once again on opening Maya to locate the tools directory.
EDIT: Btw, sorry for the late reply. Been focusing on one of our game projects and accidentally letting my inbox and forum threads go unattended.
I have gone through all the folders for Maya and made sure that there are no userSetup python files and that there is no mayaTools.txt in maya/versionXXXX/ folder and am still having the same issue. I even tried downloading what you have in Dropbox again just in case there was an update to that as well and still get the same error. I am not sure why it does not want to recognize the folder. Is it possible that there is an issue with it being for engine 4.4 or the fact that I have 4.4 and 4.3? I don’t know what else to do now, I have even dropped down to Maya 2013 so I am at a loss with ideas.
If you have any more ideas on what could be the cause of this issue I am all ears. Thank you for your response and I look forward to hearing from you again.
Hey everyone. I wanted to post here to find out if perhaps there are fixes incoming sometime soon to ARTS. I just rigged my first character using ARTS and have just been doing some very basic animation tests, so some of these issues may be a matter of my ignorance with the toolkit. That being said, I want to point out a few of the issues I’ve been running into…
Issue #1- The orientations of the animation controls are screwy. My body, hip, spine, and neck controls all have an angled X-up-ish orientation as pictured here…
The head then has a straight X-up orientation and the IK controls have the proper Z-up. I would expect all of these controls to have Z-up orientation. The orientations as they are now would make animation a nightmare.
Issue #2- As far as I can tell there is no FK limb functionality on this rig at all. This isn’t a deal breaker on its own, but its a very desirable and basic feature that is missing and is a huge turn off from this rig.
Issue #3- Another pretty basic and desirable function that is missing is foot/ball roll. It seems the standard rig doesn’t even have basic toe joints. I realize that I could add toe joints at the stage where you can add the extra joint bits, but this would not lead to the desired functionality. I could dig into the rig and rebuild the legs/feet to add this functionality manually, but I’m not sure exactly how this would affect the rig integration with other stages of the pipeline, and at a certain point it becomes less of a hassle to abandon ARTS and build my own rig from scratch.
Other issues- I think this is a known issue, but I’ll just add it to list… In Maya 2015 the pop up windows do not resize and often cut off the buttons preventing you from actually using them. I was able to fix it by editing the scripts, but something to be aware of.
Also, during the skin weighting phase I was running into constant maya crashes- it seemed to happen usually when I was trying to select a joint. Not sure if this one is ARTS related or not, but again thought I’d mention it.
I was super stoked to hear about your new indie-friendly payment plan and I think its great that you are making these shifts. Putting out ARTS is a great help to the community- it creates further opportunity and streamlining for the indie community which I think is extremely important. However, if there aren’t fixes for these issues, then ARTS may be moot, for me at least. I hope you guys can help!
In regards to this issue, the controls and joints get built to the orientations you specified during the joint mover stage. So go back to that stage and adjust the offset controls (light blue controls) to fix your orientations. By default, these are oriented with X up, but if you turn on Aim mode, and start moving parents around, you can change that.
There totally is, mate. It’s available in the picker, and in the rig settings tab, as well as the node called rig settings:
Awesome!!! Thanks so much. I’m glad it was simply my ignorance at work, though I apologize for making any assumptions. I’m going to re-rig the model with these things in mind. Thanks again.
No exactly what I meant I know where the file lies, but I would like to know were this path is saved (I assume it is not hardcoded and must be saved to some file?).
I appreciate you going through all the hard work of keeping up with this forum and helping us all out. When you do get the video up could you post a link to it so I can get to quickly?
Oh, it is actually encoded into the maya file. If you save it out as an ascii (.ma), you can actually open it up in a text editor and replace the reference there for good
Has anyone gotten this to work on Mac yet? Back in march it was said to be under way and it is had been over 6 months with as best as I can tell nothing being done. I have seen it come up in here a few times and the question seems to get ignored.
I’d love to know the status of the Mac version too, but I think the main guy developing the tools has been busy with his main work. Here’s hoping he’s able to tackle it soon!
I know where the file lies, but I would like to know were this path is saved (I assume it is not hardcoded and must be saved to some file?).