Probably best to do it directly rather than cluttering up the forums here. My e-mail is alexwidener # gmail.
Best,
Hi ,
Currently I’m following this tutorial ( look at 12.07 ) in order to setup the arm twist, but I notice that there is no possibility evenly move the joints so that I get the same results ( spacing ) between the joints.
I know that moving them manually is a quick solution, but having something like that, which updates itself in realtime if the joint change position/dimensions would be really nice addition in ART 
Added already in V2
Hi , this tool is really cool but I’m having a huge problem with saving. Similar to what someone said before after using the import Mocap or export FBX tools I can’t save anything anymore, even new scenes. I’ve tested it with student versions of 2014 and 2015, with both UE4 4.5 and 4.7 ART. I just get the error line:
// Error: line 0: Could not save file “C:/Users/Will/Desktop/anim.ma”. //
I’ve resorted to exporting out the fbx each time I want to save and reimporting, but I’d love to be able to actually save!
Hello WRHerbert
Just wanted to let you know that the same things happened to me with student versions on Mac as well - I think it’s a Maya thing more than anything. I’ve had similar troubles with programming in Modo - I would throw in a similar command to something that should be happening and it would require user input, and would kill the executing script. I suspect something similar is happening here, which is that if it’s a student version, the stupid little window that pops up is interrupting the process of the script. The same problems did not happen for me when I was using a professional version of Maya.
Just wanted to throw in some ideas!
Hmmm, that makes sense but I don’t think I’ll be able to get in reach of a professional version…
it seems when placed from the pose_editor the chest_ik_anim body_anim doesn’t key some of the rotates, it does set the rotations, just not keyed… its easy to just key them before moving on, just noticed. I’m doing mirror pose not sure if thats different from just setting a pose
Not sure if you guys are in the same situation, but usually, during the built of a rig for a single character, I have from 10 to 20 Maya ( 2014 ) crashes…
It doesn’t matter if the skeletal setup is the default or is modified ( I added arm twist and eye joints ), but the end result is still the same…
Sometimes I can this situation:
- I can edit the export rig ( so only joints )
- I’m not able to work with the animation rig, because, during rig built, the process suddenly stops and I have the popup window which doesn’t shut down, and it doesn’t go forward in the rig creation, so I don’t have, in the end, the popup window with the files location and so on…
Do this happen often to you guys?
Its beyond frustrating :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:
I’m not sure if its a ART problem or Maya is trying to **** me off…
I don’t know the answer b/c crashes are hard to solve but I can tell you I was getting a lot of crashes when trying to use HumanIK so… not sure if its ART.
I’m getting a lot of Maya crashes after the final rig build process as well. However, for me it usually happens after the building is complete. So after restarting Maya I can still access the character via “Epic Games > Edit Existing Character” or “Add Character For Animation”.
I have no clue why Maya is so unstable during that process, but I think it helps to shut down any background applications and let the build finish completely before touching anything. It might just be my superstition though. 
Hi . I’m back with a couple possible ART bugs and would love a solution that can be applied to existing rigs plus a script fix if a genuine problem.
I’ve just created a new character with ART using my mesh to test the problem. Then added the character to a new scene. In the Epic body component picker, select ik_foot_anim_l and take a look at the OUTPUTS shown under the channels panel:
ik_leg_l_twistMultNode
leg_stretch_toggle_condition_l
leg_squash_toggle_condition_l
However ik_foot_anim_r is missing ik_leg_r_twistMultNode
Then moving on to heel_ctrl_r the OUTPUTS are:
heel_ctrl_r_RX_MultNode
ik_foot_heel_pivot_r_MultNode
But for heel_ctrl_l there is only:
heel_ctrl_l_RY_MultNode
Maya Save Bug
I too have lost many hours of work on many occasions before discovering that my scene can’t be saved in Maya 2015 Student Edition. When the “// Error: line 0: Could not save file” error appears there is no warning message box, just an red error message at the bottom of Maya with no useful details on the script editor output screen. That plus the lack of the ‘Student edition’ notices that should appear on a successful file save are the indications that Maya is hosed. Once in this state Maya won’t save the scene to the original filename or to a new filename and I find that all export functionality is broken too.
So far it seems that using the ART Export Motion button | Export FBX is what screws up Maya. I get a good export and save isn’t immediately broken. I seem to be able to work for hours doing progress saves with no problem but things go south at some point after doing an export. So my work flow (when I remember to do it) is to save the scene prior to export. Do the export. Close and restart Maya.
I was getting frequent crashes during or seemingly after the final rig build process until I made two changes. One improvement was a typo fix on my segmented mesh naming that resulted in the left and right upper leg components having the L & R swapped. The second improvement was flattening the mesh segments into a group - eliminating the mesh hierarchy.
I’ve been having trouble getting P4 hooked up with the tools. I think it’s a Python/Maya thing though. Importing P4 from the cmd line or Sublime works fine. But Maya 2014 and 2015 have this error:
import P4
// Error: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found.
# Traceback (most recent call last):
# File "<maya console>", line 1, in <module>
# File "C:/Projects/WalkRaw/Tools/MayaTools/General/Scripts\P4.py", line 211, in <module>
# import P4API
# ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found. //
I saw someone else in this thread was having issues, and it looked like 2014 wasn’t supported yet. But it is now, so not sure what’s up.
Hey again!
I have a quick question about how all of you are working with the rigs created from this toolkit. For some reason all my animations done on ART rigs play with well below 10 FPS in Maya 2015 and I’m at my wits end as to what I could try to get a smoother frame rate. I’m not sure if it’s a problem with how I created the rigs or if that’s just the way it is. I’m certain it’s not an issue of my hardware however, since I tried several different PCs by now and none of them could reach anywhere near real time 30 FPS. I also tried pretty much every possible option in Maya and none of them gave me more than maybe one extra FPS. Even lowering the characters tris count to below 2000 didn’t make much of a difference.
If it’s a known issue it would be nice to learn how the community or the animators at Epic are working with the rigs to get a decent preview of their animation. Do you create regular playblasts or export to UE4 and preview the animation there? Do you use a proxy mesh without skinning? Or maybe just switch to “Play every frame” in Maya? Any suggestion would be welcome! 
What are your PC specs? How complex is the skinning & rig? Do you have any other scripts or expressions outside of ART that might be evaluating every frame to slow things down? I know that ART 1.0 doesn’t support Maya 2015 fully yet.
Also take a look at GPU caching to get 30fps playback. https://vimeo.com/106042366
You don’t want to try playing every frame, as that will give you inconsistent playback speeds from what you’ll see in engine.
As of now, you have a blind test. You need to attempt playback of a (good) rig with animation on the same machine in order to determine if there is a real “weight” to the rigs causing them to operate slowly. As said, things like expressions running in the background are known to be VERY heavy in slowing down Maya, hence why people stopped using them so much. Also mentioned by - skinning - paramount to slowing down your scene.
And yes, you should absolutely use a proxy mesh. In almost any case with a rig, I use a proxy mesh.
Also, you say it’s not an issue of hardware, but you haven’t listed the specifications.
Myself, for instance, can get steady ~30 fps on a heavily skinned rig:
Samsung SSD(where I run the scene from, I don’t run it from the other external HDDs)
i7 4790K
nVidia GTX 970.
Likewise, my brand-new MB with an i7, SSD, 16 GB, and whatever mobile GPU CANNOT run the same scenes at the same rate. Your graphics card will be the biggest performance improver.
Everything that said, you should pay attention to. The caching, not playing every frame.
Also forgot to mention: Maya 2015 has a “profiler” tool. Not sure if it can be used to evaluate rigs, but it should evaluate scenes. I just haven’t had time to mess with it myself, but I would look around there.
Oh man, thanks for the video ! I was already using GPU cashing before, but “Deform User Normals” in the skin cluster was turned on and so the FPS boost was very limited. Now that it’s turned off I get 50+ FPS and the script provided in the video description is extremely useful as well!
The reason why I didn’t mention my specs before is that I work on several PCs and even though they have different hardware, the differences in performance were minute. A PC with an R9 270x and a i5-2400 had almost the same FPS than one with a and GTX 680 and an i7 4790K. And neither my GPU, nor the CPU have a high workload when I use Maya. CPU usage barely reaches 40% and the GPU doesn’t get much higher than 20%.
As for using “play every frame”, I am aware that it obviously can’t be used for timing in my animation. But once the key poses and timing are down, it was a useful tool to get a good look at the motion without resorting to playblasts every few minutes. 7 FPS in a walk cycle that’s only 30 FPS long just doesn’t cut it. But I guess I won’t have to resort to that method anymore now!
Thanks again for the replies, this is going to make animating much more fun!
Hi (and the rest of this thread),
Thanks so much for this toolkit. I’m currently using it at my school for the ease of transition from Maya to UE4. Things seem to be working so far, however… My school is using Maya 2015. While there have only been minor errors (as with most things maya-related) the biggest problem is that in Maya 2015, the control rig will not build without errors or crashing. I know there is no support for 2015 currently, but with 2016 coming out soon this might be something you could look into for all of us out there who are trying to stay updated with software.
Regardless of this, I’ve been using 2014 on my home computer and it’s worked great so far. Just thought I would let you know.
The error specifically is:
Some of my fellow students just get crashes.
Thanks so much for this awesome plugin and for all the work you’ve put into it!
-TG
To : In conjunction with that, wouldn’t it better for version 2.0 to use .ma files instead of .mb files to help with stuff like this? I know they’re slower, but from my opinion, the ability to fix files outweighs speed. But again, I’m coming from a Technical Artist perspective and not an animator perspective.