Hi guys,
I’m testing Maya 2016 and I got the ART plugin working with it…main issue that I currently have is if I go to Edit existing character the window is too “short”, means that the Edit skeleton and Edit Rig button are not showing…
I remember that someone here made a python script to solve this issue, but I’m not able to find it…could you guys help me please? 
That should be fixed in the latest few code releases. It’s correct in the dropbox code here:
Dropbox - Link Disabled - Simplify your life?
Line 245 in customMayaMenu, sizeable = True should be set. If not, then you don’t have the latest code. Now, the window will still appear short, but you can just drag it down to extend it.
Hi All,
I’ve got some animation cycles to do that are giving me nightmares. The ART rig has worked fine on my walk cycles and I’d like to keep using it. Do I now need some local mods to the rig and how to get started making them?
I want to keep using root motion. For the walk cycles the root bone is point constrained to stay under the pelvis – letting me animate across the floor yet end up with in-place cycles after FBX import into UE4.
The plan is to stay with IK for both legs. In the new animations the character will be turning / pivoting on one foot then the other. The center of the pelvis can no longer be the character pivot point and thus can’t be the location for the root bone (x & y).
So far, moving and keying the offset_anim pivot to alternate it between the ball of each foot ends up a mess. The first time I move the offset_anim pivot this shows up on Rotate Pivot X & Y channels. When I next move the pivot the values show up on Rotate Pivot Translate X & Y and things start getting crazy.
Seems like I need something nearly identical to offset_anim but the two new versions will stay centered under the left and right foot toe joint. For rotation only, each control would rotate the entire character using a pivot point that is always in correct placement under the foot.
Anyone have a nightlight that might help?
Hey there. Just ran into an error after downloading and installing the latest dropbox stuff. When I clicked the Build Control Rig button during the Deformation step, the window that pops up to name the character was too small and not resizeable, so I was unable to select the build button that is supposed to be at the bottom of that dialog box. I am using Maya 2015, don’t know if this issue is reproducible for other people.
A quick and dirty fix for anyone having the same problem: Navigate to your ART_skeletonBuilder_UI.py file, and on line 7920 you should see the line:
self.widgets"publishUIWindow"] = cmds.window("publish_ui_window", w = 300, h = 700, mxb = False, mnb = False, sizeable = False, title = "Publish Character")
Just change “sizeable = False” to “sizeable = True” and that should work.
Transparent limbs?
Having an issue during initial skeleton creation. Please refer to image…
If it uploaded properly, you can see that the Right side limbs have issues. The right arm is darkened and transparent, as is the right thigh and right foot. Also, the right clavicle seems to be missing (but is in fact there on closer inspection).
Anyone else experience this? did a casual search through the thread but didn’t see anything right off the bat. Suggestions greatly appreciated.
I’m having the same issue as Odysseus. It may be related to a serious issue i’m having regarding editing rigs. If i build a simple rig with just one extra joint, say a leaf joint for a jaw, i can’t go back to editing the skeleton placement for that rig after it is built. I get a popup saying that if significant changes are made to the rig it may mess up the skin weighting, I click continue, then the operation errors out. Here is the error:
# Error: ValueError: file C:/Users/Michael/Desktop/MayaTools/General/Scripts\ART_skeletonBuilder_UI.py line 10989: invalid literal for int() with base 10: 'Nothing counted : no polygonal object is selected.' #
I saw someone earlier in the thread have the same error, but that was a while ago, and it seems unresolved, or broken again for maya 2015 maybe?
edit: figured out that my problem lied in misunderstanding the difference between export file and rig file.
Well I’m glad it isn’t just me. Hopefully it is something painfully simple…
I’m looking at the section of code, and it seems like it is erroring out trying to get the number of vertices of your weighted meshes. Somehow, one of your meshes is returning None when it asks for the number of verts. And when it tries to loop through each vert, it crashes because None isn’t valid.
Have you done any tests in a new scene with something simple? It sounds like it’s something specific to that file. Likely a naming conflict (as in, your mesh has the same name as something else in the scene, like a material, or another transform. Something that doesn’t have vertices).
ah! Found it! It’s not a naming conflict, it’s the fact that you have something skinned in your scene that is not a polygonal object. I created a nurbsSphere, skinned it to the root, went back to skeleton placement, and got the same error. All geo needs to be polygonal geo. I think that’s the case for the engine as well.
I’m assuming you have nurbs geometry as well that is skinned?
I’ve seen this as well. Since the files were created in Maya 2013, something weird happens to them in 2015. I think viewport 2.0 fixes it if I recall correctly.
EDIT: after opening the file in 2015, viewport 2.0 is actually what causes the issue for me, and it looks correct in legacy viewport.
Ah. So the recommendation is to try it with the legacy viewport. I’ll give that a go and report back to see how that goes. Thank you much for your time…
Hi,
Is it possible to mirror entire animations with this? I need an animation that is an exact mirror but UE4 doesn’t have a mirror feature and I don’t think ART does either. Do I need to do it manually?
The Maya Bonus Tools has a mirror animation tool.
Is there a reason why the new 4.8 release doesn’t have the latest code for Maya ART? It seems weird we still need to get files from dropbox to fix issues.
Please excuse me if this has been answered, or is so obvious and I somehow missed it. Is it possible to keyframe a blend between IK, FK and Dynamic on the custom joint chains? I can’t seem to find a keyable attribute.
Hi ,
I bought this up many months ago but since nothing has come of it I’ll mention it again… it’s costing so many tedious hours that multiplies with each character I need to rig.
The tool is trying to match the rotation of the bones to my character’s mesh and misses horribly, it has never come close. Then it has odd rotations throughout and I have to go through and attempt to tweak it into position, this takes roughly 30-45 minutes for some characters when it would take 5 minutes if it didn’t do this.
It should just put it in a T-Pose so I can position it myself rather than fighting against the weird rotations the system gives me.
No matter how long I waste trying to fix the rotations they’ll never be half as accurate as if I had been allowed to do them by hand.
Please, please, fix this! I have tried looking through the hierarchy and finding a way to reset the rotations but it just causes glitches down the road.
Just want an option to do this instead of the current way…
I noticed that as well. I don’t know actually. I don’t create the releases, so whoever does must have not had latest. I’m working on an auto-updater for ART v2 to get around this whole mess.
It currently isn’t. This has been addressed in ART v2.
Dropbox - june1.gif - Simplify your life?
Hey.
Is that image actually from the joint mover? Nothing I see has the bottom example as the default. I’m assuming this is just an extreme to illustrate the point?
I could probably write a script to fix this, but I don’t have the time to test (3 projects + new tools = no time).
Basically, you just want to zero the mover groups, though not all. I’m assuming the example would be more like a finger? And you want the child movers to be perfectly in line?
If so, you just need to open the jointmover file (under MayaTools/ART/) and select the mover groups (1 step up from the mover) and zero out the translate Y, Z and rotates. Same for spine if that’s what you’re looking for. (the proxy geo will look off, but the bones will be correct).
Here’s a file where I did a pass on that. See if that addresses your issues and causes any problems. You’ll want to overwrite the existing file under MayaTools/ART/
