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

[Draven_lock]

1st I just have to say I’m completely taught so I ma be missing a lot.
Is there any way to have ART a Maya plugin and Weight Pro 2.0 a plugin for 3Ds Max work together? ART is good but you still have to manually fix all the Weight painting and I have found that as much as I would love to get all the work done in Maya, I suck at it… and I have not been successful in making a Unreal 4 compatible skeleton 3Ds Max, however I know my way around the skinning aspects in it.

[anonymous_user_73094a6c1 (anonymous_user_73094a6c)]

I’m forced to use 3D Studio Max. Does Epic recommend BIPED or for Unreal Engine?

[anonymous_user_73094a6c1 (anonymous_user_73094a6c)]

Does ART have a reverse foot lock solution?

Things like heel peel, toe twist, toe tap, fingers manager with hand presets, toe lift, heel twist, heel lift, knee & elbow swivel? IK for head, hands and feet, etc?

I’m thinking about abandoning the rig in 3d studio max and biting the bullet and moving to Maya.

[Enter_Reality]

I love using ART, but freaking IK Pole Vectors solve of the imported FBX animation is ridiculously slow…it get stuck with the elbow solving and it goes 1 frame every 3-5 seconds and it’s really time consuming…

Is it Maya, is it ART setup or something else? it’s Maya, isn’t it?

[Vaei]

@;496419

Does ART have a reverse foot lock solution?

Things like heel peel, toe twist, toe tap, fingers manager with hand presets, toe lift, heel twist, heel lift, knee & elbow swivel? IK for head, hands and feet, etc?

I’m thinking about abandoning the rig in 3d studio max and biting the bullet and moving to Maya.

These are all generic features of any rig, even absolutely sub-par ones Except the ‘fingers manager with hand presets’ - there is a pose manager and you can build poses for ‘selected controls only’, which makes that a ‘yes’ if you build your own library.

TL;DR yes to all

[Vaei]

@Draven_lock;492582

1st I just have to say I’m completely taught so I ma be missing a lot.
Is there any way to have ART a Maya plugin and Weight Pro 2.0 a plugin for 3Ds Max work together? ART is good but you still have to manually fix all the Weight painting and I have found that as much as I would love to get all the work done in Maya, I suck at it… and I have not been successful in making a Unreal 4 compatible skeleton 3Ds Max, however I know my way around the skinning aspects in it.

ART doesn’t do your weight painting so it’s not having to “fix” it, it’s having to do weight painting in the first place. I don’t think ART, at least at it’s current stage, is intended for people without any weighting or rigging knowledge but I’m sure it’ll get there some day.

Without looking at your plugin link, if it’s an auto-weighter what you can do is something along these lines:

1. Go through the ART steps until you have your rig and export file
2. Bind your mesh to the ART skeleton and export it as FBX
3. Import the FBX with geometry + skeleton into 3DS Max and go through the weight pro 2.0 steps
4. Export the FBX with geometry + skeleton as FBX
5. REFERENCE (not import!) the fbx file from step #4 into your maya scene that you initially exported your geometry + skeleton from in step #2.
6. Select the referenced geometry from the fbx file, then the original geometry, and from the rigging menu… Skin -> Copy Skin Weights (the defaults should be fine)
7. (Optional) repeat #6 for any separate pieces of geometry, you can’t do all at once
8. Remove the referenced fbx file

Then you should have the weighting from the weight pro 2.0 copied onto your ART skeleton.

The reason you reference instead of import is so you don’t get any garbage nodes coming along for the ride, meaning once you remove the reference it’s as if it was never there asides from what you took from it (in this case, weighting information).

[Chosen_One]

Hello guys. Looks like I need some advise.
When I am trying to animate my custom charater (created in ART) in FK mode - I am creating a few keys, and maya just crushes after few seconds without any error messages.

Downloaded toolkit from 4.11 engine package. I am on maya 2016. And I’m new to it (used to work in 3ds max before), so, I’m not sure - may be I’m just making some stupid fundamental mistake at some point… I can make a video, or share my scene, if anyone (? :)) ready to help.

*UP:
OK. It’s happening only with his legs. Legs look like this: rig pose https://i.gyazo.com/2ed598b0b60d55730396f320250c4357.png model pose https://i.gyazo.com/db9635b1c77a1f14386e9a6b60ae8394.png

*UP2:
It seems I solved it. I tweaked legs for rig pose of this character (tried to put them more staight), and looks like it was a mistake. Now I left auto generated rig pose and rebuild the rig. And it seems like everithing works fine now.

May be this will be helpfull for later generations. If your maya crashes when you animating - it can be, that you messed up something with just one limb

[Draven_lock]

@;498291

ART doesn’t do your weight painting so it’s not having to “fix” it, it’s having to do weight painting in the first place. I don’t think ART, at least at it’s current stage, is intended for people without any weighting or rigging knowledge but I’m sure it’ll get there some day.

Without looking at your plugin link, if it’s an auto-weighter what you can do is something along these lines:

1. Go through the ART steps until you have your rig and export file
2. Bind your mesh to the ART skeleton and export it as FBX
3. Import the FBX with geometry + skeleton into 3DS Max and go through the weight pro 2.0 steps
4. Export the FBX with geometry + skeleton as FBX
5. REFERENCE (not import!) the fbx file from step #4 into your maya scene that you initially exported your geometry + skeleton from in step #2.
6. Select the referenced geometry from the fbx file, then the original geometry, and from the rigging menu… Skin -> Copy Skin Weights (the defaults should be fine)
7. (Optional) repeat #6 for any separate pieces of geometry, you can’t do all at once
8. Remove the referenced fbx file

Then you should have the weighting from the weight pro 2.0 copied onto your ART skeleton.

The reason you reference instead of import is so you don’t get any garbage nodes coming along for the ride, meaning once you remove the reference it’s as if it was never there asides from what you took from it (in this case, weighting information).

Thank you for the step by step walk through sounds simple enough.

[ernstAlert]

@FatMoth;491369

So I used the ART tool to rig a character for a friend. He wanted to make some extra custom animations but he can’t get the file to work because he doesn’t have the ART plug in. Is there a way to use Maya’s regular animation toolset after rigging with the ART tool? Any help would be great.

I don’t see why this wouldn’t work. We tend to do this with outsourcers. It’s best if they have the tools as it will likely make their life easier.

Did you pass off both the rig and export file? It might be better to just create a new file yourself, use the Add Character For Animation menu to add the rig in, and then go to the reference editor under the file menu, and import objects from reference. Then send this file over. No dependencies this way!

[ernstAlert]

@Draven_lock;492582

1st I just have to say I’m completely taught so I ma be missing a lot.
Is there any way to have ART a Maya plugin and Weight Pro 2.0 a plugin for 3Ds Max work together? ART is good but you still have to manually fix all the Weight painting and I have found that as much as I would love to get all the work done in Maya, I suck at it… and I have not been successful in making a Unreal 4 compatible skeleton 3Ds Max, however I know my way around the skinning aspects in it.

I don’t see a reason why not. I think you could export an FBX from maya to max, use that plugin (not familiar with it), and then reimport into Maya using update instead of add in the FBX options. If that doesn’t work, you could use add, and then use the built in import/export weights on the new weighted mesh to export the weights, then import them onto the original maya mesh.

[ernstAlert]

@;496419

Does ART have a reverse foot lock solution?

Things like heel peel, toe twist, toe tap, fingers manager with hand presets, toe lift, heel twist, heel lift, knee & elbow swivel? IK for head, hands and feet, etc?

I’m thinking about abandoning the rig in 3d studio max and biting the bullet and moving to Maya.

It does. Except the fingers manager with hand presets. However, there is a pose editor where you can save poses to achieve this easily.
As for the other question, we have no animators in house using Max, so I don’t think we have a recommendation as to which would be better to use.

[ernstAlert]

@Enter Reality;498232

I love using ART, but freaking IK Pole Vectors solve of the imported FBX animation is ridiculously slow…it get stuck with the elbow solving and it goes 1 frame every 3-5 seconds and it’s really time consuming…

Is it Maya, is it ART setup or something else? it’s Maya, isn’t it?

Both

So, the problem is, with the no flip leg setup, not having a proper pole vector, I have to compare the angle of the knee to the imported angle, and keep iterating until I get them close (under 1 degree). Maya 2016 should be faster at this. Unfortunately, I have to update the scene each time I iterate for the angle between node to properly update its values, so that’s why it takes so long.

[ernstAlert]

@;498287

These are all generic features of any rig, even absolutely sub-par ones Except the ‘fingers manager with hand presets’ - there is a pose manager and you can build poses for ‘selected controls only’, which makes that a ‘yes’ if you build your own library.

TL;DR yes to all

LOL, should have read down the page before replying with almost the exact same answer! haha.

Thanks !

[ernstAlert]

@;498291

ART doesn’t do your weight painting so it’s not having to “fix” it, it’s having to do weight painting in the first place. I don’t think ART, at least at it’s current stage, is intended for people without any weighting or rigging knowledge but I’m sure it’ll get there some day.

Without looking at your plugin link, if it’s an auto-weighter what you can do is something along these lines:

1. Go through the ART steps until you have your rig and export file
2. Bind your mesh to the ART skeleton and export it as FBX
3. Import the FBX with geometry + skeleton into 3DS Max and go through the weight pro 2.0 steps
4. Export the FBX with geometry + skeleton as FBX
5. REFERENCE (not import!) the fbx file from step #4 into your maya scene that you initially exported your geometry + skeleton from in step #2.
6. Select the referenced geometry from the fbx file, then the original geometry, and from the rigging menu… Skin -> Copy Skin Weights (the defaults should be fine)
7. (Optional) repeat #6 for any separate pieces of geometry, you can’t do all at once
8. Remove the referenced fbx file

Then you should have the weighting from the weight pro 2.0 copied onto your ART skeleton.

The reason you reference instead of import is so you don’t get any garbage nodes coming along for the ride, meaning once you remove the reference it’s as if it was never there asides from what you took from it (in this case, weighting information).

Dang man, you’re on fire!
Thanks again

[ernstAlert]

@Chosen One;498812

Hello guys. Looks like I need some advise.
When I am trying to animate my custom charater (created in ART) in FK mode - I am creating a few keys, and maya just crushes after few seconds without any error messages.

Downloaded toolkit from 4.11 engine package. I am on maya 2016. And I’m new to it (used to work in 3ds max before), so, I’m not sure - may be I’m just making some stupid fundamental mistake at some point… I can make a video, or share my scene, if anyone (? :)) ready to help.

*UP:
OK. It’s happening only with his legs. Legs look like this: rig pose https://i.gyazo.com/2ed598b0b60d55730396f320250c4357.png model pose https://i.gyazo.com/db9635b1c77a1f14386e9a6b60ae8394.png

*UP2:
It seems I solved it. I tweaked legs for rig pose of this character (tried to put them more staight), and looks like it was a mistake. Now I left auto generated rig pose and rebuild the rig. And it seems like everithing works fine now.

May be this will be helpfull for later generations. If your maya crashes when you animating - it can be, that you messed up something with just one limb

Awesome. Sorry I wasn’t able to help you sooner. I was out last week and part of this week.
Glad you were able to get it working!!

[AntonioE]

Hi. I was animating and noticed that with the arms in FK mode I can rotate the clavicle controls but the rotation channels in the channel Box are hidden. I think the rotation channels should be locked?

[Pirate_Tony]

I’m trying to get the tools for Mac to work (they don’t load automatically, so I’m running them through the script editor) and get the following error:

Error: IndexError: file <maya console> line 9: string index out of range

import maya.cmds as cmds
import os
import sys
from functools import partial
import maya.mel as mel
MAYA_SEP = ‘/’
def correctSysPath():
for i, path in enumerate(sys.path):
if path-1] in (MAYA_SEP, os.sep, os.altsep):
sys.path* = sys.path*:-1]

Line 9 is the if path-1]… line

@'[EPIC

;379847’]Might want to ping Widener on here, or maybe on the twitters. He did the Mac port and could probably help you out quicker!

On Mac still doesn’t install. 4.9/4.10/4.11 as well

After copied py file to “scripts” and run Maya does nothing… Silent.
When it will be fixed?
Every release i waiting

[anonymous_user_e68bc0841 (anonymous_user_e68bc084)]

@;483517

Unless we use this script, just posting it in case something it does might help you narrow it down.

import maya.cmds as cmds

fileName = cmds.file(query=True, sceneName=True)

multipleFilters = “Maya Files (.mb .ma);;Maya Binary (.mb);;Maya ASCII (.ma);;All Files (.)”
newName = cmds.fileDialog2(fileFilter=multipleFilters, dialogStyle=2, startingDirectory=fileName)

if type(newName) is list:
newName = newName[0]
cmds.file( rename=newName )
cmds.file(save = True, type = “mayaBinary”, force = True, prompt = True)
print “File Saved as:”, newName

Hey , thanks so much man for posting this! I was going in circles trying to figure it out. I do want to add though, in case there are some who may not be too familiar with script syntax (like me), that although the forums don’t show it, there is a TAB space before the last 4 lines of the script. Also its a python script. Until I hit reply to ask you if there were any missing TAB spaces, I didn’t see the TABS. I guess forums auto-remove TAB spaces? And yeah, I’m kinda new here :-p

[ernstAlert]

@DwayneMartin86;509267

Hey , thanks so much man for posting this! I was going in circles trying to figure it out. I do want to add though, in case there are some who may not be too familiar with script syntax (like me), that although the forums don’t show it, there is a TAB space before the last 4 lines of the script. Also its a python script. Until I hit reply to ask you if there were any missing TAB spaces, I didn’t see the TABS. I guess forums auto-remove TAB spaces? And yeah, I’m kinda new here :-p

I will update the first post of the thread with this info for any edu version users

Thanks @!

Here is the code formatted:

if type(newName) is list:
    newName = newName[0]
    cmds.file( rename=newName )
    cmds.file(save = True, type = "mayaBinary", force = True, prompt = True)
    print "File Saved as:", newName

[ernstAlert]

@AntonioE;503584

Hi. I was animating and noticed that with the arms in FK mode I can rotate the clavicle controls but the rotation channels in the channel Box are hidden. I think the rotation channels should be locked?

You’re correct. Good catch, I will update that.