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

ernstAlert · September 23, 2016, 11:49pm

Hey there!

So on Paragon, we extensively add leaf and chain modules to all the characters for secondary. For armor, I would add leaf modules, and use the anim dynamics node in UE4 to simulate them.
For cloth, we use Apex. To make Apex performant, we use physical meshes (sim meshes that are lower res) to simulate, and the graphical mesh (the original mesh) matches what the physical mesh is doing.

Cloth tutorial I quickly smashed together:

Our stream on anim dynamics:

https://.com/watch?v=5h5CvZEBBWo

ernstAlert · September 23, 2016, 11:53pm

I really wish I could give a date for ARTv2, but there have been a few wrenches thrown my way. First, we have a bunch of projects going on at work, so those take priority. Then, Maya 2017 came out and changed the Qt version, so I had to (still in the middle of) re-factor all of the code to not only work in 2014 -2016, but also in 2017+.

Still hoping for end of year release, but there is currently no schedule to ensure that happens. I work on it every chance I can!

I haven’t tested Maya 2017 with ARTv1, so I’m not sure what doesn’t work. Unlike V2, it doesn’t rely on using the Qt UI library, so it should work.

ernstAlert · September 23, 2016, 11:55pm

Not really, but what you could do is bring in your own skeleton, make an ART skeleton with same settings, and then place the ART skeleton in the same places as your existing character. Then you can simply constrain your original skeleton to the ART skeleton and use the ART rig to drive your character.

ernstAlert · September 23, 2016, 11:57pm

Mercurial Forge;594799:

Thanks for the reply!

Yes like at the end of that video.

The parent joint for the “weapon joint” is the “root joint”. I place the weapon joint in the offhand to where I like it, then I then create a space for it to follow. (Using the space switcher menu) This works fine and follows the hand as expected. But when I want to switch to the right hand, (I create a new space and select it from the menu) my weapon joint becomes locked to the both spaces. I can see it in the channels box, both spaces are set to “1”

It seems like when I change the space it’s not disabling the other space?

Here is an example of what I mean. Notice how the space for weapon_anim changes but seems to be constrained to both!
https://gfycat.com/RadiantAngryDiamondbackrattlesnake

Hmm, one of the things that pops out as a red flag to me is that your space switcher UI isn’t lighting up red when you scrub. It is supposed to light up red when a frame change happens, then you hit the red button, and it refreshes the UI.
Since that isn’t happening, just make sure you have the latest and greatest files from dropbox. Also, on the control that has the spaces, you should be able to pick-walk up from that control to see what is actually happening with the spaces and if they are truly being switched or not.

ernstAlert · September 24, 2016, 12:03am

They’ll usually be at the very bottom.

you can also run this code (python) to see what nodes it complains about being unknown:

print cmds.ls(type = “unknown”)

these might be the nodes that get listed:
mentalrayGlobals’, u’mentalrayItemsList’, u’miDefaultFramebuffer’, u’miDefaultOptions’

Then you can simply select those and delete.

Or you can run this, which will auto-check, delete, and convert any ART nodes that might be labeled as unknown:

(python)



print cmds.ls(type = "unknown")

unknownNodes = cmds.ls(type = "unknown")

for node in unknownNodes:
    if node != "SkeletonSettings_Cache":
        try:
            cmds.delete(node)
        except:
            pass
    else:
        orig = 'SkeletonSettings_Cache'
        if cmds.objExists(orig):
            if cmds.nodeType(orig) == 'unknown':
                new = cmds.createNode('network')
                for att in cmds.listAttr(orig):
                    if not cmds.attributeQuery(att, node=new, exists=1):
                        typ = cmds.attributeQuery(att, node=orig, at=1)
                        if typ == 'typed':
                            cmds.addAttr(new, longName=att, dt='string')
                            if cmds.getAttr(orig + '.' + att):
                                cmds.setAttr(new + '.' + att, cmds.getAttr(orig + '.' + att), type='string')
                        elif typ == 'enum':
                            cmds.addAttr(new, longName=att, at='enum', enumName=cmds.attributeQuery(att, node=orig, listEnum=1)[0])   
        cmds.delete(orig)
        cmds.rename(new, orig)
        
print cmds.ls(type = "unknown")

ernstAlert · September 24, 2016, 12:04am

I’m an idiot, that’s from my post haha. I’m pretty sure that line will fix it and I will edit that post.

LilaAlu · September 24, 2016, 1:16pm

Hello ,

first of all, thanks for the help! unfortunatly it didn’t seem to work.
at first i just ran the script without your added line, just for a test. and yeah a neww error occured:

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
// File read in 0.12 seconds. //
// Error: file: C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2017/scripts/startup/cutCopyPaste.mel line 75: Error reading file. //
[u’Mannequin:Mannequin_ExportRN’, u’Mannequin:sharedReferenceNode’, u’MannequinRN’]
Mannequin:Mannequin_Export