We’ve come across a couple of issues with the ART tools. First off with the jiggle joints. We’ve noticed that their rotation does not follow the parent control. When rotating the parent control the jiggle moves/translates along fine, but doesn’t rotate with it, instead pointing in it’s original direction. So if we have a ponytail sticking out from the neck, by twisting the head to the right, instead of the ponytail trailing behind it moves at the base but keeps pointing forward, so the result is that it curves around the right ear. They do follow when rotating the world controller, but that obviously is not a solution. This pretty much renders jiggle joints useless once characters deviate from being perfectly straight. Has anyone noticed this issue and are there any workarounds?
We’re also having trouble importing mocap onto ik controls or matching from fk to ik. The knee pole vectors and foot rolls are not solving and the end result is flips and pops in the knees and feet. The fk motion imports fine. We have tried all the different options in the import dialogue, and we have tried matching ik to fk with the match tool. I had an idea that it could be a strange character set up, but this still happens with a test character that is set up purely on the tool default settings (i.e. building the control rig without moving any of the joints). Has anyone had issues with this and does anyone have any solutions?
We’ve come across a couple of issues with the ART tools. First off with the jiggle joints. We’ve noticed that their rotation does not follow the parent control. When rotating the parent control the jiggle moves/translates along fine, but doesn’t rotate with it, instead pointing in it’s original direction. So if we have a ponytail sticking out from the neck, by twisting the head to the right, instead of the ponytail trailing behind it moves at the base but keeps pointing forward, so the result is that it curves around the right ear. They do follow when rotating the world controller, but that obviously is not a solution. This pretty much renders jiggle joints useless once characters deviate from being perfectly straight. Has anyone noticed this issue and are there any workarounds?
We’re also having trouble importing mocap onto ik controls or matching from fk to ik. The knee pole vectors and foot rolls are not solving and the end result is flips and pops in the knees and feet. The fk motion imports fine. We have tried all the different options in the import dialogue, and we have tried matching ik to fk with the match tool. I had an idea that it could be a strange character set up, but this still happens with a test character that is set up purely on the tool default settings (i.e. building the control rig without moving any of the joints). Has anyone had issues with this and does anyone have any solutions?
Unsure whether to create another AnswerHub question or post it here. Apologies if this is the wrong place.
Trying to install the Animation and Rigging Toolkit. I’ve copied the latest userSetup.py (from official dropbox) to this location:
C:\Users<username>\Documents\maya\scripts
but nothing happens when I launch Maya (no “browse” dialog to locate my MayaTools directory)
Other details:
Maya 2014 64-bit 30-day trial clean install, but there is another version of Maya (2011) on the same machine where I did get the browse dialogue but nothing happened. Assumed 2011 was unsupported, hence the new 2014 install.
Try this, create a txt file in maya\2014-x64\scripts name it mayaTools open it up and paste the path to your mayatools in my case its D:\Unreal Engine\Maya_AnimationRiggingTools/MayaTools.
Thanks very much for the reply but I found the fix. Turns out I had a number of MAYA_* and PYTHON_* environmental variables set that were messing up where Maya was looking for userSetup.py. Deleting these vars did the trick.
(for reference, Windows environmental vars are set in Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\System\advanced system settings)
Running into that error in deformation setup when switching between paint and select mode. Saw a couple posts about this but wasn’t sure if there was an official fix:
Error: RuntimeError: file C:/Program Files/Unreal Engine/4.1/Engine/Extras/Maya_AnimationRiggingTools/MayaTools/General/Scripts\ART_skeletonBuilder_UI.py line 10242: artAttrSkinPaintCtx: Object ‘ART_artAttrSkinPaint’ not found.
Maya 2014 x64 Student, Windows 7
Latest dropbox scripts applied
I haven’t found this problem in the forum yet unless I missed it.
On both 2014 and 15, I get this error when trying to switch from IK to FK.
*# Error: ValueError: file C:/Program Files/Unreal Engine/4.1/Engine/Extras/Maya_AnimationRiggingTools/MayaTools/General/Scripts\ART_animationUI.py line 12201: No object matches name: :ik_upperarm_fk_matcher_l #
*
I recently had my Computer wiped and re-imaged. Our IT department put 2014 and 15 back on and I downloaded and installed UE4 like before and properly installed ART. I feel like it’s a simple solution because It worked fine before.
The Sample character, Mannequin, works fine.
But the character I built from scratch in 2014 has the fk/ik switch issues. I can’t figure out why I’m getting the error.
Also, I’ve uninstalled/reinstalled Unreal and ART and reset my prefs in both Maya versions.
OK. I solved it.
As long as I turn off “Match on Switch” under the settings menu then I can switch between IK/FK.
It’ll work for what I need at the moment.
Hello Nicolas. I am having the same issue with the two boxes not showing up as full size. I am not familiar with changing script, could you send me a message with a description of how to fix this problem. I would greatly appreciate it, thank you for your time.
Firstly, thanks for this impressive tool and Epic. I think we are very fortunate to have a tool that allows us to focus on the artistry without getting bogged down in technical rigging.
Does anyone else get a “Skin Weight” dialog pop-up when they click Yes to Skin Proxy Mesh?
This didn’t happen in 's tutorial video. What does it mean?
I am still seeing this error when attempting to bind skeleton to final mesh.
Steps:
Run ART tool
Skeleton Creation
Adjust according to final mesh (in same scene)
Save Skeleton Template and Joint Mover Template
Hit the Deformation Setup Button.
Create Rig Pose (Yes)
Save Rig Pose (Yes)
Chose not to weight proxy mesh
Select Skeleton, Shift select mesh
Skin>Bind Skin>Smooth Bind
py Script error: // Error: line 0: Problems occurred with dependency graph setup. //
I have updated all script files for the tool as of today.
Maya 2014 Win 8.1
Note. I did adjust Z scale of root mover for the size of my final mesh. Shouldn’t this be reset to 1 with freeze transforms? If so, it would not allow me to do so stating that the Rotations have been locked. How would one go about accomplishing this?
I found a solution that worked for me. It`s a temporary workaround though so a fix would still be nice.
To fix the issue all you need to do is select all the joints you are missing in the influence list, then shift+select the mesh, go to the “skin” tab and choose “add influence” from the dropdown menu. you should now see the former missing joints in the influence list.
But here is the downside:
Once the joints are added to the influence list, the skin weights are lost and you will not be able to import them if you exported before adding the joints to the influence. So be carefull using this methode or do it before you start painting weights.
Hello Originally I was having a problem getting a control rig built bc the box wasnot sizeable but I fixed that in the Skeleton UI script however now when I am trying to open edit existing so that I can export to UE4 I am having same problem with the whole box not showi g so I have no options… I am very frustrated as I need new animations for my project and bought Maya specifically bc it was supposed to have a direct link into UE4. Please help
Hello I’ve tried to read through all of the posts to check to see if this has been answered before. I’m coming from a programming background so this is probably really simple and I’ve over looked something.
When I am using the ART tool i cant seem to move anything around all i seem to get is the white dotted selection box. I cant move the skeleton or anything and its getting a little frustrating. I’ve tried watching a whole load of videos to see if there is anything I’m missing but I’m coming up trumps.
Cheers.
PS. forgot to add I’m using the student version if that helps.
Ok I fixed this box sizing issue again through the script. If you go into Maya Animation Rigging Tools file, through Unreal Engine file. Find PY File Named: customMayaMenu (should make a backup before modifying just in case) when file opens run and quick search/change and search for sizeable = False and change to sizeable = True . Save file open Maya and now when you choose edit existing character you should be able to grab the edge of the box and drag it out so the edit export file and edit rig file options are accessible.
It’s a feature that will project the proxy geometry skin weights to any meshes it finds in your scene. To be honest, it’s not something I ever use. One of our animators requested it, but I find just adding the smooth bind with a really high dropoff value (400) gives better quick weights than trying to line up proxy geo in such a way to get the best projection.
The root mover is totally okay to have a scale value on it (not the root joint though!). It really does sound like you’re still getting an old error that has since been fixed. If you copy the ART_SkeletonBuilder_UI.py file from the dropbox and overwrite the one stored locally on your machine, it should fix it for ya. If not, please setup a thread on answer hub and we can take a look!
