Yet another ARTv2 post. Feedback, bugs, requests. [USER=“2385”][/USER]
Requests
When re-entering the skin weight tool can it remember last selection and select the module automatically? Possibly the last selected influence too (have an option for that one maybe)
When a build rig fails the revision number is still increased, unsure if this is intentional
Mesh slicer always fails with this error (only tested in one project)
# Traceback (most recent call last):
# File "D:/04_Development/ARTv2_Git/ARTv2/Core/Scripts\Interfaces\ART_Publish.py", line 2096, in continueToCreateThumbnail
# newMesh = utils.splitMesh(mesh, name)
# File "D:/04_Development/ARTv2_Git/ARTv2/Core/Scripts\System\utils.py", line 1034, in splitMesh
# influences = cmds.skinCluster(skinCluster, q=True, inf=True)
# RuntimeError: A single deformer should be specified in edit/query mode.
Skeletal Mesh Exporter has group nodes that are incorrectly added to hierarchies despite having their own sections in the tree view. Furthermore, accidentally selecting one of these group nodes will cause the exporter to fail with this error:
# Traceback (most recent call last):
# File "D:/04_Development/ARTv2_Git/ARTv2/Core/Scripts\Interfaces\ART_ExportMeshes.py", line 1716, in export
# utils.exportMesh(self.mainUI, meshValue, pathValue, boneValue, poseData)
# File "D:/04_Development/ARTv2_Git/ARTv2/Core/Scripts\System\utils.py", line 799, in exportMesh
# cmds.skinPercent(skinCluster, mesh, prw=0.001)
# RuntimeError: Need skin cluster node name.
#
When the Skeletal Mesh Exporter fails the progress bar remains and there is no clear indication that it has failed, the script editor shows the error but it’s especially unclear if it’s a repeat error, the progress bar should disappear and a message box should pop up saying it failed, look at the script editor, with an OK button.
When adding a character for animation I get the message box ‘No characters in scene. Would you like to add one now?’, even though there is and it works fine. Minor issue really, I just click no. Also occurs when loading one of my animation scenes. At a guess, whatever checks for a character is giving the wrong result.
Feedback
Setting the rig pose wasn’t entirely self explanatory until I had fiddled around and realized the way it’s intended to be set, the slider and two buttons threw me off a bit and I wondered why the pose wasn’t sticking and why updating moved the slider to the max. Now that I understand it (didn’t really take long) it makes perfect sense and it’s logical. Perhaps a help button that explains the process would be welcome here for less experienced users?
A build rig can fail due to a naming conflict, I think there should be an initial scan for naming conflicts before even asking what project/group/name you want because going through the process and having an error is a big time waster.
This… may not be the place to ask this question but why make the ART (or V2 for that matter)? Put simply, what makes this toolkit better than what one can get out of other third party skinning and rigging solutions that presently exist for Maya and how well does this tool (and its V2 counterpart) cooperate with them? I understand that this tool was created and is used in a UE4 pipeline and is streamlined. But I don’t just make characters with two arms and two legs. I don’t know if the skinning tools are that great. I don’t even know if the rig it creates can be easily extended with other tools or if this will save me much time compared to the time spent learning the tool itself.
I can’t find answers to that. To get my own answer I’d need to learn + work with the tool. It doesn’t look awful but neither does Maya’s built in auto-rigging tools or, again, the plethora of free rigging tools that exist. I just want to know what the ART’s objective is, how well it succeeds in a solo indie dev environment (no one else to pass the model off to other than the engine), and whether I’ll be screwed if I need to take my human rig and extend it to make him / her a centaur (for instance). Albeit that’s probably the worst example due to a myriad of reasons.
Blendshapes? Twist joints? Offset Controllers? Bridge Joints? Deformation rig? Modular components for ease of reuse? What if I find out I need to add or remove some geometry? Can I easily transfer skin weights for ease of integrating multiple clothes?
V2 is modular, you can add as many arms and legs (and more) as you like. I don’t really care to answer the main question, just try it yourself, it’s not hard to use and you can just open the sample character to test the animation tools. As for your last paragraph you can do most of that regardless of any tool, there’s no reason for it to do it for you, adding and removing geometry is just binding it to the skeleton and transferring skin weights is simply the copy weights tool under the Skin menu. And yes it can do twist joints.
I really think you just need to try the tool for yourself, it’s a huge time saver, I don’t know what other options are out there but I don’t feel the need to find alternatives when I’m using ART. V2 is much better than V1 albeit in alpha (has bugs, missing features).
I’ve got some experience with rigging and binding and understand the process quite well. I just made the mistake of thinking that Modo was capable of more than it is. Without digressing too far I’m now aware that Maya is better for rigging, binding, and animation but know very little about the exact details with regard to the third party tools. It seems clear that the V2 is better but appears to be too incomplete to use in its current state without needing an assist from other tools. I’ll test it out, though. I’m trying to avoid learning a framework before I learn the language so to speak. Like when I looked at the ART my main concern was that it would lock me out of using Maya’s integrated / other tools or something strange. This came from saying that the ART V1 can’t export skeletal meshes? And then showed this long process of exporting the mesh using the ART V2
So I wasn’t sure if that meant that I’d be unable to access the rig or mesh in order to do anything else - the thought being that the ART / ART V2 = Walled Garden system so to speak. Then in this thread there are reports of the toolkit crashing, undos not working, ect. And I felt the need to get a quick rundown before investing my time. But uh… I guess I’ll just check it out?
Should I use V2 or V1, then? And, if V2, does the documentation / videos for V1 more or less match up? I’m aware of the videos / docs on Github and can apply reasoning (: Just want to know how much has changed.
And. Seriously. Sorry for all of the questions. A full month ago I BEGAN rigging my character in Modo using a lengthy video course + some online google searches. Two weeks straight later and, while trying to fix my character’s shoulder deformations, I found a video course that explained Everything to me. Stupid well. A couple of Maya things later and I realized that Modo still isn’t that great for rigging / animation and that I needed to go for Maya. I also learned that the course I’d spent 2 weeks on was a joke. It explained nothing, purposefully wasted time to prove a point, and the rig itself was of poor quality. So I’ve got a Maya 30 day trial and I’m trying to get as much done in that time as possible while also learning web dev + using the knowledge I’ve gained to properly prepare my original character model for deformation. It’s a lot, so I didn’t want to spend any of that time poorly.
Edit: So I just went through the list of third party tools. All but two of them were either outdated or required a purchase to use for commercial products. So uh… I guess there’s /not/ a lot of 3rd party tools I’ll be using. Unsure why I was referred to them. Anyway. Have a good day.
Sounds like ARTv1 inability to export skeletal meshes has more to do with LOD models. Bone removal, weight transfers, etc. You’re not being locked out, Maya just doesn’t have an easy solution to this. What is the video course that explained ‘everything’ to you? Always interested in new techniques.
Sorry, it seems as though quoting is the only way to reply as far as I can tell. Anyway, I watched the RHLW videos on - it’s very good at explaining pivots and whatnot alongside a great deal of examples for specific rigging and modeling problem solving. Other than that I watched “Low Poly” and studied the models on my own, did a lot of research on Pinterest and Google for specific topology help… The Last of Us (and all of Naughty Dog’s talks, really) has a really good solution / alternative to blend shapes that’s well known by now but I wasn’t aware of… There’s an interesting trick where you use two bones for the elbows, shoulders, and kneecaps (1 above, 1 below) instead of one… I mean it’s just a ton of stuff and overall what I’ve learned is that there are a lot of different solutions and the ones you choose depend on the situation. One of the better things I learned and am employing into my models for the game I’m working on is having multiple hands and just swapping them in instead of having a rigged hand. It’s lighter on performance because you’re not deforming anything and on top of that you get to adjust the hand manually to solve anything you might want to. It wasn’t explained to me, it was just something I picked up on while dissecting so many GameCube / 360 era models. You set each hand to a bone as a rigid rig and just toggle visibility in the animation or in-engine. It doesn’t cost an extra draw call and rigid is cheap because no deformation. I haven’t done this yet as I’m still designing the characters but that’s what I’ve theorized. Oh, and of course you still make and rig the hand to begin with. You just put it into separate poses and more or less save them out as the rigid models. I’m targeting laptops so that’s probably going to be a pretty good performance boost in my case.
also why my model does not go black if i want to paint weight on certain modules pls? It just does not go black and does not show me the influences and where to paint… Bug ?
EDIT:fixed need to be in renderer view 2… interesting
Hi, i want to make an animation with ART using two mannequins, but they get named mannequin and mannequin1 and have the same icons which makes it difficult to know which one i have selected. How can i rename them and give them different icons?
Can someone give a brief description of the state of ARTv2? Is it partially functional? Would I be able to animate a character an export those animations? I’m currently using Maya 2017 and I cannot for the life of me get ARTv1 to install correctly. For some reason during the first bootup I see the error "// Error: file: C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2017/scripts/others/hikCharacterControlsUI.mel line 329: Object ‘hikCharacterList|OptionMenu’ not found. // ". I can load up a character but I can’t use the Character Rig Creator. I’ve heard that ARTv2 is for Maya 2017 but is not functional yet. So how functional is it?
ART v2 has a huge bug with the ankle. It keeps giving it a strange rotation even though I have corrected it multiple times. For some really strange reason it’s aiming the ankle at the ball joint and trying to prevent me from setting it to something usable. The ball joint *does not *go on the floor, it goes in the center of the foot if that’s some kind of validation for this. But ultimately just give me the control I need to rig my characters?
Any time I go ‘Edit Setup’ everything I’ve moved is reset to it’s original position too, so if I make modifications I have to move everything all over again.
Mesh slicer could ask which meshes to slice instead of just doing any weighted meshes (as such I don’t use it, especially because I have simplified meshes that weighting is transferred from in scene)
Ask if you want to update rig pose before generating sliders as it’s a very very lengthy process
Hi guys, i have a problem running the A.R.T 1.0, on maya 2017 sp4. Everytime that i start a new scene or open a new file, ART change my scene framerate to 30fps, if i remove the userSetup.py this problem disapear. I was looking in to the code and the problem seems to be on these lines:
def launchCustomFileLister(): import customFileLister reload(customFileLister) customFileLister.UI() #setup script jobs scriptJobNum = cmds.scriptJob(event = “NewSceneOpened”, launchCustomFileLister ] ) scriptJobNum2 = cmds.scriptJob(event = “NewSceneOpened”, mayaTools]) the userSetup is creating a fucntion def launchCustomFileLister(): and calling on the new scene opened event, this function is calling a module (customfileLister) that i couldnt find it in the scripts folder. Have you seen this before? could you help me please? thanks
So… Is this dead? There have been no updates to the core ART files by OP in 4 months. Unless you have 4.16 installed you cant download the base files as intended. I like using this plugin but its far from production ready. Anyway thanks for the plugin its far better work then what I can do, especially for free.
is no longer working at Epic, so, as far as I understand, there won’t be any updates for the original ART tool. He is, however, still working on ART 2.0 - his last dev blog update was three days ago. It looks like it’s going to take quite a while until 2.0 is “feature complete” and ready for the official release on the UE4 marketplace though.
Unsure why I was referred to them. Anyway. Have a good day.
