 |
bittnerRiggingTools
This is a collection of many tools that help you weighting,
working with joints, and working with blendshapes.
Source all 5 MEL-files, and type: "bittnerRiggingTools"
Tested with Maya 6.5
some examples:
the jointTools-Tab:
Place closest Joint
to selected Points
After selecting some points and pressing this button,
Jointtools looks for the closest joint to the selected points,
and moves it exactly into the middle of all of them.
the orientation is crap after that... just reorient it - or
use the button Rebuild Joints
Create blending Groups
if you select an object and press this button, it creates
a point-constraint with the blending parameter from local
to global.
after pressing the button, move the created local- and global-group
into the right hierarchy, where you want them to be.
Rebuild Joints
When you place your joints, you might use the move-tool and
also rotate them... or even scale them - like it should actually
not be done.
But with this tool you dont have to worry so much about it.
It rebuilds the joints.
Then the orientation is - in most cases - good. The Rotationparameters
are set to zero, and you only have one value in the translation-parameters,
that is not zero. And you have no scale-values different than
1.
Create Cubes
this creates a cube for each selected Joint and aligns the
size to it.
Its useful, if you want to check, if the joints are twisting
correctly.
the infobar
In the bottom of the window you can see exactly hwo many joints
are selected and how many of them are skinned.
Select...
you can select for example all joints in the hierarchy of
a selected object, all joints with a certain name in it...
the weightingTools-Tab:
The Jointlist...
In the first FrameLayout you have all joints listed that are
used for skinning the selected Object.
copy - paste of points
this tool is most useful, if you have some small mistakes,
for
examples only three points are not right. Or if you have one
point, you want to be painted exactly like other points, but
you don`t want to enter they weights manually.
Select one point, press "copy point", then select
the
points, where you want to paste the weights on, and press
"paste points"
copy - paste of the whole mesh
"create skincluster and copy weights" works
almost like copy weights in smooth-skinning.
Select the weighted object and the object, that doesn`t have
a skincluster yet, and then press this button.
the other two buttons are useful, if you want to have your
skinning be cleaned up. It just reApplies smoothskinning and
copys all the weights again to the new created skinCluster.
Bind Pose
you can move around a joint, that is already weighed with
smoothbinding.
after pressing "reset skinCluster", the start-pose
is reseted. So the poly-object "jumps" back into
the origin-position.
You can have eather joints or the poly-mesh selected.
Set weights 100 % to the most weighted joint
this tool looks for the joint with the most weighted values
of each point, and sets the value of this skin-joint to 100
%. So the result is something like a rigid-skinning.
Lock weights of unselected bones
if you use for example "smooth-painting", you don`t
have much controll, where the weights are painted to. With
this tool you can lock all the bones, that you dont want to
effect and unlock bones, that you want to be affected by weightpainting.
Select the skin, and the bones that you want to be affected.
And then press this button.
Lock weights of selected bones
does almost the same, like "Lock weights of unselected
bones", with the difference, that it locks weight of
selected bones, and unlocks the others.
create corrective joint
select for example the elbow and press the button "corr.Joint(aut)".
this creates a joint, which is automatically orientated in
the middle of elbow and upperarm.
you can also use the sliders for quicker tweaking.
Rigid Skinning
here are some buttons for rigid skinning.
Mirror Weights
Add Deformers
Copy Weights
...
the blendShapeTools-Tab:
Mirror Blendshapes
before you model the blendshape, and the object is still mirrored,
select it and press "create invisible Mirrormap".
after you modeled one side, press eather "from left to
right", or "from right to left"
Split Blendshapes into left and right
select the base-blendShape, create the interpolationcube.
then select the blendshape, and press some of the other buttons
(left-side, right side, or both sides)
Select other Components
This tool is useful, when you are creating correcting-blendshapes".
For example: you want to remove the "shrinking volume",
when the elbow rotates. If the geometry is quite high, you
might not know exactly which points are which points in the
blendshape.
So you can use this script: Select some points, edges or faces
of the "main-object" and let it select the same
points of the "blendshape-object".
|
