Scripts, Podcasts and MacGuffins!

Been working some on Bokser's film and enjoying that. I can't wait to get past blocking and into animating after the assets are finaled. In the meantime, I think it's time to get some back to the basics exercises going.

• Updated jbExportQss - Got some insight from a poster on Cgtalk and adds some new abilities and squashed some bugs. Still available here. After this one, I think I'm done mel scripting for a while...my brain hurts.
  
  
• Andrew Stanton Podcast - A nice long interview with the director of Wall-E and Finding Nemo.
  
  
• Big MacGuffins - I had never heard this term but this was a great introduction to it and an insightful pose. My meager education in storytelling continues.
  
  
• Another Episode of Simon's Cat - I love these.
  
  
  
• Some amazing concepts - Check out the work of Harald Siepermann.
  
  

jbExportQSS

Quick selection sets are something I use a lot. And I got tired of setting the same ones up repeatedly for work and home projects. There's lots of scripts out there to make working with selection sets easier but I couldn't find one that exported them to use in other scenes, so I rolled up my sleeves...

Download here

TITLE: jbExportQSS
VERSION: 1.5
AUTHOR:Josh Burton
www.joshburton.com

DESCRIPTION:
Script to aid in the redundancy of setting up quick selection sets all the time
for the same assets but in different files. Exports a mel script that will set up
the identical quick selection set in another scene.

Exporting:
1) Select a quick selection sets in the outliner to be exported
2) Run script - it will export a mel file to recreate the sets

Importing:
1) Run the mel in your new file you want to set up the quick selection sets in
2) It will ask you want to add a prefix. If you're using a referenced asset
put in the prefix. If not, leave it blank:)

Features:
1) Checks for referencing data and removes it in the exported selection set
2) Can do multiple selection sets at once
3) Will account for prefixes on import if desired
4) Reports if set members aren't found in imported sets

Thanks:
To David Bokser for answering my many questions and Scott Englert for my picking apart some of his scripts

History
v1.5 - July 14, 2008 - Added the ability to export multiple sets at once into a single mel file, making importing easier. Also,
little quick selection window doesnt' pop up any more due to a flag on the "sets" command I hadn't known about. Several bug fixes
as well
v1.0 - July 3, 2008 - Initial realease

Testing a new Autorigging system...

A classical pose...for a troll...?

Note - This'll prolly be the last update on Olaf for a bit. Some major forks in the road are quickly approaching - 1) I'm getting married in a couple of weeks , 2) Moving to Houston, 3) Transitioning to a freelance/contractor from being an employee so it's gonna be a "wee" crazy. Crazy good that is!

I've been playing with John Doublestein's autorigging system the last two nights and I have to say it's pretty awesome. John works with my buddy Dave and we're using his rig for Dave's film. I hadn't realized a bunch of the neat little features workin so far on the film. He's got some great little right click menus that get built when you rig a character that snap between fk and ik.

You can play with the rig on a character by downloading the Andy Rig on that same page. Some neat stuff I noticed on that version that aren't in the autorigger that I'm planning on implementing to Olaf:

• Squash and stretch through the spine using scale. Prolly will do that in other places too
• An extra curl on the hand that allows that pinky and ring finger base bones in the hand bend for a proper fist.
  

Couple of things I noticed with the rig:

• Some of the systems don't work properly in Maya 2008 - namely the right click menu
• Speaking of Maya 2008, the new smooth skin weights feature is awesome. I saw it in a Austin 3d user group meeting a couple months back and had been dying to play with it.
  
• Joint placement and orientation is critical but this matters regardless of what rig you're using. Having the ability to quickly try out joint placement by quickly adding an arm rig and a default skinning is a great boon to the work flow.
• That workflow allowed me to identify problem areas - I updated Olaf's tail and made major adjustments to the hands
  

What's next for Olaf?

• Facial Rig - This is where I wanna spend some time over the next...well while...got a bunch of things I wanna try. I'm planning on blogging that process pretty well so tune back in if you're interested.
  
• Tail Rig - at some point I'll have to rig his tail, but it'll be a bit
• Animation - That's really the whole point....:)
  

Also....
Fingers are a pain in the rear to model well so that the proportions work to "roll the finger" on itself. If anyone knows a good tutorial or book on the subject, by all means let me know.

Pivot points...

• "Locating Your Center" - No this isn't a philosophical rant. Having such a hard time keeping my own in check hardly would afford me a seat of authority on that matter. Pivot points matter in more than life changes; they have a good deal to do with proper rigging. Some examples might be wheels, orbs and the like. If you start spinning one in 3d and it's pivot point isn't dead center you're gonna get wobble. Like a flat tire.....more on that in my next post.
  
  Today I was rigging a car and for reasons unbenonced to me, the joint for the steering wheel had a pivot that didn't align with the tilt of the wheel. For various reasons I create a separate skeletal hierarchy for the rig and bake the animation down to the skinned hierarchy. Not having the luxury to fix the underlying issue I was looking for a good method to find the exact orientation of a pivot that would allow that wheel to spin properly on the steering column.
  
  To do so, I wanted a script that would find a center pivot based on a selection of verts and place a locator there so that I might snap things to it. I don't like reinventing the wheel, so my first stop was highend3d where a quick search revealed a handy script that did just what I was looking for.
  
  With that in hand, it was as easy as finding the center of two edge loops worth of verts snapping a couple of joints and reorienting the joint to the correct orientation.
  

Quick example with some dummy geometry....

Good edge loops and this little script have aiding the placing of Olaf's finger bones quite nicely.

If you know a faster way of accomplishing the same, by all means let me know.

• Rig for Olaf - I think I'm gonna give John's tools a try for the body. He works with my buddy Dave (speaking of, looks like he has a new site in progress) and we're using the rig on Dave's film. It's pretty darn good.
  

jbGraphSetDrivenAttribute

Last fall I wrote this script cause I was sick and tired of having to manually filter the graph editor with the curves I wanted to edit when tweaking set driven keys on a facial rig. It was useful for me, maybe it will be for you. Eventually I'll add a section of the site for the few scripts I write. And cause I love icons....

/*
TITLE: jbGraphSetDrivenAttribute
VERSION: 1.0
AUTHOR:Josh Burton
DATE: October 26, 2007

DESCRIPTION:
Script for use with setting up set driven key poses. Sometimes you wanna see all the curves
of one attribute in the graph editor and not manually select them.

HOW TO USE:
1. Select an attribute
2. Run script

LIMITATIONS:
- Select an attribute with set driven keys connected

HISTORY:
10.26.07 - BIRTH!
*/

global proc jbGraphSetDrivenAttribute() {
global string $gChannelBoxName;
string $selected[] = `ls -sl`;
string $selAttr[] = `channelBox -q -sma $gChannelBoxName`;
string $fullAttr = $selected[0] + "." + $selAttr[0];
select `listConnections -p true $fullAttr`;
}
jbGraphSetDrivenAttribute;
GraphEditor;

elasti......IK!

My same buddy who pointed me on the script yesterday, dropped another in my lap today. This one looks sweet as well and I shall check it out as soons as I have a few minutes to spare.

ELASTIK is a suite of plug-in IK solvers for Maya. Delivering squash-and-stretch functionality at the touch of a button, ELASTIK makes it simple to create dynamic, versatile, and extensible rigs. elastikSolver

• Auto-stretch
• Adjustable smooth stretch
• Interactive elbow/knee manipulation
• Hyper extension

elastikSplineSolver

• Auto-stretch
• Dependable twist
• Curve sliding

matchBox...

No, not the cars, though they were pretty sweet when I was a kid...:)

This is a sweet looking mel scipt. A buddy from work pointed me to it and I'm putting it here so I don't lose the link:)

Here's what it says of itself:

MatchBox is the result of an effort to develop a universal character flipper that will work with any rig, every time. While animating a walk cycle, poses will be mirror images for the opposite stride. Even though the thought process has been completed for posing the first step, it’s a time consuming process to match the pose on the opposite stride. Match box allows you to quickly reverse and match the poses for a complete cycle. If the starting or ending pose of a cycle needs to change, the leading or ending foot may change as well, requiring reposing of the entire walk sequence. While some tools exist for flipping animation data across an axis, it becomes very difficult if the character is turning a corner or walking on an arbitrary angle.

Icontastic!

A sampling from the year...

So one of my favorite little tasks at work is making icons for the mel scripts we use and create. Scottie is the brains behind our little mel factory here (check his site, he has some goodies up there) and I..well...I make the picturesque little buttons. But I'm learning. I did complete my first major mel script last week that makes captures a thumbnail of a character's face, adds custom text in to label it and render it off to an input location which then became a very small part of Scott's current opus mel project which is gonna be very sweet when finished. One of my goals for the year was learning more mel and I'm slowly chipping away at it. Next on the list is UI Mel creation which my compatriot tells me is "lots of fun."

Giddyap.

Greasy Virtual Pencils...

My buddies told me about this script for Maya a while back and I'd forget. However, I saw a link for a video of the creator (Jason Schleifer) demoing and now I'm sold. Now, why is it called a Grease pencil script you might ask? Well, a lot of animators would draw their arcs and timing data on their crt monitors, then erase it and do it again shot by shot. I'm not sure what folk do with LCD's as I imagine they don't respond so well to heavy rubbing. Either way, Jason has solved that. VERY cool.

Here's the vid.

Why did I leave my Wacom at work!?