Rig System

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The Rig System allows the user to create different kind of advanced rigs easily with just some parameters and a template of points that can be used to define the position of the different parts of the rig. The created rig will be an open system composed by several independent components like bones, helpers, controllers and solvers that can be modified, replaced or removed by the user.

It creates rigs with a hierarchy of bones and a set of control nodes that the animator can use to manipulate the rig. All the nodes of the rig are stored in 3 different types of layers for their easy access, one for bones, one for helpers and one for control nodes. There are several types of rigs available, like biped, quadruped, centaur, insect, and different types of sub components to assamble together customized rigs.

The rig limbs can have IKFK solvers for easy animation of Inverse and Forwards kinematics. The feet can also have reverse foot with parameters for controlling different movements for walking. It can also have an IK spine, which allows the user to animate the spine of the character more easily. And the limbs can have twist bones that can be bent and stretched in a cartoony fashion way if the character requires to do so.

It also provides UI Panels with pickers and other UI Controls, that can be used to access and manipulate more easily the different parts of the rig.

Additionaly a face rig with a bone based system can also be created by just defining the position of different points of the face in a similar way that is done with the other parts of the body of the character, this face can also have an UIPanel for accessing the controls easily. Alternatively a Morpher based system can be created, in that case the morphs can be easily animated with 2D sliders in the UI Panel of the face.

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Creation Method

Create panel > (Systems) > Standard > Object Type rollout > Rig button

Click and drag in the viewport to set the position and size of the Rig template. You can access all the parameter in the Modify panel, where you can choose the type of the rig, and turn on and off and change the number of it's components.

Points Template

With the rig template you can manipulate several points in order to define the proportions of the different parts of the rig, you can access those points by selecting the rig system, then going to the modify panel and then press "1". You can also access them by clicking in the arrow in the left side of the word "Rig" in the base of the modifier list and then clicking in the sub object "Point". Then you can select any point and start moving it to the desired position. You can also select and manipulate several points at the same time.

After setting up the rig parameters and the template points, just press the "Create" button to create the rig with all its components.

Bones Based Face Rig

To add a face rig to your character, go to the Face rollout and turn on the "Face" checkbox, by default the bones based face rig is turned on. After this the face rig points template is displayed so you can adjust the position of the different part of the face, like the eyebrows, eyelids, nose, lips, etc. After adjusting all those points and the points of the body you can click on the create button to create the full rig.

Morpher Based Face Rig

You can also create morpher based rig interface that can be used to animate the morpher modifer. For that turn on the "morpher" radio button in the face rollout and create the rig. After that the full rig is created including a UI Panel that contains all the sliders used to animate the face morphs, those sliders are connected to an empty morpher modifier where you can assign the different morph targets.

The modifier is stored in an object that is called "Morpher", you can just copy that modifier and paste it in the head mesh of your character and assign the respective morph targets. The connections with the UI Panel sliders will be kept and you can start the animation process. For a list of all the morph targets that have to be used please click here, or click in the image below.

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Parameters

Create Button

When pressing this button the rig will be created with all his components.

Reset Button

When pressing this button the rig will be reset if it was created, the rig's nodes will be removed from the scene.

Type

In this list you can select the type of the rig.

Rig Name

Here you can define the name of the rig, the created nodes and layers of the rig will use that name as a prefix.

Size

This parameters controls the size of the rig.

Draw On Top

When this is on, the rig draws the points and lines of the template of the rig with the Z buffer turned off (which usually causes it to appear in front of other objects).

Side

this parameter controls the side of the rig (Right, Left, Both).

Affect Children

If this parameter is ON, the transformation of a point of the template of the rig will affect the transformation of the children points.

Affect Mirror

If this parameter is ON, the transformation of a point of the template of the rig will affect the mirrored points.

Mirror Relative to Parent

If this parameter is ON, the mirrored transformations of the points of the template of the rig will be relative to the parent points.

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General Parameters

Colors

With these controls you can define the different colors used for the display of the rig point template and the wirecolor of the control helpers.

IKFK Solvers

If this parameter is ON, the rig system will assign ikfk solvers to the limbs of the character.

Auto IKFK Match

If this parameter is ON, the ikfk solvers will be set up with automatic match.

Twist Bones

If this parameter is ON, the rig system will create twist bones in the limbs of the character.

Sub Controls

If this parameter is ON, the rig system will create sub controls in several parts of the rig.

Bendy Controls

If this parameter is ON, the rig system will create controls that allows the user to bend the limbs of the character.

IK Spine

If this parameter is ON, the rig system will create an IK Spine system for the character.

Reverse Foot

If this parameter is ON, the rig system will create a reverse foot system in the feet or paws of the character.

Root Bone

If this parameter is ON, the rig system will create a root bone that can be moved independently, useful for characters that need to be exported to game engines.

Support Bones

If this parameter is ON, the rig system will create support bones, these bones are useful to keep volume in certain joints of the rig, like the shoulders, elbows and knees.

End Bones

If this parameter is ON, the rig system will create small bones at the ends of the bone hierarchy.

UI Panel

If this parameter is ON, the rig system will create UI Panel with several UI Controls to select and manipulate the rig controls.

Pose Kit

If this parameter is ON, the rig system will create a Pose Kit for the character rig controls.

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Current Type Parameters

With these parameters you can enable or disable certain parts of the rig and you can change the number of components of those parts (Like number of finger, toes, spine bones, etc).

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Face Parameters

In this rollout you can define the type of the face rig, it can be either bone based or morpher based. In the case you are using a bone based system you can set the number of controls and bones for each part of the rig (eyelids, eyebrows, lips, etc). You can also enable/disable the creation of the face rig with the "face" checkbox.

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