Automatic Hand Rig V1.0 (very complete rig, complete naming tool, easy to use)

[twedzel]

You are missing bones and control for your metacarpals.

[cyberman2]

You don't need any bones or controls for the metacarpals unless you want extreme hyper hyper hyper hyper realism. And that won't make a big difference at all. You can achieve hyperealism without them. I never saw any hand rig with controls for those. If you still really want them to move, you can fake it by translating the first fingers' controls, starting from the interior of the hands.

[softocean]

Have you looked into the automatic rigging toolkit (zooCST)?

http://highend3d.com/maya/downloads/mel_scripts/animation/2874.html
http://www.macaronikazoo.com/

Perhaps you can build on the work that was already done there?

[meljunky]

Is their the ability for the pinky cup? Noticeable when you touch the tips of your thumb and pinky together and when you make a fist. Also, it will have to have atleast two rotations for this to happen. It would be a nice feature to have.

You MEL script seems pretty solid. More notes throughout would me nice..debatable with who you talk too. I notice that you repeated code about [a-z].. In the same procedure
Example...

string $alphabet = "a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,p,q,r,s,t,u,v,w,x,y,z";

Their is no need to redeclare $alphabet so many times in one procedure in reference of the SDK. This would be a great use of a local procedure to handle the SDK for you. Would makes changes easier.

When you names layouts and fields for your GUI, keep them more personalize to prevent conflicts with other people scripts. Personally for example I use something like beRN_searchField_TF, to name a textfield. It seems long but has meaning...
be: Refers to my name
RN: RenameIt, the name of the script

searchField: General purpose of what the field is
TF: Textfield
It makes the textField and other UI elements very descriptive and leave little chance of conflicting with someone else script.

Hope that helps,

-brian
www.meljunky.com (http://www.meljunky.com)

[prettyh8machine]

Nice little thing. I didn't have a look at your code so can't really comment on that but here are a few suggestions regarding functionality and UI:

- The UI can be a bit less cluttered and more standardized. You don't have to write so much on the buttons and labels; its good to be concise in terms of putting text on UI elements. May be you can design some good icons. You can put the description in tooltip text instead of the frame. You might wanna have a look around at other Autorigging user interfaces or general applications. I know it's a very small thing but I've realized that when you're presenting a piece of code to artists, all they care about is how pretty and homely the user interface is. The spaces between the buttons and other components shouldn't strain the eyes and so on and so forth. I think there are huge books on topics of HCI and a programmer always find them rather boring so I'll just stop it :D

- I personally think that it's very tedious to make an ultimate hand rigger that caters all kinds of SDKs that people want to use for fingers. Cupping is one thing, offset is another..etc. The point is that more useful would be a generic tool within this autorigger that can let you set multiple keys at once etc. which people can use to quickly SDK their fingers. Instead of trying to hardcode the options for spread and curl, you may do well with a more general purpose SDK window.

Just my suggestions. You don't really have to agree :)

Cheers

[mfiorilli]

Hi guys,

Thank you very much for your replies and for taking the time. Your suggestion were highly interesting and I will, for sure, take them in consideration for future work on this script.

I know there are not a lot of notes in my script, and most of them are in french. The reason is I wasn't thinking of releasing it on the web and it was just for myself. I never though someone would take the time to read it! I was very glad and surprise when I read your post meljunky. Your advices are very very constructives.

Concerning the UI, you'r totally right prettyh8machine but I unfortunatly didn't take the time for that. Since I was doing it for myself I didn't care much about this aspect hehe. But yeah, it's true, the UI could be much better looking. I was very interested with your suggestion for a generic tool for the SDK. I didn't think of it but now that you give me the idea, I think it would be much usefull then the current system.

I was amazed how right your comments were. Usually, I don't agree that much on people's comments because they don't always seems that good. But I have to say that I totally agreed with yours guys, all you said was absolutely right!

Again, thank you very much guys and be sure that your goods advices will be highly taken in consideration!

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