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View Full Version : Referenced Geometry in a Character Rig

Coyote12
03-09-2009, 07:23 PM
At work we use a referencing system to the character rigs we use and give the animators. So the other day I was thinking why don't we do the same with referencing the geometry as well and then rig that. Since the geometry of my character is locked and will not be changing I figured it was safe to try this.

One thing I did notice after binding the refrenced geometry to the skeleton was that the shape node of each piece changed from saying Shape to Deformed. I was going to continue to experiment with this and see what pro's and con's there may be in doing this but I wanted to start a thread and see if anyone else has done this and discuss what results they may have had.
BoostAbuse
03-15-2009, 03:00 AM
Works fine for just about any pipeline unless you foresee there will be a lot of topology changes done to the model. I've always worked with the model, skeleton and control rig in separate files where the model gets referenced into the skeleton file, the skeleton file gets referenced into the rig file and the rig then referenced into the animation files. I've found this works best as it allows me to easily track changes or make changes and do it in a layered approach.

The caveat to this is if your characters topology changes it can get a little crazy, small changes are fine but when a modeler does a near complete overhaul it can break quite a few things. This is one reason I like to do my binding in the skeleton file first before applying any control rigs so I've got a real simple scene to work with and make changes to.

OT: Noticed you're at the VR Studio, does Daniel still run the show over there?
Coyote12
03-15-2009, 03:08 AM
Thanks for the reply Boost. Massive topology changes was the one area I saw that could be a problem but glad to know others have done this and it has workable solutions to any problems. I had not thought of referencing in the skeleton so I think I will try that as well.

And yes Daniel is still running the show over here. Only I should update my profile since they changed the name of the department.
BoostAbuse
03-15-2009, 04:34 AM
The nice thing about compartmentalizing these stages is it makes any scripting you do fairly easy to maintain and even easier to code sanity checks should you need to double-back and make sure things are ok or batch changes. Modeling changes aren't too bad if you're prepared for them, I keep all weight files stored per character in a depot I can easily access or refer to should things change. When I read the weight files in I just pass a quick barycentric algorithm if the topology has changed to try and evenly distribute the weights across the mesh but for large topology changes this can only do so much.

Cool, I interviewed there years ago and the studio was up in North Hollywood in a high rise.. Daniel was running the show back then too.
Coyote12
03-15-2009, 09:32 PM
The compartmentalization was why I was looking to do this. That and my geometry is fixed and will not be changing.
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03-15-2009, 09:32 PM
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