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woadiestyol
03-31-2010, 06:36 AM
Hey all,

I'm having an odd slowness problem in a rig I'm working on, and was hoping someone might be able to point me in the direction of rig elements that are more or less heavy. The character is a biped, and this is the first rig I've tried to use the Aaron Holly-style ribbons on, so I'm wondering if that could be the cause. I have 2 per limb, plus the spine (so 9 total), and they're created with joints parented under hair follicles on the ribbon geometry, 5 joints per ribbon. My geometry is pretty light and I don't have any history on it...the rig runs at about 30 fps with the skinned geo off, and about 20 with it on.

Here's the file if anyone wants to take a look. The skinning is really awful and there's a couple parts that haven't been hooked up, but I'm trying to figure this thing out before I spend too much time painting weights in case I need to rebuild something.

RC Rig v87 (http://www.canyourigit.com/downloads/RC_rigB_087.zip)

If anyone has any other general tips, I'm all ears. I don't generally use expressions, try and make direct connections where I can, etc - but something in here seems to be bogging this down. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
animatedfox
04-08-2010, 10:33 PM
Don't have time to check out your file...but check out the Heat Map display options for Hypergraph. Maya help has info about it...good to find the most computationally expensive parts of a scene.
A place to start at least.
~Ben
woadiestyol
04-09-2010, 03:25 AM
Awesome - had no idea that was there :)

I think the answer to whether the ribbons are a major culprit in slowing the rig is a "yes." The reason is that any time a limb moves at all, the skinCluster that controls the nurbs surface that the ribbon is on has to recompute. When I activated the heat map diplay and graphed my whole rig, everything was blue except for these skin clusters, which were all purplish-red. Makes sense, but the heat map really clued me into seeing how many things were calculating when the character moves. If the body of the character moves, 9 of these skinClusters get calculated (as do all the point and aim constraints on them) - never mind the skin cluster that's actually deforming the character!

Thanks a bunch for the tip. I see myself using this a whole bunch in the future, especially before committing to tying my whole character into a system like this.
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04-09-2010, 03:25 AM
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