'Referenced Rig'?

#1

Is there a way to reference an external rig ‘model’?

I have an incredibly simple ‘rig’. Like a car, for example, it has a body, suspension arms, and wheels. The rig is animated, but not rendered. Instead, rim, body, and tire choices are rendered as children of the rig. We are building up a large collection of rims and body parts and the scenes are getting really crowded; as I add passes, it’s getting exponentially slower. Changing the active pass now takes more than 12 seconds.

I want to break the scene up into several scene files. The problem is that the animation is not finalized yet, so any change in animation would require going into each scene file and pasting the updated animation onto the rig. We may end up with hundreds of scene files.

Is there a way to animate and export a rig, then import the rig and enslave meshes to it? That way, I could change the animation of one file, and the other files would update automatically, like a referenced model.

I tried a referenced model, but it won’t let me attach the element parts (rim, for example) to the model/rig because the model’s hierarchy is ‘locked’ (understandably). But if referenced models exist, so must referenced rigs, right?

#2

How are you attaching the parts to the referenced rig? Did you try pose constraining objects to the referenced rig? Constraints should work, parenting won’t.

Eric T.

#3

You Rock Eric, Thanks. Pose constraining works fine, but…

It’s my first time using referenced models and I must be doing something wrong. I can’t get my models to update properly…
Fail version 1:
0- export animated rig model
1- import rig model to new scene, constrain rim object to rig, save
2- open new scene and import rig
3- modify animation (add crash and roll)
4- export edited model and replace the original emdl file (ideally)
5- open rig with constrained rim: only has old animation
6- Model>Modify Model>Update Referenced Model: No change

Fail version 2:
4- export edited model as new file
5- open rig with rim: only has old animation
6- Change Model source file to the new edited emdl file: No change

Work around:
6- change RefModel source to unrelated model and load, containing only a cube for example (no animation)
7- immediately change RefModel source to new ‘crash and roll’ source: SUCCESS!, but…
… pose constraint lost
8- Re-Constrain object to ‘crash and roll’ model

It seems that when I update the model, it keeps the animation keys from the last model if all the new geometry matches the old geometry, explaining why step 6 and 7 work in he work around. Unfortunately, step 8 is problematic for a large number of referencing scenes.

I tried it with animation mixer both ON and OFF. I must be missing something simple.

Thanks again for all the support.

#4

Here is the way I would work it:

Create the car rig in a model named: Car_Rig_Model
Export the model with NO animation on it.
Import into new scene as a reference model.
Animate the car as needed.
Store the animation as an animation clip.
Export the animation clip to an external file.

Create new scene and import Car_Rig_Model
Constrain rims to necessary part of Car_Rig_Model
Open the mixer for the Car_Rig_Model
Import the external animation clip onto the mixer
Animation should now be seen on Car_Rig_Model and rim should follow.

Keep in mind that if you change the name of the object that the rim is constrained to in your reference model, the constraint will be lost next time you load your scene where it is constrained.

I am not a big fan of putting animation on the models that are referenced into a scene. It keeps you from editing the animation if needed and dirties up the work flow in my opinion. Animation should be stored as animation clips to keep the reference model clean and at a neutral state.

#5

Thanks for the suggestions.

I’ve never been much of an animator and the tools are foreign. I’ve taught myself as best I can to try using ‘animation clips’, which I assume are Action Clips in XSI jargon.

I exported a new rig emdl file without any animation on it.
I stored all the previous animation into a ‘MYanimation’ clip.
I even managed to export the clip.
Loaded the empty model, imported the MYanimation clip to explorer.
Apply>Action returns: “Invalid Argument” at the bottom. Okay… can’t apply it, so…

I can import the clip into the Animation Mixer, and it works fine; the model performs as it should. BUT, everytime I close the Animation Mixer, XSI crashes. I CAN save the file before I close the Mixer and upon reload it works, but that scares me.

Is there a way to apply animation clips without using the Animation Mixer?
Am I missing a step when trying to use Animation Toolbar>Apply>Action?
Is there a way to reference an Action Clip so that it can be updated (automatically?) in all referencing files, like Referenced Models?

Thanks again :slight_smile:

#6

when you work on reference models, you can store the animation in clips, and then use an animation layer. on top of the clip,
as my experience, the animatino layer dosnt work very well with reference models.
when you save your scene, and open it again, the animation layer is empty, dont know if they fix that bug on 2010 version.

what i did to over come that issue, is i use the animation layer and then plot the animation with the clip + animation layer into a new clip or keyframes every 5 keyframes.

or convert the reference model into local, and then save the scene. that work, but i lose the ability to later make changes on the model, but i can save the animation into a clip, and import it back into a new model, is extra steps, but let you keep working in a linear way.

#7

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