Duplicating Rigged Characters/Synoptic Pages

#1

Hello,

I’m currently working on a scene for my showreel using other people’s rigs for the first time and have hit a bit of a snag. The rig I’m using (David J. Hammer’s guy-v1) has quite a comprehensive synoptic page (or eight) that’s proved useful so far, the problem is when I import a duplicate of the rig as a model the new synoptic page still applies keying/reset actions to the original rig. Is there anything I can do to easily address this?

Also, when importing the rig into a blank scene I lose the layer information that makes the rig so well organised, any way to avoid this?

Thanks in advance for any help.

#2

Im not sure if this will help,

but try renaming the models. Change the model of the first Dave, then simply take out the number on the second Dave.

I think I’ve seen this model before. The character has a beard and is wearing a sweater right?

#3

Not quite, I think I know the one you mean though. It’s linked in the original post, as a model it’s nothing flashy but as a rig it’s very well organised.

I’ll try renaming them, but that could mean importing them into a new scene where I’d lose the layer information, any thoughts on that?

#4

Does anyone else know a better way to use duplicates of the same rig/character in one scene while maintaining individualized synoptic controls <—that’s the kicker…

(Although this is a continuation of johnsonishere’s question, note that I am not using layers but keeping things contained within the character model and scene independent…

My method currently is far too painful:

A) Rename the Model name from, for example, “Character_01” to “Character_02”

B) Create Duplicate Synoptic Pages
[ul]
[li]duplicate all synoptic html pages and rename them with an “02” suffix…for example, if the name of the html synoptic page was “character_main.htm”, I would change it to “character_main_02.htm” for all pages.[/li][li]go into the Synoptic Property of the duplicate rig/character[/li][li]Change the path from (for example) : “Synoptic/character_main.htm” to “Synoptic/character_main_02.htm”[/li][/ul]C) Create Duplicate Synoptic Scripts [HUGELY INEFFICIENT – this is where I need help!]
[ul]
[li]Edit/Rename all scripts to which the synoptic is directed reflecting the change to the character model and/or any internal models within the rig that are automatically “numbered up” (for example, if there was an arm model that was named “arm_model” it would automatically be named “arm_model1” by XSI if the character model is imported or simply duplicated within the same scene.)[/li][li]Test to ensure that all of the changes to 80 or so scripts were done correctly…aaagh![/li][/ul]D) Go on and do this for another duplicate character…aaagh AGAIN!

NOTE that all duplication processes still maintain the same relative hierarchy of the file structure of the original character so that there is not more complex linking issues regarding the scripts and the synoptic.

Any thoughts would be helpful…

#5

It’s because that “guy” rig has the character model name written explicitly in the synoptic .htm files, so even if you duplicate it, you’re going to be selecting in the “GB_face_model” namespace. You would have to duplicate all of the synoptic files and explicitly rename them for each new character.

If you take a look at the default XSI biped synoptic, you can see the way it uses in_obj to get around the model namespace. Your best bet is to ue a method like this in the future.

#6

Thanks for your response tuna…

That’s what I was missing…seemed too complicated for something relatively simple…

In any case, can you suggest any good resources to explain the whole in_obj as I have found some threads and sites that go into them briefly, but if there is anything that you think would be a good primer, I would greatly appreciate it…I’m not an expert scripter fella…

FYI - I am not using the Guy rig but one of my own…and also trying to streamline future rigging aspects of projects as well…

#7

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