if this belongs rather in the rigging forum, feel free to redirect me. However I suspect what I am trying to achieve is not possible without resorting to a little scripting, so…
Basically I’d like to be able to access an object’s custom property from another object. I know some of the “reference” rigs out there (like for instance the CookieFlex rig) have this possibility, but they’re using an embedded script to create an interface in the toolbar and I haven’t figured out which lines exactly made it possible (I can barely read Python yet).
For example, in the CookieFlex rig, you have access to the arm’s IK/FK switch from both the hand’s FK and IK bones. Seems like none of the bones actually have this IK/FK property, instead it looks like they’re pointing to a property located somewhere else.
I’ll try to explain it another way, who knows ? maybe it will ring a bell with somebody :
I have an object A and an objectB. Object A has a property called “xyz”, and I can access it by selecting object A and scrolling down to the “custom properties” panel. What I’d like now, is be able to see and modify this property just the same when I have object B selected instead. It wouldn’t be another property : it would be the same xyz that we all know and love, referenced, or pointed to, from object B (something like that I can only guess).
If no one has any idea about this I’ll have to resort to dive into Python. It looks very frightening.
But if you want to have 1 property… why not just add it to the scene in stead of a specific object? I’m thinking there’s probably an easier solution than learning drivers/python.
Thanks for your input macuno. However creating a property in the scene’s data does not make it appear in the viewport panel so it requires navigating to the scene panel, scrolling down… hence extra clicks and extra effort spent.
How would you go about the driver solution ? I already tried the following : one “real” property (let’s say an IKFK switch) and two others controlling it. But how do I say which one takes priority over the other ? Python expression ? I couldn’t make it work.
I’ve just learned how to do this in Maya, tried to replicate it in Blender, unfortunately it doesn’t work. Anyway, in Maya you would have to create an attribute (or property) on the shape (that is, on the mesh instead of the transform) and instanciate that object, so that both transform nodes point to a single shape node. Selecting any will display the attribute we created, because it’s linked to the mesh data that’s shared across the objects. In Blender, I tried creating a custom property under the object data tab, but it won’t display in the sidebar either, so… pointless.
