Thanks for the pixels. :] It looks like a chained matrix multiplication, something like what you would get with as many different (weighted) childOf constraints ? I imagine if you placed a bone, say on the belly of a character and copy the weights from the nearest vertex onto the constraint targets, you’d get the exact same end position. Nice.
Huh, you’re right. I set two armatures side by side, one with childOf’s and one with armature, and both were the same. Rotation seems to be handled differently, but I’m getting out of my depth here so I’m off back inland 
1 Like
Rotation decomposition has always been weird when blending multiple childOf constraints, not sure what is up with that. It’s also a tad beyond me. 
1 Like
Great great news!
Rigging props, clothes and additional tweak bones will be way much easier thanks to this new constraint.
Is there any info on Facemap custom manipulators? Like what we see in this video:
I haven’t seen anything newer than 2017 on it. I hope it’s not dead as it looks like a clean and intuitive way to control characters.
2 Likes
If I remember correctly those were hacked in, and it was talked of porting them so they’d use the new ‘tool’ backend, but it hasn’t been done yet as far as I know. Right now in 2.8 builds facemaps are there, we can create them but not link them to a controller, I’m afraid - at least I haven’t found how.
Hey, reviving this thread to add in one more concept that I consider very well thought-out : onion skinning with actual outlines (and calculated ones, rather than dynamic - which is bound to be faster) to replace ‘simple’ ghosting, see here :
http://www.graphite9.com/MayaDownloads.html
I’d rather have this than ghosting, actually - remember Sergey saying it would be difficult to do onion skinning because of depsgraph, etc. well this solves it, and it’s not unlike current motion paths which have to be calculated (and can become out of sync, but that’s not too bad is it ?).
1 Like
Since there is some movement on that front, I figured I’d add a couple things to the document (can you spot them?).
Also, here is a reminder for everyone that they’re mostly working on small improvements to the animation workflow for now, not life-changing redesigns. Since the above document contains both big and small ideas in no particular order, and that Sybren has expressed legitimate frustration in getting “nagged” (->my words) by the community (by me, actually) without much of a concrete plan, I’d say this is a good opportunity to really flesh out what we have thought of so far.
I don’t have a lot of time these days for this, so if someone wants to take a crack at mockups, workflow design, etc. they’re very welcome to do so ! You’re welcome to add suggestions to the document, I can take it on me to reformulate if needed and fit into the list, or I can give away editing permissions if necessary.