Rigify Auto-rigging system: new and improved

#1

Hey everyone,

So I’ve been working on improving the auto-rigging system that we used on Project Durian. Specifically I’ve been working to make it a lot more user-friendly.

Here are a couple of demo videos:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUSyoO2BmaQ (This demonstrates the easiest workflow.)

At the moment the code is not in Blender svn. It will be eventually, but not yet. I’ve also changed Rigify to be an addon, however, so you can try it out anyway. You can get the addon via bzr here:
bzr://bzr.cessen.com/rigify

Note that it only works with recent builds of blender (e.g. not 2.54)

Also, shameless plug: I’m available for freelance rigging and animation work. :wink:

EDIT:
Apparently bazaar is a bit too tricky for some. Here are zip files of the addon:

Revision 41: rigify_r_41.zip

Revision 45: rigify_r_45.zip

UPDATE:
I’ve committed Rigify to Blender svn now. So the addon should automatically appear in builds from now on. You’ll still have to enable the addon, of course.

Future updates will be through blender svn. I won’t be maintaining the bazaar repository anymore.

#2

buh buh who needs this make rigging easy button anyway …
power to the artist and not the tools !!!

Great work Cessen - the demo makes the rigging job look
not so time consuming anymore.

On a second note can something like this also be applied
or constructed to 2 or 4 wheelers?

In the movie you show many pre-made bone sets and I am
curious if one could make a library of bones with or without
constraints suitable for mechanical animation.

In particular a strong focus is on the constraints because
with mechanics it sometimes can get complicated to for
beginners to understand how and what they have to do to
simulate a particular movement.

#3

Really impressive work, and quite handy.

One thing I notice is that on the video you don’t care much about the exact position of the joints, nor the roll of bones, and still works fine. For instance the leg is not straight, bends at the knee to the side.
So, does the script take care of correcting this kind of things and we just place the bones without too much precision?

#4

Awesome !!!

#5

You have to be as precise as you want the rig to be. I was being lazy. :wink:

For most of the rig types where rotation axis’ matter (arms, legs) it rotates on the x-axis of the bone, towards the z-axis. (I actually plan to make this configurable as a rig-type option, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.)

#6

Woohoo! this looks great. Thanks a lot Nathan.

#7

I am not an animator or rigger, and never have hopes to be, but that were really cool videos! Makes me want to fool around with it, and maybe be able to show something to my diehard Maya rig/anim friends :wink: Thanks Nathan!

#8

awesome… o

#9

Preettttty cool, although I would have prefered to see more hugs XD

This shizz is deadly. Great work Nathan!

#10

Amazing work, Cessen. And very helpful video’s. Actually more than helpful, atm they seem necessary to use or understand this properly.

Good luck!

#11

Doesn’t appear to be working using the latest Blender versions (which you say are required). Tried both the OSX & Windows builds from Graphicall. Won’t install (complaining about a missing ‘utils’ module) as an add-on.

Am willing to admit I might have done something wrong here though.

#12

BTolputt:
I haven’t tested on either of those platforms… heh. Don’t have a mac or windows. So I may have done things in a way that doesn’t work on non-linux platforms.

But for the record, the proper way to install it is to take the entire rigify directory and put it in the addons directory:
addons/rigify/<files and subdirectories>

You say it’s complaining about a missing “utils” module. Can you check to make sure the utils.py file is in your rigify directory?

#13

Wow that was great, I hope it gets integrated in blender soon. Is there any chance that it will be integrated in the next release of blender ?

#14

Could we (please) get the addon some other way? bzr is much too complicated (it needs python etc)

Thanks!

#15

Hi Nathan

This a very good and great addon !
Your videos are very promising.

I think for the professionnal animation studio, it will be a very useful feature !

I have tried to use it with windows, i can see it in the addons :

http://blendman.free.fr/blender/2.5/cessen.jpg
cessen.jpg881×589

but, I can’t push “on” the button to add the addon working in blender (the other addons are working, so I d’ont understand why it doesn’t working.

Do you think it will be integrated into the trunk, in a next release ? Because it’s one of the biggest feature I have seen in the 2.5x (with the cache irradiance/GI feature from Brecht ;-)).

Thank you again.

EDIT :
the error in the console :

http://blendman.free.fr/blender/2.5/cessen2_console.jpg
cessen2_console.jpg722×394

#16

Glad to see progress on this project! I was kind of beginning to think that the rigify system wouldn’t receive any further development now that Sintel is finished. I was actually thinking about this the other day and got into snooping around the code, but my python skills are only very basic. (I have managed to script UI controls for rigs, thanks for the reply couple weeks back, btw!)

It is probably too early to be asking this, but will rigify support custom rigs without the user knowing python and hard coding them in? For example, let’s say I want to use a different leg design or maybe I want to rig a mechanical backhoe/excavator or want to create a bird’s wing design. Even if the custom rigs have to be hard coded in python, will the main rigify script recognize new ‘templates’ if they are just added to the rigify folder?

I think this would be most useful as then there could possibly be a repository of rigs created for everyone to use. Say someone wants to rig a strechy/squishy ball, they could download a template, drop it in the rigify folder and make use of it.

Can’t wait to see where this goes!
Randy

#17

I think it’s a very good idea. :rolleyes:

#18

I’m on windows too, and experiencing the same problems as Blendman.

Also I agree that this could be a fantastic feature. It’s probably the one thing I’ve been most looking forward to in 2.5.

#19

I haven’t tested on either of those platforms… heh. Don’t have a mac or windows. So I may have done things in a way that doesn’t work on non-linux platforms.

I reckon that might be a little problem given they are the two most popular desktop platforms for us artists :wink:

But for the record, the proper way to install it is to take the entire rigify directory and put it in the addons directory: addons/rigify/<files and subdirectories>

I know there are two ways to install an addon. There is the manual method of copying the files into the “scripts/addons/” directory which I tried first and there is the “Install Add-on” function built into Blender. Niether worked and that is with a complete wipe of Blender and it’s directories to ensure no cross-contamination between installation attempts.

You say it’s complaining about a missing “utils” module. Can you check to make sure the utils.py file is in your rigify directory?

Did that. Checked the files all copied across as the first thing. It seems that you import things slightly differently from the other “modules” in the addons directory. I might play with that tomorrow to see what pans out.

#20

Nah, that’s what testing like this is for. :wink:

I’ve made some minor changes to how I import things. If you could update and give it another try I’d appreciate it. :slight_smile: