Simple Rigs/Rigify - Multiple Character Rigs Workflow

Support Animation and Rigging
1

I am planning on creating dummy mannequins to be used for various projects. I want a generic adult male mannequin, a generic adult female mannequin, and a generic child mannequin (I might add generic overweight and generic elderly later on). Initially I wanted all three mannequins to exist in one scene with simple rigs (just bones, no complicated drivers, controls, constraints, etc). Now I’m thinking of maybe using rigify, but I have apprehensions because of my experience with multiple rigs in one scene. In my experience, rigs with similar names end up being a conflict in the scripts that drive them.

My main question essentially is: what would be the best workflow for what I intend to do with the mannequins?

What I intend to do with the mannequins:

  • pose multiple mannequins to render an image to be used as a reference for paintings (my main goal in having the mannequins).
  • pose multiple mannequins in one scene to sculpt

The rest of my questions:

  • If I was to go with the simple bone no rigify approach, I shouldn’t run into any problems right? Since there are no scripts/constraints/drivers attached to the bones, there shouldn’t be any complications right?
  • If I was to go the rigify route;
  • Can I have multiple rigify rigs in one blend file or is this a big no no?
  • Is there some sort of naming function in rigify to make sure that multiple rigifys in one scene do not come into conflict with one another?
  • Should I separate the models into different files, rig them with rigify, and link/append them altogether? Is this the best approach?
  • If I go the linking rigify approach, would the different rigs made with rigify conflict with each other once I link them?
  • If I separate the models into different files, can I link to the same file twice? Ie, if my painting/sculpt calls for two male adults, can I link to the generic adult male twice? Would that cause any conflict?
  • Which one is better, linking or appending?

I would like to use rigify because of the ease of using it, but I honestly don’t know much about rigging/linking. I’ll be doing more research and experimentation on this subject today so I’ll update this question later on. In the meantime, any help you guys can give me is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

2

Ugh, you asked too many questions and I don’t feel like reading; I skipped around and am going to say some things that may or may not be actually answering some stuff.
Names/Unique Rigs?
Rigify works as is without scripts; the script is for using the convenient panel for each rig.
Each Rig has a unique ID randomly-generated to the script and rig upon generation (click generate)
The file ‘rig_ui.py’ is also generated but it’s name isn’t important, the ID in it is.

The rig always “work” and if the script isn’t working then you just have to run it (because it didn’t auto-run like it’s supposed to).

Multiple Rigs?
I don’t know; I was looking for how to link multiple rigify rigs.
The panel is important and I don’t want to run the script for both (or more) rigs whenever I load the file

However generation doesn’t work (at least not for me) in the same file for multiple rigs. The script will look for the rig but fail if it’s on another layer, so maybe renaming it would work but I don’t care enough to test that out

If all you’re going to do is pose (not animate) a model then do whatever you want, a simple FK rig (with Auto-IK or simple IK setup) is good enough and hell, you could even do it with AnimAll and/or Shapekeys (where you model/sculpt the pose).

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Thanks Edtion…

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Hey, for the Multiple Rigs part, I found a video with a method for auto-loading the ui script(s): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmQMeuNKv8Q Just select the armature in object mode, add a python node to the controllers with the script, then the script will auto-run again automatically in files where it’s linked..

To do it with multiple characters, you rename their script names individually (must end with .py), otherwise you’ll get multiple panels (and buggy, like only showing with one of them selected)

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Thanks edtion, that video is very very helpful. I bookmarked that informative video.

I’m actually going with just simple rigs with no scripts for now. I don’t want to have to overcomplicate things when I’m not really planning on animating anyways.