Rigging Tool / Technical

WizRig - Versatile Rigging Tool

This was created for my Honours Project in university.  It is a rigging tool for Maya, which was created using Python.  It is designed to be able to rig a vast variety of meshes; as shown, a humanoid, quadruped and fish are being rigged using the tool.

 The basic premise of the rigging tool is a spine is created, then any available body part can be added to any existing joint. This approach means that the rigging tool is extremely versatile and can rig a variety of meshes.

If for example, a creature has 12 arms and three heads, then these can be rigged by simply adding more of the appropriate body parts to the rig, and parenting them to any existing joint as required.  Each available body part has differing options available; for example, an arm has options to add squash / stretch / space swapping / and whether to use an IK system.

The rigging tool also has the ability to load and save rig definitions, but also, if the tool is open, and the user loads a scene with a rig that has been created with WizRig, the rigging tool will give the option to load the rig definition from the scene, and allow the user to change the rig, meaning that if a joint is in the wrong place, it can be amended and the rig rebuilt.

WizRig Demonstration Part One - Rig Building

This shows the rigging tool being used to rig a humanoid, quadruped and fish to demonstrate the versatility of the tool.

WizRig Demonstration Part Two - Rig Demos

This shows the basic demonstration of the rig controls manipulating the meshes.

Mechanical Rigging

AT-ST MCL Variant

A version of the AT-ST from Star Wars.  When modelling, weapon storage was built into the mesh, and two separate textures were created to allow the texture change between normal wear and battle damage.

Features

IK Legs / Single Control Weapon Deployment Animations / Single Control Texture Blending.  

Maya Custom Commands / Nodes

Custom Maya command that is used to move the transform attributes of named or selected objects to the offset parent matrix.  The command can also be reversed and will also work if the offset parent matrix is already in use.  This command is useful for rigging and other processes.  Once the plugin is loaded, it can be called in Python (using the cmds method) and MEL.

krHelpText:  Custom node that allows the user to display 2D Text in Maya's viewport.  The ideal use is when creating tools for Maya, it can display text in the viewport to help the user.  The node can be created manually, or with code.

Curve Creation Tool

This is a small tool that was created in Python to create curves in Maya from stored curve definitions.  New curves can be created and added to the definition files as required.  This tool is primarily designed to help in the rigging process.  

For use, the curve definition file should be loaded, then curves are selected from the drop-down box in the first tab, then created as required.  When a joint is selected, the user has the option to match the transforms so the curve is aligned to the joint.

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