itsjustme

I'll take a look at it late tonight and get it back to you, Rusty.

I think you're right, Rusty...that one slipped by me. It should be "right_calf_bow_0_geom" and "right_thigh_bow_3_geom" for the "right_knee_geom" bone, if I'm remembering correctly. Yes, another one that got by me. Yessir, you got it right. Thanks for going through this, Rusty! If I look at things too much, I sometimes don't see them clearly. I'm going to be updating the rig in the next few weeks (if all goes as planned), so I'll make sure that the corrections are made.

What we were referring to are the illustrations on the CD. The Oz CD has the TinWoodman and Scarecrow from the "TinWoodman of Oz" production that is being made by the AM community. The Yeti CD has Kevin Waldron's Yeti on it. Each version can be referred to by the year or the version number. v13 is 2006 and v14 is 2007. 2D pictures or video can be brought in as rotoscopes or decals. 3D models from other programs can be brought in as props, meaning they would get just an overall object bone...so, there would be limited things you could do with them. You can also import models and convert them to an AM model...that would require some cleaning up on each model. Hope that helps, Nikodim.

Wow! Nice, Lee! When you get time, you have to finish that...it's too good not to.

The latest stable version is v13t...which can be run using the 2006 (Yeti) disk or the 2007 (Oz) disk. v14 is in beta, but should be considered a stable release very soon. With the 2007 disk you will be able to run v14 and any version of v14 that comes out in 2007 (and v13 as well). Hope that helps, Nikodim.

If the compensation is different at "0%" than it is at "100%", there will be movement as you slide the slider. The goal is to have everything stay in place as you change the enforcement. You could also open the Timeline and copy the settings for compensate from 100% to 0%. The instructions don't change often, it depends on what gets added. I can't predict what will change, but the majority of it will remain the same. Hope that helps, Rusty.

Yes, it is for both. Steps 2 and 4 aren't necessary. When in the pose, open the Pose menu, the Pose you are editing will be highlighted in red...turning it on and off won't affect anything (just don't turn on or off any other Poses, those would get recorded as part of the Pose). Hope that helps, Rusty.

LOL! Yessir, I've had a ton of conversations that go that way...text just doesn't work as good as looking over someone's shoulder, that's why I like video tutorials. I didn't cover any of the enforcement tweaks I meant...those are in the face rig. I'm hoping to kick out a few tutorials along the way as I work on a personal project, so I should eventually have a video that shows what I mean. Since you already have a good working knowledge of the face rig, I don't think you're going to have any problems with that.

I needed to push forward so I went back to your wonderful Squetch_Installation videos and found where you reset the compensations. Here you do in fact edit the relationship before doing the . So regarding your reply that I should "edit the relationship after resetting the compensates", I'm going to have to gamble for now and edit the relationship 'in order to' reset the compensates. If I have to go back and redo them I'll be right were I'd be at if I'd waited for your response and anyway, I can see no other way to do this anyway. Cheers, Rusty Maybe I misunderstood you, Rusty...what I meant was, you should reset the compensates before tweaking the enforcements. I'm guessing that is not what you meant. I still don't think I understand what you meant, but the way I did it in the tutorial is what I mean.

so is there any other rigging style that i as or almost effective as sqetch that i can use in AM: 2004?...please say "yes" i'm desperate here... What part of the Squetch Rig? The actual squashing and stretching? You could take out the Hand Gizmo (or re-work it so that it doesn't rely on Expressions) and take out anything that requires Expressions...you would still have a decent rig. Other rigs you could use are the 2001 Rig and The Setup Machine...TSM sounds like the best choice for you if you can't use the Squetch Rig. Hope that helps.

No sir, you should edit the relationship after resetting the compensates. That way you get a true representation of what it will look like when editing the relationship. There are a couple of people that have talked about adding automatic resetting of compensates to the InstallRig plugin, but I don't know how far along that is...I haven't heard anything. Another way to make it easier would be to eliminate the need to compensate...unfortunately, I needed to use compensates in some key places for several reasons. The bones rig for the face uses the upper lip to raise the overall nose and each individual nostril, the upper and lower lip are compensating for the "Maxilla" and "LowerTeeth" bones and those are compensating for the "Jaw_geom". The cheek bones are compensating for the location of some of the nose bones, the eyes are compensating to aim at the eye targets, the eyelids are compensating for the eye bones, etc. There are also bones in the limbs that need compensating due to the split-up nature of this rig. Eventually, there may be an easier way, at the moment I'm not aware of any. I've thought that it might be possible to make a script that would reset the compensates using a text editor, but I haven't tried it. Of course, then you will be dealing with quaternions...math is not my strongest subject. I did some messing with Python and had some simple stuff, but I decided I don't want to spend that much time attempting to program...I'll leave that to people more adept than me. I think that if you can figure out a way to make this simpler, I will do whatever I can to help.

The Squetch Rig relies on Expressions for the actual squetching of the individual bones and Steve's Hand Gizmo, so the earliest version of AM that is able to use it is v11.1 (there are versions for v11.1, v12 and v13/14 on the Wiki page). The InstallRig plugin will work as far back as v11.0, so you could build an installation rig of your own rig for that version. There isn't a complete tutorial for how to build an entire Squetch Rig from scratch at the moment (I'm assuming that's what you mean), but I did make a tutorial for how to build an installation rig that can be used for any rig that also shows how the squetching is done in the Squetch Rig. The tutorial is located here. Does that help?

A wild stab in the dark....when you copied the arm constraints, did you rename the bones in those constraints? If not, they would be applied to the set of bones you copied. The bones you copied would automatically be renamed, so you would either have to changed the constraints to match those names or rename them the way you want. An easy way to do the renaming is in a text editor. Drag the arm bones to an empty model, drag the appropriate constraints to the empty model, save the model under whatever temporary name you want, open the new model in a text editor and do a "search and replace" on the names of everything that will be a duplicate. Then, save the model in the text editor (not as a text file), open the edited model in AM, drag the bones and constraints to the original model and set everything up the way you want it. Hope that helps.

Ah! Ah... and when you want to hide them, do you hide them by hand or is there an easy way to do that too? And is this information somewhere I'm not seeing? I perused the Wiki page -- lots of links -- at least several are broken. r If you want to hide all of the bones at once, hold the "Shift" key down and hide the "body_SQUETCH_base" bone in the PWS...to unhide all of the bones, hold the "Shift" key down and unhide the "body_SQUETCH_base" in the PWS. Hope that helps, Rusty.

Thanks! I forgot all about Squetchy Sam! Now... is there an easy way to make all of the geom bones visible in the Squetchy Sam model in the model view/bones mode? To make the "geom" bones visible in the Bones window, you can just run the InstallRig plugin...it won't affect anything else.

I keep "Squetchy Sam" up to date, you can get him in this post...there is also a link to all Squetch Rig related stuff on the Wiki page (it's also in my signature at the bottom of every post I make). There are a few bones here and there that aren't used in Squetchy Sam...they weren't needed for him, but might be necessary for other characters. He'll give you a good idea for most of the weighting though. Hope that helps, Rusty.

If you can point me at a model that you have rigged and what you want replaced, I can give you a step by step for that, Rusty.

The instructions I listed showed how to get rid of everything except the head stuff on a character rigged with the Squetch Rig, get rid of the head stuff on the Posable installation rig and then combine the two so that you had the head and face stuff from the previously installed character and a new installation for everything else. I went through all of the steps myself to make sure that I didn't give you incorrect information and it worked flawlessly...I got absolutely no errors. If the plugin can't find the parent bone, it just does nothing for that orphan bone. Was the character rigged with some other rig previously? That could cause the problem with not being able to find the parent. If it is a character with some other rig in it, the instructions I gave would need modifying.

Usually, I put the date in every character's name so that I can keep track of them better. That way I know which version is the latest, what rig version I used (or at least close) and what is old enough or unfinished enough to delete. I could put the rig version number in there somewhere if you really think it's necessary, but the way I work it isn't.

Since you're replacing a Squetch Rig head with another Squetch Rig head, you won't need to delete those Poses. The only thing that will probably be needed for those Poses is to reset the compensate on the "head_and_neck_orient_like_chest" Pose.

I haven't heard anything, but I assume it's still being worked on.

When you save out your model, you could include the rig version in the name...that would be one way to do it, Rusty.

Yes. Not really, the rig is complete, but the bone hierarchy has been split up for installation. The InstallRig plugin restores the bone hierarchy. In an Action or Choreography, the rig has Poses that hide all of the bones not used for animating...you can unhide whatever you need using those Poses. In the Bones window, the Poses don't apply, but, the InstallRig plugin will unhide all of the bones with "geom" (the geometry bones) in the name to help you assign CP's if you use that window. I use an Action to assign the CP Weighting for the most part, but I use the Bones window to rough them in. Sure, you could do that. How well it works would be dependent on the geometry changes. You could do that...that's what Rusty was asking how to do, sort of. That's the same kind of plan Rusty is using, his is slightly different. Having a generic character that you tweak the geometry of to make new characters should work fine. Hope that helps.

The Squetch Rig is different from a lot of rigs because the parenting of the bones isn't done in the same way. In a standard rig, all of the bones that the geometry is assigned to are parented much like the control setup. The Squetch Rig isolates each individual geometry bone so that you can squash and stretch every individual joint (and in some instances it's subdivided further than that). That makes it where you can't just drag a control bone in the Bones window and have everything that that bone moves follow, because there are a lot of bones that are tied to it using constraints instead of parenting. If you tried to use the 2001 Rig installation method on the Squetch Rig, you would have a tangled mess. To get around the problem, I put in "INSTALL" bones. I tore the rig apart and parented everything so that moving the "INSTALL" bones (using the rotate, scale and translate modes or poses in the Posable installation rig that Mark Skodacek made) would move everything correctly. The problem with that, is then you would have to go through and delete a couple hundred bones and re-parent everything manually...unless you use the InstallRig plugin (thanks to Noel). The InstallRig plugin deletes any bone that has "INSTALL" in its' name, reparents the bones using the hierarchy that is in the bone's name after the word "INSTALL" and unhides all of the geometry bones when in the Bones window. I made a tutorial that shows the process of making an installation rig that is located here...with that information, you could make your own installation rig that can use the InstallRig plugin. Once you get the bones in place and run the InstallRig plugin, you are left with resetting any compensates that need adjusting (there's a list included in the ZIP file) and CP Weighting. In the Squetch Rig, geometry should be assigned to bones with "geom" in their name. The Wiki page for the Squetch Rig has links to every version of the Squetch Rig, add-ons and tutorials. At the bottom of the page is a standalone version of the FACE setup, three different versions are included (one with just FACE, FACE with tongue bones and FACE with the entire bones setup). At present, I don't have a separate set of hands...but I can always strip out a set if necessary. Let me know if you still want them. I think I covered the questions...if I missed something, I can always try again.