TO THE STARS - TOOLS
All the tools and scripts I've developped for my graduation short film.
LIGHT AIM
Problem:
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We had a lot of lights that were character centered, but the lights couldn't aim which made the process quite slow.
Handiness is what we were looking for here.
Solution:
I wrote a script that allows the lighter to move the light freely around the object. It can be one or multiple lights, and the last object selected would be the lighted object (mesh).
CONTROLLERS NORMALIZATION
Problem:
For the facial rig, I made an UI on orthographic view so the animator would animate more easily the character face without having to look for missing controllers. The controllers activate the blendshapes and the combo blendshapes, and for the controls to be more ergonomic for the animators, I normalized the controllers so it would simplify the animation process.
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Here is the issue: I want all the controllers normalized, and there is a lot of them. Since we want the facial rig UI visuals to match our blendshapes, it's better to have the controllers as the same range as the blendshapes.
Solution:
To resolve this problem, I wrote a script we used to reload the rig references. There were two rigs, one for the human (Serguei), and one for the dog (Laika).
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I just needed to select all the controllers, export their animation in ATOM in the right directory with all the proper settings, delete the old reference, import the updated rig back as a new reference, and then import the ATOM again on the same controllers.
How I would upgrade the tool:
I would add a feature to create the controller and mirror them to make the UI creation more efficient.
The tool would be able to create limitations on the controllers as well.
RELOAD
REFERENCE
Problem:
Sometimes, the rig would break when using the native Maya reload reference when a rigger would make too big changes in the rig, while animators were starting animation.
It makes the work annoying for both the riggers and animators.
Solution:
To do so, we need to have the controller transform and the controller offset, so we could change their scale value. I've created a controller scale UI, so the rigger doesn't need to give a value by hand and can change the range visually. To help the visualization, there is a plane connected to the controller which shows the max and min range.
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I gave the UI a range of possible values (which become the value of the offset scale), and by changing this value, it changes alongside the controller transform scale value as well (which is 1/offset_value).
Limitations:
We could reload one rig at a time, the rig name and the shot the animator was working on needed to be changed by hand. Constraints needed to be baked.
How I would upgrade the tool:
- I would create an UI that would allow the animator to choose
the shot they're working on and the rig they want to update.
- The tool would support constraints.