Juss Rig It

Weight Painting - Maya 2011

2011-06-25T11:28:00.000-07:00

I was using Maya 2011 and could not get used to the new weight painting system. To weight paint like how we used to in the previous Maya (2009 and before), just go into the Paint Skin Weights Tool options, change the "Normalize Weights" from "Post" (default) to "Interactive". A message box will pop up and ask if you want to normalize the weights, in which I prefer to pick 'No'. Normalize Weights is accessible from "Edit Smooth Skins option" if I need it later.

joint Zero-ing

2011-02-04T15:06:00.000-08:00

Here's a simple Python script that is used to zero-out selected joints' or given joint's rotation value and joint orient value.

INSTRUCTION:
For the first argument, 'jointName' is used to specify a given joint name. If you intend to run the script for selected joints instead, give a 'None' or do not use this argument at all. It is defaulted as 'None' though. Second and third argument is 'rot' and 'jo'. Give it a 1 to 'rot' to zero-out rotation values or a 1 to 'jo' to zero-out joint orient values. Otherwise, give them a 0 to do nothing on that particular arguments.

EXAMPLE:

1) This will zero-out rotation values for joint1, but its joint orient will not be affected:

jointZero (jointName='joint1', rot=1, jo=0)

2) This will zero-out rotation values and joint orient values for all selected joints:

jointZero (rot=1,jo=1)

FULL SCRIPTS (to run before hand):

def jointZero (jointName=None, rot=1, jo=1):

   if jointName == None:

       sel = cmds.ls(sl=True)
       for joint in sel:
           if rot == 1:
               cmds.setAttr ('%s.rx'%joint, 0)
               cmds.setAttr ('%s.ry'%joint, 0)
               cmds.setAttr ('%s.rz'%joint, 0)

           if jo == 1:
               cmds.setAttr ('%s.jointOrientX'%joint, 0)
               cmds.setAttr ('%s.jointOrientY'%joint, 0)
               cmds.setAttr ('%s.jointOrientZ'%joint, 0)

   else:

       if rot == 1:
           cmds.setAttr ('%s.rx'%jointName, 0)
           cmds.setAttr ('%s.ry'%jointName, 0)
           cmds.setAttr ('%s.rz'%jointName, 0)

       if jo == 1:
           cmds.setAttr ('%s.jointOrientX'%jointName, 0)
           cmds.setAttr ('%s.jointOrientY'%jointName, 0)
           cmds.setAttr ('%s.jointOrientZ'%jointName, 0)

Note that this is a very simple script. Fail-proof procedures are not added. So make sure your selection type is 'joint' and no rotation or joint orient attributes are locked or non-keyable.

That is all for now. Hope this sheds some lights to the blog's viewers.

Animation Transfer Script

2011-01-11T23:26:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine was asking me if it is possible to have a script that can save the animation data into a text file and load the saved animation data text file into another object. So I wrote a simple Python script that could perform such operation. It saves the keys as well as its animation curves and tangents.

The GUI is pretty simple to navigate. There are two tabs, LOAD and SAVE. To save out animation data into a text file, first select the object with the animation that you like to save out. Then click 'Browse' to browse to a directory where you want to save the text file containing the animation data. You can specify the start frame and end frame, as well as choosing the channels you like to save such as translate, rotate, scale and visibility. I made an additional custom attribute if you ever need one. The 'Save Data' button executes the saving data script. And to load the animation data, all you need to do is to choose your object, click 'Browse' to select your saved animation data text file, and decide whether if you like to remove the current keys on the selected object by ticking the checkbox. A click on 'Load Data' will executes the loading data script.

That is all.

Download link: Python File : jwAnimTransfer.py

** Note that this script is very simple. It can only save 1 object's animation at one time. Not that great, I know! Well, if you have any suggestions to make it more useful, let me know. Thanks!

Joint Labeling

2011-01-04T00:09:00.000-08:00

I developed this script about a year ago. It is used to rename the joint labeling and set the 'side' of the selected joints according to their prefix. In my case, I used 'cc' for center, 'll' for left side and 'rr' for right side. You may modify that to suit your preference. It is important to make sure the name on both sides of the selected joints are the same except its prefix. The script is as below:

# Import Maya functions
import maya.cmds as cmds

# Prefixes change here

leftSide = 'll'
rightSide = 'rr'
center = 'cc'

def jointLabeling ():

    sel = []
    sel = cmds.ls (sl=True, fl=True)

    for i in sel:

        afterName=i.split ('_', 1)[0] # take the starting prefix and check
        afterNameTwo=i.split ('_', 1)[1] # take the obj's name and check

        if afterName == leftSide:
        cmds.setAttr ('%s.side'%i, 1)
        cmds.setAttr ('%s.type'%i, 18)
        cmds.setAttr ('%s.otherType'%i, '%s'%afterNameTwo, type= "string")
        print 'Labeled %s prefix called %s' %(afterName, afterNameTwo)

        if afterName == rightSide:
        cmds.setAttr ('%s.side'%i, 2)
        cmds.setAttr ('%s.type'%i, 18)
        cmds.setAttr ('%s.otherType'%i, '%s'%afterNameTwo, type= "string")
        print 'Labeled %s prefix called %s' %(afterName, afterNameTwo)

        if afterName == center:
        cmds.setAttr ('%s.side'%i, 0)
        cmds.setAttr ('%s.type'%i, 18)
        cmds.setAttr ('%s.otherType'%i, '%s'%afterNameTwo, type= "string")
            print 'Labeled %s prefix called %s' %(afterName, afterNameTwo)

IK Spring Solver

2010-12-15T00:00:00.000-08:00

IK Spring Solver is useful when posing and animating limbs that have numerous joints such as insect legs. The most prominent function is the ability to adjust the spring angle bias to keep the joint angles to be evenly distributed. To use this IK solver, it has to be activated through an easy MEL script:

ikSpringSolver

Through the Internet, there are many people who bumps into problems while using this IK Solver, especially when performing world rotation that seems not to affect the joints rigged with IK Spring Solver. This problem has been a plague since Maya 7.0 and no rectification is being done up till Maya 2009 (which I am using) to make it behave properly.

The only available fix to it, is to have the first joint of a series of joints bounded to an IK Spring Solver not to be parented to its whatever parent. That joint shall be parent constrained to whatever parent it supposed to be, instead of directly parented underneath them.

Note that IK Spring Solver will also break if you choose to parent the joints under a transform node and choose that transform node to perform the required parent-constraining. It is okay if you parent constrain the joints to whatever parents it supposed to be as described above, and group the joints in an empty transform node for clarity purposes.

I guess that is as much as I could explain. Please do drop a message if the problem persists, or my instructions being unclear.

Returning multiple values from a Python function

2010-02-22T23:00:00.000-08:00

I was working on my Python scripts. Then I came to a point where I require more than 1 value to be returned from a function that I wrote. Usually, functions in Python can only return one thing, but the one thing can be a collection of items - tuple. The returned values can be broken down into a bunch of variables:

# Create a function as below, with three returns:
def addme(num):
v1 = num + 15
v2 = num - 10
v3 = num * 2
return v1,v2,v3;

# Running the function:

main = addme (15)
sA, sB, sC = addme (15)

#By printing main, main will be equal to (30,5,30):

print main

#By printing main[0], main[1] and main[2], you'll get individual values of 30, 5 and 30 respectively:

print main[0]
print main[1]
print main[2]

#Or, another way would be printing sA, sB and sC; you'll get 30, 5 and 30 respectively as well:

print sA
print sB
print sC

'It has non-zero rotations'

2010-02-18T17:00:00.000-08:00

If you ever try to joint orient some joints that has rotation values, an error message ' It has non-zero rotations' will appear. This script is to remove unneeded rotation values on joints and apply them to their joint orient attribute. The position will not be affected. After applying this script to the joints, these joints can now be joint-oriented:

import maya.cmds as cmds

import sys

sel = []

sel = cmds.ls (sl=True)

for i in sel:

rot = cmds.xform (i, q=True, ro=True)

print rot

jrot = cmds.joint (i, q=True, o=True)

print jrot

newjrotX = rot[0] + jrot[0]

newjrotY = rot[1] + jrot[1]

newjrotZ = rot[2] + jrot[2]

print newjrotX

print newjrotY

print newjrotZ

cmds.joint (i, e=True, ax=0, ay=0, az=0)

cmds.joint (i, e=True, o=(newjrotX,newjrotY,newjrotZ))

Note that this is never advised to be done unless in some circumstances. It is always better to keep your joints clean with its values early on and not relying this script to alter the joint orients and rotation values at later times.

Modeling bumpy polygon plane

2010-02-12T05:00:00.000-08:00

This simply Python script creates bumpy surface on a polygon plane by altering the Y position of each vertex points in a random manner. The User Presets area can be edited according to your needs.

import maya.cmds as cmds

import random

#User Presets Below This Line-----------------

numberOfVertex = 10200 # Number of vertexes

pName = 'pPlane1' # Name of polygon plane

loR = -5 # Lowest point of bumping

hiR = 5 # Highest point of bumping

mult = 0.1 # Magnitude of randomness

#User Presets Above This Line-----------------

for i in range(1,numberOfVertex):

    vtx = ('%s.vtx[%s]'%(pName,i))

    cmds.move(0,(random.randrange(loR,hiR)*mult),0,vtx,r=True,ws=True)

Note that if your polygon plane is very high in resolution, it might take longer to complete depending on the processing power of your machine. I tried 10000+ vertexes and it took my computer's Maya about 30 seconds to complete.

Don't panic if Maya froze during the process!

'File contains unknown nodes or data'

2010-02-10T21:00:00.000-08:00

Some people happens to run into a problem when trying to save a Maya Binary (.MB) file to Maya ASCII (.MA) file. An error message would pop up mentioning, 'File contains unknown nodes or data. To preserve this information, the current file type cannot be changed.'

In this case, you can write this MEL script to look for the 'unknown' node(s):

ls -type unknown;

A list of unknown node(s) will be generated.
You can delete them by typing:

delete `ls -type unknown`;

By deleting the unknown nodes, the problem should be solved. =]

UPDATED 12.01.2010 :
Thank you to Ariel for adding extra info.
If it says "Cannot delete locked node", make sure you get the name of that node and select it, and then type:

lockNode -l 0;

Then type again:

ls -type unknown;

delete `ls -type unknown`;

That should do it.

Juss Rig It

2010-02-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

Officially online!