Mirko Jankovic
Am I the only one finding APEX way too complex and out of reach for animators and artists, focused entirely on hardcore riggers?

Quite sure literally everyone (SideFX devs included) has realized that now.

Mirko Jankovic
Am I the only one finding APEX way too complex and out of reach for animators and artists, focused entirely on hardcore riggers?

I kind of have to agree with this question. I've done a few mechanical rigs in the past with Blender, off-road motorcycle chassis in particular with long fork and swing-arm suspension travels, so I know a few things in that narrowly focused "mechanical rigging" direction.

I first heard of APEX about 2-3 years ago, and decided to try but the lack of documentation and educational material was too little, so I gave up immediately without even trying.

Two years after I came back and now I tried to rig a simple double-wishbone suspension in APEX and failed miserably. I think I spent a few days trying to figure out that I need to orient the joint correctly so that look-at constraint works as expected and does not flip captured geo. I think I watched 90 percent of Max Rose tutorials online, and some other ones. I still feel clueless. I don't know, maybe its age and lack of free time, but I am not able to do any rigging with APEX what-so-ever without probably investing my entire life into learning it inside-out. It feels like you are required to present a college degree with "A" grades on vector math, matrix multiplication and other related disciplines to be able to use this system. For now I have to pass on this once again, the entry bar is just too high for me.

I want to mention that I really enjoy working with Houdini in general and most of it feels logical and approachable. And I also don't doubt the sheer power of APEX system if used by a person who knows what he's doing.

Perhaps having more high-level tools with easier UI would help make it more approachable. Structured educational series that start with basic concepts and simple goals, explaining the reasons why certain nodes/functions are used. At least for me, I have to wait a few more years to try it again I guess... :/

I started diving into Apex and keep saying to myself why it can’t be simple the way Softimage XSI had its Biped Guides and rigging process.

Create > Character > Biped Guide

Create > Character > Rig from Biped Guide

Bind geometry: Use the rig's envelope group

easy simple steps

Well.... with Claude it can actually be rather simple...I figured I will likely never learn APEX script nor have too much time to dig deeper into rigging itself so... comes in my friend Claude.
First he created me one button shelf to auto rig character.. it takes Electra takes her skelet, gives me GUIDES node to setup proper position for parts even those auto fit gets them pretty close.. then it finishes everything else... it made facial setup as well. still tweaking it but really close to fully working.
For another project.. I told him to convert rig from maya to houdini.. actually to look at rig in Maya.. transfer mesh to Houdini and rig it there to have all those controls... it did it.. So yea not really what I was looking for when all this started with Houdini APEX but it gets the job done for the moment.

For everyone being a bit frustrated with APEX for rigging I recommend tumble rig. It's - in some ways - like rigging in Maya, but without all the Maya trouble and more like Houdini (without the APEX trouble).