Hello

I've a couple of KineFx questions.
I understand it's far from finished in terms of complete rigging and animation tool.
But already it seems very powerful.
I've botched up a biped rig from scratch - it's really clean and quick and i'd love to use it in a production environment.
Promotion of parameters to HDA - all good.

But to animate this i run into a few problems…

Selecting controllers in a rigpose state seems too tricky to use.
Appears i can't multiple select more than one controller at the same time. I can shift select.
If a controllers handle lays over a different contoller i would like to select, i struggle to select it (At object level aniamtion i can hold S).

Hopefully i'm missing soemthing.
I'm also struggling to understand how i would setup HDA's, animate and visualize multiple characters/props in the view port.
Would they all live under one Geomtetry node. Could they all be visable concurrently?


Any suggestions / insights would be greatly appreciated.
ta

I was also curious if there was any intention for animation controls. I don't find the rig pose tool appropriate for animation control either,
- Seem unintuitive to build control hierarchies
- The secure selection constantly locks the viewport (this happens with obj controls as well but less frequently)
- As mentioned above, you can't select multiple points

Instead I went ahead with a hybrid Sops and Obj solution. I've attached an example. It isn't wrapped up into a rig hda but it should show a possible approach to handle rig controls.

Thanks CShannon,

Snap, I gave up with the rigpose, and like you dragged in null ctrls from Obj.
Kinda got a biped working quite nicely.
It's way faster than a Obj level rig stuffed full of Chops and IK bone solvers. And infinitely quicker to change proportions.

But it's a real shame bout the rig pose. There's a load of functionality lost by having to pull in Obj anim.
Hopefully that'll get some love in the near future.

Hello toefurchris,

I too use controllers from object context to drive my kine FX RIG. I am sure new additions will be added to KineFX and SOP context in the future, and especially to the rigpose node

Chokmah
Hello toefurchris,

I too use controllers from object context to drive my kine FX RIG. I am sure new additions will be added to KineFX and SOP context in the future, and especially to the rigpose node

If the controllers from obj level are not causing the same slow down as tons of CHOPS, that is already a step up from what we had. And adding the intuitive approach for retargeting made it all worthy, maybe not specifically for the character animation but definitely ads more freedom in procedural workflows.

I was wondering how you are guys dealing with it and if you have an automated way for creating those controls at the OBJ level? I've changed a few pieces in Attach control HDA in order to have an easier/faster way of creating controls and to automate that process.



I would love to hear your thoughts about it and maybe we can share our tools to automate it.

hi Hektor.

I'm doing pretty much the same. By hand though - so I'd love to see how you've automated this with your script.
Also dragging in null transforms directly from Obj level. But you lose a bit of functionaltity that way.
There appears to be a few Kinefx nodes that are surprisingly slow, so i'm currently looking at dieffernet options for those.

It's all cool though - and we're using this in a production right now. In all honesty there's more niggles on the animation side of things than the rigging. Hopefully that side of things will get some love too.

Hey @toefurchris Yes, Kinefx is amazing, no comparison to what we had before. I've quickly uploaded a few HDAs and that script on git hub: https://github.com/kamilhepner/kinefx_tools [github.com] feel free to check it out.

It will be great to keep this project growing: any HDAs, tools, or tips and tricks welcome as well.
Currently creating those controls on the object level is a workaround. Hope that in the future lots of those nodes with python sop in them will be rewritten.

Cheers,

Just committed an update to tools on git hub. Lots of updates that I think you guys will find interesting.
Most importantly now you can promote your controls to HDA with one click, as well you can easily lock channels on "Attach Control Geometry" node. Check out git hub and tutorials:

https://github.com/kamilhepner/kinefx_tools [github.com]




Cheers,

Amazing Hektor,

These look really good.
I'm knee deep in a project a the mo, but i'll check them out soon as the heat is off.
Incidently, how are your rig speeds?
I'm finding them pretty good - once i've worked around a few slow nodes.
Suspect that the viewport is limiting them a little, but seems good.
ta
Chris

Thanks Chris! Speaking about the speed, it's so so. I wonder about your workarounds to speed up the rigs. Currently the biggest bottle neck is characterblendshapes node, and (suprinsigly) rig pose - which is very unfortunate.

Not sure if characterblendshape can be replaced with normal blendshape node, and if those blendshapes will be exported down the line to FBX.

Speaking about rig pose, I have few of those. E.g for spine, then for legs, then arms. Slowes one is that one on top of the chain (spine)

Cheers,
Kamil