Guilherme Casagrandi

corestudio
I must be missing something obvious. I want to drive an apex controller rot.z with some chops data. but how? nothing I'm doing is working or is even remotely close.

I think SOPS will eventually replace CHOPS, but it'd be better if SideFX created a better workflow to convert CHOP channels into animation primitives. Right now it works like a channel sop, so the animation is being fed into the rig pose, and the control update parms are just creating a dictionary similar to an attrib adjust dictionary, so the scene add animation will have to sample all the frames to build the full animation primitive (that's why it's slow), but it works.

edit: I forgot to say that although the node's name implies the animation is added, it's actually overriding it (not sure if that's a bug or not; eventually I'll talk to SideFX devs about that). That's why I'm adding the animation as another clip/prim and merging with the motion mixer. Nevertheless, the motion mixer is quite good, and it's easier and faster to tweak the mix there.

I'm using that to add noise to a helicopter animation for a show.

Thanks, @kevinthebright, for adding my link here.
I know the feeling, but there are some reasons I think are worth thinking about before that decision:

• Apex is in development and has different premises than other DCCs rigging frameworks. So it may or may not have the tools you expect in the next release. I'd guess it'll take 2-4 releases for it to start settling down, when users get the hang of it, and SideFX makes a final decision on the workflow that best fits its users.
  
• Nevertheless, if your rig breaks, you must be able to fix it, or the project may halt. So, being able to wrangle with Apex may be something good to have in your bag of tricks.
  
• Usually, having a custom workflow will allow you to work faster and also stand out from most artists.
  

I have a similar opinion about the components, that's why I've been building my own. The graph gets messy really fast; that's why Apex Script seems far better suited for the job. But you must have a well-defined workflow, so even after several components are built, a messy graph won't stop you from changing it or adding more features.

I recorded 20 videos about apex and apex script. 17 will be released on Fri on my YT channel. Hopefully I'll address some of your problems... I know how it feels.
Rig builder is amazing but I believe we must know how to deal with pure apex to customize things.
So I decided to share a bit of what I've learned so far in a series of YT videos. They will be out tomorrow on my channel.