Julian Davidson

Wouldn't claim to be an expert in any way shape or form, but, off the top of my head:

• The component or rig::ControlSpline / rig::SampleSplineTransforms nodes should be able to get you a lot of the way there in terms of driving your joints with a curve.
  
• Procedural density should be doable (in the graph construction not the animate state). You're still going to have to do the weights though.
  
• For closing the mouth sop::fuse should work pretty well for basic things. Just put it after the bone deformation and set it to pick up a group on the geometry to fuse. You might want some fancier logic to blend it in, but should give you a start.
  

malexander
It looks like this is working for OpenGL in the current daily build, at least on my Linux box. If it's not for you, could you post a hip file?

This should be pretty easy to reproduce on MacOS. I've attached a video and hip file showing the GL viewport not updating unless you copy and paste the preview material in COPs (20.5.298 - M2 Ultra)

It does feel that the viewport on MacOS is creaking somewhat, perhaps unsurprisingly given that the OpenGL version is circa 2013. Really hope that 21 brings an updated viewport, so that there's (hopefully full) cross platform feature parity.

Speaking of outdated graphics technologies, do wonder if the OpenCL support on MacOS might become an issue sometime - that's also stuck in the past, but doesn't feel like OpenCL has evolved particularly.

I'm not too fussed by missing out bells and whistle (volume AO is nice, but I can still work), but more core functionality; COPs being an obvious one, but also things like the Texture Mask Paint and some other bits and bobs.