Tools

Although I am very comfortable in C#, all my rig supporting tooling was written in Pymel, and often leveraged Pyside 6

Auto-Rig: FK IK Limb

  • Standard FK / IK setup with blending

  • Can scale from 0-3 twist controls on upper arm or forearm

Helper Script: Create UI Line

 This script was created to reduce the time to create UI lines, which is a common action in rigging
  • Select two objects

  • Run the script

  • Position and group clusters

  • UI line appears which follows the two selected objects

Helper Script: Analyze Meshes

This script was created to help give early data on how optimized an asset would be
  • Select the meshes you want to analyze

  • Run the script

  • The script editor will print:

    • How many meshes are selected

    • Of those selected meshes, how many vertices exist

    • How many joints are skinned

    • How many non-zero skin weight influences exist

Helper Script: Print Meshes

This script was created to capture which meshes are attached to a particular joint
  • Select the joint you want to analyze

  • Run the script

  • The script editor will print:

    • The names of all meshes attached to this joint

Helper Script: Print Joints

This script was created to print the joints skinned on a specific mesh, in order to select them easily when skinning and transferring weights onto new meshes
  • Select a mesh

  • Run the script

  • Script Editor will print out all joints skinned to selected mesh

    • Usability, I then copy it into a pm.select() tab to quickly select those joints again

Helper Script: Transfer Skin Weights

This script was created easily transfer skinning from one joint to another
  • Select the old joint, the new joint, then the mesh

  • Run the script

  • The new joint will be added as a new skin weight, the skinning will be transferred, and the old joint removed from the skinning

Helper Script: Change NURBS Color

This script was created to quickly set NURBS colors
  • Select the Controls you want changed

  • Run the script

  • Select the color from the dropdown

  • Run

Helper Script: Rig Cleanup

This script allows you to unfreeze and unhide all channels without using the Channel Control, Select all items with a string in them, lock and hide attributes by type, or lock and hide all attributes and hide visibility on any selected item(s)
  • Run the Script

  • Use the search field to use the select feature

  • Select which fields you want to lock and hide and press the Lock & Hide button

  • Unlock Unhide all with associated button

  • Lock and Hide all attributes and visibility on a given control

Helper Script: Was Control Used?

This script is useful in post mortem analysis, when determining if a rig was "over-engineered", or (in the "print joint" version) when determining if there are any bones that can be safely excluded from LOD0 when doing skeletal LODs.
  • Open and animation and select the Root Control

  • Run the script

  • The script editor prints all controls that do not have changing keyframe data on them