okay guys i been trying to wrap my head around this whole squesh rig and in turn the instal rig feature and was coming up with some issues. I've looked through the boards and could not find a defined answer. I am primarily an animator so rigging is only a means to an end to me. I am unclear as to why the installrig is used. Is it just a to be considered a short cut(if so I don't see how cause you still have to assign bones and poses after the fact) or is this how bone rigs are made(i.e. the 2001 skeleton rig, which i have been using from the start(ver9)).



To bottom line everything.... after I move all those install bones into position and wizard installrig, what's actually happening. would it be any different if i adjusted the installbones AND assigned the geometry and worked from there? (like the 2001 skeleton) I admit to being a scavenger. I take the things I find and like and integrate them into what i already use. I'm kinda like Itsjustme in his most recent post where i really just want the facial setup (and maybe the hands too ) Can someone explain or direct me to a link that does?

The Squetch Rig is different from a lot of rigs because the parenting of the bones isn't done in the same way. In a standard rig, all of the bones that the geometry is assigned to are parented much like the control setup. The Squetch Rig isolates each individual geometry bone so that you can squash and stretch every individual joint (and in some instances it's subdivided further than that). That makes it where you can't just drag a control bone in the Bones window and have everything that that bone moves follow, because there are a lot of bones that are tied to it using constraints instead of parenting. If you tried to use the 2001 Rig installation method on the Squetch Rig, you would have a tangled mess. To get around the problem, I put in "INSTALL" bones. I tore the rig apart and parented everything so that moving the "INSTALL" bones (using the rotate, scale and translate modes or poses in the Posable installation rig that Mark Skodacek made) would move everything correctly. The problem with that, is then you would have to go through and delete a couple hundred bones and re-parent everything manually...unless you use the InstallRig plugin (thanks to Noel). The InstallRig plugin deletes any bone that has "INSTALL" in its' name, reparents the bones using the hierarchy that is in the bone's name after the word "INSTALL" and unhides all of the geometry bones when in the Bones window. I made a tutorial that shows the process of making an installation rig that is located here...with that information, you could make your own installation rig that can use the InstallRig plugin.

Once you get the bones in place and run the InstallRig plugin, you are left with resetting any compensates that need adjusting (there's a list included in the ZIP file) and CP Weighting. In the Squetch Rig, geometry should be assigned to bones with "geom" in their name.

The Wiki page for the Squetch Rig has links to every version of the Squetch Rig, add-ons and tutorials. At the bottom of the page is a standalone version of the FACE setup, three different versions are included (one with just FACE, FACE with tongue bones and FACE with the entire bones setup).

At present, I don't have a separate set of hands...but I can always strip out a set if necessary. Let me know if you still want them.

I think I covered the questions...if I missed something, I can always try again.

Thanks Itsjustme, I think I understand now but just to make sure........
The bones with geometry attached are just guided by other bones that are set and constrained to perform.... whatever they are set for. the installrig "embeds" the bone functions to the model and tells the software how to read it depending on where you are working(modeling, bone, chor) once that's done you have your model?

Now, let's say i complete a model using the face install rig. so I have this head with all the poses and targets. Is it now a base structure I can use? Like if I had another head with different geometry(we'll say slightly different facial features, but no real proportion difference) could i just swap out the geometry and make the adjustments?

Could I take my completed head and import a body already boned and just child the neck where needed? or would it offset the "true" control bones on the head rig.

I ask because time is always against me (that lines probably from a movie) I can't always make entire models from the ground up so I have template body sets(fat, thin, heroic..) and template heads all boned and ready to be tweeked and combined. The rigs are great, but it would be limiting on time if by using them it cuts in on this versitlity.

Yes.



Not really, the rig is complete, but the bone hierarchy has been split up for installation. The InstallRig plugin restores the bone hierarchy. In an Action or Choreography, the rig has Poses that hide all of the bones not used for animating...you can unhide whatever you need using those Poses. In the Bones window, the Poses don't apply, but, the InstallRig plugin will unhide all of the bones with "geom" (the geometry bones) in the name to help you assign CP's if you use that window. I use an Action to assign the CP Weighting for the most part, but I use the Bones window to rough them in.



Sure, you could do that. How well it works would be dependent on the geometry changes.



You could do that...that's what Rusty was asking how to do, sort of.



That's the same kind of plan Rusty is using, his is slightly different. Having a generic character that you tweak the geometry of to make new characters should work fine.

Hope that helps.

Yes it did!! thanks Itsjustme you are the best. I now have new motivation to master those rigs.