Maybe I missed the information, does 2008 rig install as simply as 2001,
just by scaling geometry bones?

And, I tried to find out what in the rig gives you that great FKIK seemless switch?
How do you implemant that? I use that all the time with the Squetch rig, it makes
animation so much easier.

Michel

There is no installation rig for the 2008 rig yet. I haven't tried installing it in another model yet, so I'm not sure if scaling the rig like the 2001 rig will work. The rig isn't finished.

As for the FK/IK switching, say you have 2 bones, bone A orients like bone B when the pose is ON, then when the pose is OFF, bone B orients like bone A. There's alot more to it than that, but that's the gist of it.

Try it. You'll beat that dang TSM if it's as easy as the 2001, (drag-n-drop).

IK Switching is easy to add to any rig.

hhmmm... I was looking for an answer for this question... Mark, please, keep your amazing work on this tool....

Thank you. I did a very quick test on a simple model,
just doing the same thing I would do with AM2001rig,
scaling geometry bones very fast, and auto assign cp's.
In the clip attached, I tried IK switches, left arms go from FK to IK
every 12 frames, a different pattern with left leg.
Those switches alone makes your rig much more fun to use than TSMrig.
I still don't why we can have those seemless transitions now,
and we could not do it a couple years, and TSMrig can't do it.
Click to view attachment
Great work Mark!

Michel

I spent some more time rigging the fingers. Everything is working like the Thom model.
So this new rig is actually faster than TSMrig, once you have placed the geometry bones,
well.. you're done, and ready to animate with a very versatile rig . I join a clip with some finger moves
and a walk cycle. It's bad animation, it's just to show the rig is easily installed on another character.
It's a very basic character, but I don't see why it wouldn' work on any character.
Click to view attachment

Michel

Congrats! (Mark should be proud.)

I am now officially confused, (O.K. Officially still confused), what then is the need for an installation rig?

Mark has stated that he needs to finish an installation rig for the 2008 to be complete. Not knowing a thing about rigging, I've been patiently waiting (Still am ) for a green light that the updated rig was ready for use by an idiot newbie.

Now it appears that no installation rig is necessary? I find myself left with more than just a "couple" of questions.

Regardless, I want to thank you again, Mark, for all your hard work. I have followed the update thread from the beginning and watching your progress through out.

Myron

I haven't tried the 2008 rig yet, but I have installed a few other rigs and even rolled one or two of my own simple rigs in the past.

In the realm of rigging, "Easy to Install" is a very relative term. Rigging is a complex and difficult discipline. To really understand the term "Easy to Install", you must first try to create your own animation rig from scratch. This goes well beyond simply adding some bones and assigning CPs to them.

You must understand:
proper spline placement,
proper bone placement,
which CPs go with what bones,
CP weighting,
Smart skinning,
All types of constraints,
Simple and multidimensional relationships,
Cogs and other types of fan bones,
Using one set of bones to control another set of bones
... among many other things.

After you have spent several months creating your first rig, you most likely don't want to go through the expierence again, unless you are an exceptional person like Mark or David. But you realize your new rig is not flexible enough for all the things you want to do with it, so you ... basically ... rebuild it. However, you really, really, really want to get on with your next big movie, so at some point you just quit dinking with your rig and you start animating with a rig that has all kinds of problems.

Now, someone like Mark or David comes along and spends a ton of time figuring all this crap out and makes a rig that is both flexible and easy to animate with.
You still have to understand the basics of proper bone placements, CP assignments, weighting, multidimensional relationships, and smartskins. BUT - they have just saved you 100's of hours of tinkering with mind-bending arcane technical mumbo jumbo. So the new rig is considered "Easy" to install.

Anyway, that's my take on it.

Michel, It's going to be easier to install once I set it up. I have it setup to use the mirror bones plugin, so the installation rig will only have one side of the rig. Install one side, assign and weight one side, then run the plugin.

Til the face rig is finished, I won't release an installaion rig.

Hash inc added constraint baking (bones hold position when a constraint is turn off), I'm not sure which version it was added. This constraint baking allows the IK/FK switching.

TSM was developed before this change was made, so the rig is not capable of the IK/FK switching.

This topic is great...
I always thought that was my mistake, when I switched IK/FK, and the bone didn't maintain its position....

Is SQUETCH using constraint baking ???

Yes.

Thanks to Michel posting his rigged model in another thread, I found a rig problem in the spine.