Gene and I are conspiring once again, and I'm trying to help by making a couple of variations of the elf model, shorter, fatter etc. I had no problem changing the mesh but I had to move some bones. I could find no way to select the whole rig in bones mode, so I had to move one bone at a time. Shorter, I had to rescale leg and such and drop the arms. Keeping the bones in approximately the same relationship to the CP's assigned to them. But they ended up being difficult to animate with.
I'd be willing to bet that this is ground that has been traveled before by someone, and was just wondering if there are any tips or suggestions that someone might share.

thank You, Myron


Edit: If I select a bone in the PWS that is a parent bone, and move it or scale it in the model window, does it move the children of that bone as well? And what about hidden bones, fan bones etc.

Much depends on the rig that you are using. If you are scaling a whole rig it is just a matter of scaling the model bone, or a root bone that you may have in your rig. It gets very tricky when you start scaling parts of a rig because there are usually at least two seperate hierarchies in a rig, (the geometry rig that your model is constrained to and the control rig that the animator manipulates). On top of that there are usually many bones which are not visible, and not documented, which must retain their spacial relationship with other parts of the rig.

In short, if you study the rig carefully and reach a good understanding of what all of the bones are doing you can do it but it is not as straight forward as you are probably hoping for.

Thanks, Paul,

I think your reply just gave ma a light bulb moment (they are so few and far between, these days).

1. CP's are assigned to the geometry bones ?

2. Geometry bones include fan and other bones?

3. Geometry level bones are then constrained to control bones that the animator manipulates?

Edit: The model and rig I am trying to use is the one that Mtpeak fixed for us found Here I think it may be the 2001 rig that was already on the foundation model.

1) yes

2) yes

3) yes

Thanks, Nancy. I haven't had a woman say yes to me that many times for over a decade!

If you want to move a hierarchy of bones (the parent and it's children) WITHOUT moving the assigned cps, then select the parent bone and then select the translate, rotate or scale manipulators

If you want to move a hierarchy of bones (the parent and it's children) AND you ALSO want to move the assigned cps, then select the parent bone and then select the translate, rotate or scale manipulators AND hold down the ctrl key when you do the translate, scale, rotate. That way the bones and the geometry move in unison.

And yes you will have to move the control bones similarly, (maintaining the same relative positioning to the geometry bones), if you don't want to redo the constraints by hand.

EDIT: Some rigs are much easier to figure out as to which bones are involved - lite rig comes to mind, 2001 rig, and probably 2008, tsm2. If you turn on visibility of all bones - (select top bone, hit asterick) - then you can probably figure out which bones need to be moved/scaled

EDIT2: Only advanced clairvoyants can figure out the squetch rig easily.

As far as "resizing a rig", most of them (TSM2, Squetch, 2008?} are all built on a workflow where you scale and fit the geometry bones to the model, THEN you do whatever step it is that adds the constraints and control bones.

That step is made to do what it does based on where you put the geometry bones, so scaling things after that step is generally the least good way to do things.

You are right Robcat - BUT if one doesn't have the model with only the geom bones, with cps assigned, weighted (as I assume in Myron's case) - or it's just too much of a hassle to isolate that hierarchy from the model:

I've found it easier in some cases - to temporarily create a parent bone (for that branch of the geom hierarchy), drag the appropriate geometry & control hierarchy bones under this temp bone and then do whatever I need to do with the temp bone parent (scale, translate, rotate), and then move the geometry & control bone hierarchy back to it's right place (& delete temp bone) - seems to work, don't have to redo constraints.

I've done this just recently with some hand models (in my library, rigged with tsm2) - so that I can resize, reuse them easily, without having to remodel, reassign cps, weights, or re-rig.

BUT then again - I will spend days and days and days trying to figure out how to take an existing rigged model, modify it & NOT have to re-rig it - when it would have been faster in the first place, to start from scratch anyway. And that's how ridiculous I can be...

Ok the purpose of this post is shifting a tad, but I see understanding glimmering around the edges.

We are using the elf model that Mark Skodacek so graciously fixed for us. I don't know which rig this is. It is probably easily recognizable to someone who is more experience and knowledge than I. Here is a screen shot of the PWS. Is it the 2008 rig?

Nancy, I tried the asterisk trick, but what it did was expand then contract the bones hierarchy

It's 2008 rig, much more advanced and versatile than 2001.

Michel

Yes - sorry - the asterick will expand/contract the hierarchy -

if you hit the eye icon of a parent bone, while holding down the shift key - it will make all the bones that are children of that bone visible or not visible.

And yes it looks like the 2008 rig