Apologies in advance for the shameless self-promotion...

I've just released The Rigging Toolbox, a toolset for character rigging in Maya that is especially game-engine friendly. Use individual tools from the Toolbox to aid in your personal rigging process or use the auto-rig functionality to rig complete characters with features including IK/FK switching and foot roll attributes.

Unlike other "auto-riggers", The Rigging Toolbox allows for the creation of custom controls and includes many control shapes, control shape positioning and naming options, the ability to create rigs with 'zeroed-out' controls and the ability to set custom control colors.

The Rigging Toolbox can be downloaded here.

Here are a few demo/tutorial videos:

Overview

The Rigging Toolbox - RTB Overview - YouTube

Basic Arm Rigging with The Rigging Toolbox (Three Parts)

The Rigging Toolbox - Simple Arm Rigging, Part...

The Rigging Toolbox - Simple Arm Rigging, Part...

The Rigging Toolbox - Simple Arm Rigging, Part...

Full Character Rigging with The Rigging Toolbox (Three Parts)

The Rigging Toolbox - Full Character Rigging,...

The Rigging Toolbox - Full Character Rigging,...

The Rigging Toolbox - Full Character Rigging,...

oooo! Cool! Thanks for sending this out! I`ll definitely be trying it next time I have to rig at work

Let me know how it works for you. Also looking for feature requests. Thanks.

Looks awesome man! I'll tell my Maya friends about his.

Looks very cool, I will take a look !

Thank you. Currently working on some interesting new features for v1.1!

Always interested in feature requests and suggestions for tutorials/demos.

looks pretty cool, jbuck!

So suggestions/requests for easy creation of:

- stretchy bone chains
- twist bone chains option for arms/legs
- ribbon spine chains
- IK spine (mighta missed it on the help page, tho)
- 'spring' bones for jiggly parts/clothing/hair secondary motion stuff

and all recognized by The Rigging Toolbox when it comes time to connect the rig!

(apologies if you've implemented some of this already...have to admit to not
watching the vids yet, as I only visited creativecrash and your website)

Those are great suggestions, thanks! I'll be revisiting the auto-rigging solutions soon and I realize some of those need to be at the top of the list.

First and foremost, The Rigging Toolbox will see some new workflow tools for building skeletons -- like the ability to easily save, load and scale custom skeletons.

The goal of The Toolbox is to keep it as simple as possible and maintain a single- skeleton export solution for game engines. There are some great auto-riggers out there but many aren't useful for games unless you rig a secondary (or even tertiary) shadow-skeleton for export.

perhaps that might be one of your considerations, then...namely, the quick easy assignment
of a secondary automated export skeleton rig when the user applies/chooses some of the
more higher-level controls available from within The Rigging Toolbox control rig itself. ;)

That would be the conventional implementation and I might go there but at this time my priority is to keep things as absolutely simple as possible -- both so the animator actually understands what he/she is controlling and for stability.

Skeleton library feature is almost complete, then on to hand pose attributes (set with just a few clicks), then I'll revisit the spine and probably add a spline IK solution as an option.

Thanks again for the suggestions!

v1.05 is released and contains a few bug fixes as well as some new features.

New Features in v1.05:

Skeleton Library: The Rigging Toolbox now has the ability to save and load skeletons in a proprietary format independent of Maya scenes and versions. Skeleton data is saved in a skeleton config file in the current Maya project. Save and load skeletons to and from the library. Each project can have it's own skeleton configuration file which will be loaded when the script is run.

Skeleton Scale: Scaling skeletons in Maya has a tendency to create an additional transform node that can be tricky to get rid of. Now you can scale skeletons and partial joint chains in The Rigging Toolbox accurately and without additional transform nodes.

Download here

If you ever decide to go the route of shadow skeleton or have additional joint chains in the scene, I recommend adding an option (or by default) add the suffix *_ignore to the chains that should not be exported. That way you add legacy support for ActorX (Unreal Engine) to exclude them and it should be easy to filter out joints for other exporters/scripts too.

The toolbox looks great so far.

That's a great idea. It's easy to rename any joints in your scene with the Scene Edit utility but I can see where automation could be desireable.

I've been thinking about building in direct export support for a couple of different engines, UDK and Unity but was planning on FBX only. I think that might be best served as an add-on module as it's not necessarily related to rigging?

If you want to make an animation exporter for UDK I have some parts from my code you can use for reference, both PSA and FBX. It's in MEL but I hope you get the basics of it.

PSA animation export

// Get inital settings
string $sequenceName = "ExampleName";
string $path[] = `fileDialog2 -fm 3 -dir $path -okc "Select Folder" -dialogStyle 2`;
int $startTime = 0;
int $endTime = 10;


// Generate one long command string, it's split because I do different things with each part depending on settings (if cases)
string $command = "axexecute -sequence " + $sequenceName;
       $command += " -range " + $startTime + "-" + $endTime;
       $command += " -path " + $path[0];
       $command += " -saveanim -animfile " + $sequenceName;

// -> "axexecute -sequence ExampleName -range 0-10 -path c:/ -saveanim -animfile ExampleName
eval($command);

FBX animation export

// Setup FBX
FBXExportBakeComplexAnimation -v true;
FBXExportBakeComplexStep -v 1;
FBXProperty "Export|IncludeGrp|Animation" -v true;

// Set start time
playbackOptions -e -minTime $startTime;
FBXExportBakeComplexStart -v $startTime;

// Set end time
playbackOptions -e -maxTime $endTime;
FBXExportBakeComplexEnd  -v $endTime;

// Set export path
string $file = (`file -q -sn`); //C:/Project/.../FileName.mb
       $file = substitute("[^(\\/)]*$", $file, "");
       $file += $sequenceName + ".fbx";

// Select joints for export
select -r $joints;

// Export
FBXExport -f $file -s;

Great! Thanks for sharing!

Originally Posted by Denny

If you ever decide to go the route of shadow skeleton or have additional joint chains in the scene, I recommend adding an option (or by default) add the suffix *_ignore to the chains that should not be exported.

+1 for this Idea : if it's possible.

I noticed with FBX skeletal mesh imported in UDK that some bones are still exported, even when not skinned and not selected. If they are in the chain, the exporter will export them.

Yes, I've noticed that FBX will often include extra unselected and undesired elements in an export. A list based command line export could help -- I'll look into this soon.

My UDK script uses back-end FBX but isn't designed for skeletal. I'll probably look into adding this functionality to that script (which is free.)

I've had a few requests to build in IK vector-control tethers and a master controller. I usually leave this up to the user as my experience has been that these items are a matter of personal preference... and debate!

For flexibility I'm leaning toward a switch of options for IK vector-control constraints like shoulder/arm/spine/root, etc., and something similar for legs. Any other suggestions?

Any comments about master controls (moves character and all controls)? Not a complex implementation but anything new and interesting you've heard about or experienced?

Thanks in advance.

btw... Unity exporter is complete, UDK is on the horizon. Will be in a version of The Rigging Toolbox soon.

v 1.10 is out with master control and floating control tethering.

v1.16 of The Rigging Toolbox has just been released. Some bug fixes and general code cleanup but more importantly, stretchy IK is now an option while auto-rigging legs and arms. The stretchy IK solution is fast and will not lag during posing.

I've also improved the automated pole-vector positioning to maintain IK chain positioning during auto-rigging and place the pole-vector in a logical and animator friendly location.

The Rigging Toolbox can be downloaded here: http://bit.ly/Ta7ZWP