Description:
EZRig Tool helps 3D artists automatically rig a variety of models. The tool automatically loads models and joints, creates controls, paints skin weights, cleans up the structure, and also generates testing animations for the user.
Competitive Analysis:
Mixamo designed by Adobe is one promising and popular tool people in the industry use nowadays. It is free and also allows the user to upload their models, select joint points, and automatically rig and animate models. However, Mixamo is only designed for biped models, also when artists downloaded the fbx. or obj. file from the website, the outline was in a mess, and It’s hard for the artist to continue work on this file.
For the EZRig tool I'm designing and working on, it will be designed to be more generic, for a larger variety of models, including biped as well as quadruped creatures. Also, it will build a clear structure and outline for animators and other technical artists to continue to work on.
Structural Plan
The program will be implemented in the following structure:
mainFolder
➢ generalCreatureRig: the main workspace to use functions and classes in the lib to create rigs for the input model
○ creatureRig.py: executes all steps for creating joints and controls
○ creatureDeformation.py: execute all steps for binding skins and painting skin weights
○ creatureRigUI.py: create a UI window for the program for the user
➢ rigLib: implement all classes and functions that will be used in rigging the input model
○ base: implement all methods and classes to initialize controls and modules.
○ rig: implement all methods and classes to initialize controls for each body part, including head, neck, leg, spine
○ utils: implement useful classes and functions when working with rigging, for example, store and edit names, joints data, and transformation data
Version Control Plan
The versions and all working progress files are backed up on the GitHub repository.
Current Progress
I'm currently taking the tutorial on Pluralsight: https://app.pluralsight.com/library/courses/procedural-rigging-python-maya-2283/
In this tutorial, I learned to build my own rig library and set up the control, base, and module class to keep a clear structure of all rigging elements. Since some of the tools used in this tutorial were built five years ago, some modules in the Pyside have changed, and also some functions were updated for Maya 2020, I also modified and updated the code myself to make everything work correctly.
My future plan is to finish this tutorial, modify the program to apply my own models to test its functionality, and also build a UI for this tool.