Any opinions on Max xRef for characters?

Bigjohn

We're looking into using xRef in our pipeline, and I was wondering if anyone has any experience with it? I found some old threads from 3-5 years ago, but nothing recent, and was wondering if anyone used it recently (Max 2011/2012).

We're mainly looking to having one rig file for each character, and then xRefing it for all our animation files. So if we change the skinning, materials, textures, etc, it will update throughout all the animation files.

Mark Dygert

Xrefs in Max are a very old system, that is pretty broken on many levels and was more or less replaced by the "Container" system.

ParoXum

I still use it at work for interior/exterior scenes connections, 2012. Maybe not perfect but I didn't take the time yet to see the containers and it does the job I want.

Bigjohn

I see. Do any of you use containers with characters/rigs?

Eric Chadwick

IIRC, the Container system doesn't work for rigging, as the Container acts essentially as a single item. You can't bind the bones in a Container to the Skin. We mentioned this problem to Autodesk in their last visit, so they're aware of it. Maybe it will change some day. I have heard that Maya has much better support for this.

Edit... the way we've solved this is to use a character system like CAT or Puppetshop, which allows you to easily save/load rigs.

Bigjohn

We use CAT. The problem is the skinning and textures though. Often times the animators start working with the characters when they're in a pretty rough stage. First-pass skinning, and either just a normal map, or even a blank grey material. This stuff gets updated later on, and we have a need to have the new skinning/material information propagate down to all the animation files.

Eric Chadwick

This would be a good topic for Tech-Artists.org. A good amount of riggers there. A search should also net you some gems.
http://tech-artists.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=17

Bigjohn

Ahh cool. Thanks. I didn't know about that site.