Auto Rigging in XSI

James Edwards

Hey all, been working on some rigging stuff in XSI, and trying to standardize/simplify some of the repetitive work, like rigging humans. While the default XSI bipeds are ok to work with, they aren't really my cup-o-tea for game output, and since CAT might not be available for XSI for some time, I decided to do my own version. This is just the start of what I hope to turn into a more complete character rigging toolset. I've already added an eye controller setup attachment, and have automated most of a morph driving facial rig setup as seen in Jason Osipa's 'Stop Staring' book. Other plans include an automated synoptic page setup, extra limb controls or additions such as wings, tails, ears etc. For now though it works great as a basic human setup that more importantly, works well with our engine exporter and saves me a metric assload of setup time.

Setup
Head
Spine
Legs
Hands
Fingers
IK/FK
BoneShapes

Examples:

I should also note that a good chunk of the control setup is derived from the rig as seen in the 3dquakers "Rigging Pro" video series, with a lot of customization added on my part to suit my needs.

adam

Hey James, I'm glad to see this progressing. It's been a personal project of yours for quite a while now and its finally coming to fruition. Keep it up.

Mongrelman

Awesome stuff, are you going to release it to us poor schmucks?

James Edwards

Thx guys. =]
Lupus, I would like to at some point but can't say when exactly. I'm going to try to get it working with actorX and if that happens I'll definitely be releasing a version of it for the community as I'd love to see more people being able to use XSI for creating unreal content. CAT might be out for XSI by then though... =]

Will definitely post anything here if I do release.

Cheers,

James

dur23

Wow gwot. That is one hell of a nice little setup you going on there. And by a little i mean huge. Great work so far. I to would love to get my hands on that sucker. CAT will probably be a few releases away. But who knows, good ol' softi has the ability to shock me every release.

Mongrelman

Man I'd love to have that even just for posing characters for my showreel.

The boxes over the bones, are they used to control the enveloping?

If you can put a muscle system in there too....<wipes up mess on keyboard>..sorry...that would be sweeeeeeeeeeet.

EarthQuake

All you need to do now is make it auto-skin as well. =D

EmAr

It looks awesome Gwot! As I'm currently working with the XSI rig and the DirectX exporters which do not seem to be working very well together, I appreciate the work a lot.

Squid

I don't know how to put this without sounding sarcastic but, you're showing all the 'rig' but none of the 'auto'

any chance of making up a little demo gif of the actual set up process ?

The end product of your plug/script looks good though. the rev foot looks about the most elegant i've seen without going into the ogl/gfx sequencer.
nice work

James Edwards

Thanks for the comments guys. Good to know there's interest outside of my own for this thing. Makes the effort even more worthwhile I think.

Dur: yeah I'm crossing my fingers for a simultaneous 6.0/CAT release =D I'd happily throw this thing away in exchange for a commercial system. The challenge is fun and all but ultimately I'm less about the technical achievement and more about the end result... just being able to spend more time animating and modeling the stuff in general.

EQ: don't they have sweatshops for that stuff?

Lupus: The boxes are the actual deformation rig... the visual adjustments are purely cosmetic - something I kindof missed from my character studio days and added mostly for my own enjoyment hehe ... Though There could be other uses for them, like ragdolls or collision objects for other simulated attachments etc. I don't think I show it in those vids but the spine is fully stretchable too. You can either grab the top controller and pull it away from the body or use the chest/lumbar handles to tweak out the curvature. You can also pin the top controller in place so that it moves independently from the hips. I didn't add stretchy capabilities to the limbs for this one but a 2 minute adjustment and an extra slider attached to the controllers would provide that functionality if it were needed.

I'm planning on adding a muscle system to it eventually =] I've already messed around with scripting some simple muscles, and will most likely go back to it once I finish a few other additions first.

Squid: sorry, I kindof just assumed people would know it worked very much the same as the default XSI rig guides. I have a rather raw, crappy vid I put online the other night that shows the guide rig being added to a scene, and then posed... Here's the link:
Guide Rig

Please excuse the crappiness. Basically the setup is broken into 2 scripts. One for the guide rig, which you then pose to match the mesh, then you run the setup script (like in the first gif I posted) and that covers the majority of the rig work. I do a few driven keys by hand at the moment for the foot roll, auto clavicle and finger curls since I find that stuff just ends up being more accurate from character to character, but I'm going to try to automate it anyway I think. After that it's just weighting. I have a few human heads I use for a partial auto setup of the facial rig using morph shapes and GATOR too but it's not fully functional yet. The face rig itself can be fully automated but not necessarily all the shape transfers. There's always going to be clean up and work involved in making shapes fit the character. But it's a lot less than doing them all from scratch. =]

Squid

Thanks for posting the vid. i try not to assume anything thesedays, especially on polycount.

It's interesting to see how you kept it simple and clean, a skill i seem to lack (my auto rig setup uses overly complicated point locators/centroid ops etc).

You've inspired me to dedicate some time (in short supply thesedays it seems ) to finally finish up my version.
Thanks