Standard Bone rigs Vs' CAT

Lazerus Reborn

I'm sure this is the right part of the forums to ask;

Recently I started taking interest in animating again, but i'm not sure what to use as there's a new rig type on the block and i wanted to know anyone's experiences with it. I'm used to standard Bipeds and Bone systems so this CAT thing is new too me.

Video link of Cat incase anyone dosnt know about it.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT706MRgDNg&feature=related"]CAT Tutorial: (Ch1 : Rig-PartA) -Character Rigs for UDK(Unreal) using CAT in 3dsMax2011 - YouTube[/ame]

My current Rig with bones, (needs IK's)



So my question's;
Are there any significant Pro's to using it?

Is it in use with the industry/ Is it becoming the replacement for Bone/biped?

Is it worth using ? - probably the main one.

Cheers for any help!

poopipe

I've used it a few times over the years going back to when it was a plugin and I think it's a very decent rigging system - it doesn't retarget as well as biped and there's a few toys I miss from CS but on the whole animators seem to prefer it to biped.

There is a huge problem though - it's massively unstable on 2012 (even after the SP) particularly with regard to creation of custom rigs . It was totally unusable a couple of months back and cost us a great deal of time and money after I was railroaded into using it for a project.


I stongly advise testing it thoroughly before comitting to a production cycle on it - you never know, you might get lucky


It's worth looking at puppetshop as well if you're looking for a non-biped system - it's sort of similar and sure as hell isn't going to be less stable than CAT .

Ace-Angel

That's a Max issue, not CAT, some people say it works, other say it doesn't. Personally, the latest SP in 2012 actually fixed certain corruption issues.

e-freak

CAT is nice but it is no wonder weapon. It allows for cool stuff for prototyping like the auto walk-cycle but at the same time it's a generalist approach. If your creature needs a very specialized rig, it's probably better to create it from scratch.

Lazerus Reborn

Thanks for the info guys, I think i'll stick with bones/bipeds for my work then. Currently using 2012 and be arsed with max's hissy fits if its buggy.

Mark Dygert

If you're going to use CAT, I would stay away from the biped preset, that seems to be the buggiest and the regular CAT human seems to be fairly stable. I like CAT but I prefer biped because it has some great features and is so flexible. The only time I wouldn't use it is when doing a character that biped can't do, snake men, spiders, lizards, multi limb characters ect...