scalable rig

[gaboraa]

Hi,

Sorry to ask such a simple question but I am just an animation nooby I wonder how do you guys make a rig scalable? I just have a simple rig and want to scale my rig but don't want my deformers to be scaled. Is there any simple way to do such a task?

[Mathaeus]

So what you want to do, to scale rig to fit into proportion of another model, or animated scaling. In both cases, if it is simple rig, properly created, actually scaling should be your option. Scaling is always the part of calculation, including the reference pose. We just keeping the scale at 1 if 'there is no scaling', that's all. Properly created = branched structure. If there is deformer for roll division, it's child of appropriate bone. One parent for entire arm, one part for entire hand, so on. Simple = there is no distance constraint or like.

Usual method for fitting the rig to model, is to have separate guide (buffer), so everything is built from scratch. There is 'middle' solution too ( that's what I have since XSI 5), to use the guide just for resizing bone length and, let's say, neutral pose of nulls. This requires much shorter sequence of commands to execute ( no need to build everything) but it's not flexible as re - build, also it seems to works nicely only if rig follows some rules, like only one operator on one object. Both needs scripting, not some rocket science, more like boring administrative work. Strong naming convention is must, too.

[gaboraa]

Thanks for all of your valuable suggestions. I did my rig scalable by constraining the actual deformers to a shadow rig with the scaling off and after scaling, I re-enveloped my mesh to the scaled shadow rig with no scaling information and load my previous weight preset. That was not a perfect solution but one of the best that I came up with:)