Im coming to a point where im trying to turn most of my functions into pure data driven. I’m trying to modularize my rigging so it can be used across platforms and even into standalone app. (no thats just a pipe dream atm)
How to approach modularity?
Its pretty difficult to standize a rig, if its a one off, but you can certainly standardize bipedal, quadrapedal and possible ornipedal (birds) rigs. I was playing with a friend on mines Japanese toy at work, it was a robot you could plug joints together – simple joints revolute, hinge, spherical and hubs. This is the kinda modularity in rigs id like.
Whats needed? The criteria?
Well for bipedal/quadrapedal i think a base structure is needed in some aspect, even if there generalize areas: spine, head, arm, leg, foot, hand. And we can assume some rigs will have more bones in e.g. 8 in one spine and 4 in another. Modularity is how we define these areas – plus after setting up there definitions, its connection with other parts.
For example, we set the spine to be RBSplineIK (rational bezier spline ik), and the head to be pure FK – how do we join the two together? If its a typeIn box “head>chest” so it builds a neck, how does this neck work? FK, IK? spline IK?
If we go back to clumping a whole system like head, an encompass the neck etc to it – this would make it easier to define itself.
Charles Looker 