A meta-data paradigm for rigging.

I was reading up on Bungie’s modular rigging and ILM’s block party – they talk about modular nodes that define how the character is made and built. I think it’s a great system to use and I’m still trying to get my head around it!

My aproach is to treat the system as searchable properties with values. Nodes with assigned properties can be then rigged based apon them e.g a bone may have a property called, “left”, “leg”. And have sockets and plugs (ala ILM) to tell it how to be rigged.

My only problem is that how are properties different to each other to be meaningful? I.e we can rig a leg it different ways – how does it know which way to use? It may be just another simple tag like “basic’ or ‘dynamic’ but im not sure.

Bone:Left:Leg:IKFK? – maybe its this simple?

Also, do we need attribute headers i.e properties – “Type”, “Description” etc or just the values themselves, “left”, “arm”, “IK” ? Personally I think you have to have properties as firstly not everything should be a string and secondly most importantly how do you differentiate between numerical values of 2 or more properties? e.g TYPE:2  LOD:2 now two values of  2 are essentially meaningless, unless they have some identifier.

I’m going to pursue  this further as i think its definitely the way forward.