poseReader

poseReader - Pose Space Angle Reader Maya Plugin by Michael B. Comet
Copyright ©2004 Michael B. Comet

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
    Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA

    For information on poseDeformer contact:
        Michael B. Comet - comet@comet-cartoons.com
        or visit http://www.comet-cartooons.com/toons/

DESCRIPTION:

This plugin provides a simple way to easily "read" pose angles from nodes or joints. This allows easy psoe driven deformation or other tasks. Angles can be read with or without twist, and with an easily set min and max angle. The value is then output to a "weight" attribute that can be used to drive a rig or blendshape.

REQUIREMENTS:

This recompiled plugin requires a Windows version of Maya 6.0.

INSTALL:

1. Quit Maya if it is running.

2. Unzip the contents of the ZIP file.

3. Copy the poseReader.mll to the Maya binary plugin path where you installed Maya. This is typically:
           C:\Program Files\Alias\Maya6.0\bin\plug-ins\

4. Copy the poseReaderUI.mel file into your Maya scripts folder.

5. Restart Maya.

6. Open to the menu for Window | Setting/Preferences | Plug-in Manager...

7. Look for the "poseReader.mll" entry in the window. Choose "loaded" to load the plugin. You can also check the "auto load" box so that the plugin is loaded automatically every time you start Maya.

8. Close the dialog.

9. Choose File | Save Preferences to make sure your prefs are saved.

10. The plugin is now loaded and installed, you can now use the new MEL command called "poseReaderUI" to launch the UI to set up poseReader nodes.

USAGE:

1. Make some joints or nodes.

2. Run the poseReaderUI script.

3. Select one or more nodes that you want to make a pose read for. Generally you will want to already pose them in the angle that you want to read.

4. Click the "Rig" button. You will usually want World space calculation. In cases where you get cycle check errors, you can attempt to use Local space, but the node must then be parented to the same parent as the one you are reading.

5. Adjust rotation or scale of pose node. You can also adjust the min and max angles and so on.

   If the pose is outside of the max angle arc, then the output weight will be zero. If the pose is inside of the min angle arc, then it will be one. If it is inbetween, it will blend between zero to one.

   If you choose to have your pose count twisting as part of the pose, then you can set the allowTwist to zero.

   Generally speaking you will want the main "Axis" to read for the pose to be the one down the length of the joint chain. I typically align with Y down the chain, instead of Maya X, which is why the script defaults to Y.

6. Connect the "weight" attribute to something useful, such as a blendShape node to drive blenshapes when the poses are hit.

7. SEE THE SAMPLE FILES, Particularly the Sample #2 for how it can be used to drive blendShapes.