Good morning,
The game studio I work at hired a new Tech Artist who is a superstar with Advanced Skeleton. We are now discussing whether we should switch rigging systems. Help me add some Pros to the mGear column, please.
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Hi Alon,
I like Advanced Skeleton for some purposes. (I haven’t used it since 2022). I found my major issue with it is that it seems very specific. So when I needed to customize it, I ran into a lot of weird orientation issues that can be difficult to fix. The hierarchy is quite convoluted.
It took quite a bit of effort for me to figure out how to do something as simple as add a separate hip joint to adjust the bottom of the spine in the quadruped rig, beneath the RootM or COG or whatever it’s called. And I found it difficult to adjust the quadruped feet vs. ankles.
And since it is MEL, sometimes you end up with errors that don’t give any information. There were a few times, I had to roll to a backup, because the rig could never build again. And all it said was // Error
or something.
The developer was quite responsive in my experience.
But if you’re making rigs that fit the templates it ships with, I do think it can be less effort than setting up a full Shifter pipeline. Even if you’re using Advanced Skeleton, you can use all the mGear tools, like the skinning export, shape transfer, and basic stuff like that.
mGear/Shifter is great because so much of the pipeline can be automated, and re-used in a semi-modular way. (Like you said!)
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@alonza1
I am curious about Advance Skeleton “Direct Support” We are offering also customization and support for mGear, but not sure if is the same thing.
Can you explain more about that part?
Also curious about the additional tools for general tech anim and the integrated with many other 3rd part animation systems. Which systems are you refering?
Thanks
To be honest…I’d be shocked if a tech animator came to me and “suggested” using a rigging tool over a proper framework. I’m not trying to be disrespectful about the person or the tool, just as Chris said; is all about the scope of the work you have and the needs of the rigging department.
I have used advanced skeleton in the past and found it very easy to break and have irreparable errors. I found it pretty awkward placing joints and dealing with joint orientation instead of using guides. Animation tools are quite scarce, with no customizable animpickers and low performance in comparison.
If you have a dedicated team of tech animators with a good level of Python in your team mGear has no competitor, simply as that. I think is priceless to have control of 100% of the rigging outcome and the level of iteration and scalability provided is way better than advanced skeleton or any other rigging system for Maya. On top of that, you can create your components and add post-scripts to finalize and arrange anything missing.
Besides the rigging features you also need to consider mGear animation tools. Animators in your team will be much happier in my opinion embracing a much modern way of animating that mGear brings.
Cheers.
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