Meta_01 and fingers, how do they work?

[Moustache_Animation]

hi guys, I am having a tough time understanding how to correctly use the Meta_01 in conjunction with fingers (lite_chain_01).

As you can see in the following demo. The global meta controller ( meta_L0_ctl ) seems to be doing what it should be doing but when manipulating the meta_L0_meta0_ctl, the fingers are not rotating.

Here is my outliner and hierarchy. Is there something I am failling to do?

Thanks

[Moustache_Animation]

nope, no one can help me?

[Milio]

Hi! I do have the same issue using latest mgear. The meta controls are relatively new addition and never tried using them before. It seems the hierarchy is not properly setup:

[Moustache_Animation]

Argh, that’s the answer I was fearing… I guess this is the reason why there were no metacarpal controls on the biped template.

It might be possible for the animators to only use the global meta_L0_ctl but animators usually prefer to have a more granual control of the metas for appealing poses that work for a set camera view.

…

Oh… I just retested this morning and things have changed !!!

So few days ago I upgraded from mGear 3.7.11 to the latest version aka 4.0.9 and those sub meta controls seem to have gone!

That was ultra confusing as I kept rebuilding my rig and they just wouldn’t appear at all anymore.

Ok I guess I need to relearn how to use the meta_01 again

[rafaelmelo]

Hi,

Individual meta ctls seem to be optional in mgear 4.

The problem seems to be the hierarchy as @Milio pointed out. The metacarpal control and the finger root are siblings, instead of parent / child.

Maybe that’s the intended behavior, I don’t know.

But I guess you could write a post script to quickly reparent finger_{}{}_root under meta_{}0_meta{}_ctl

Cheers!

[Moustache_Animation]

Ah, I see, and I see that I didn’t see the new options in mGear 4

Cool, well I think I got a setup I am quite happy with so far without using the “Meta Ctls” and I made a little tutorial.

mGear meta 01 and fingers setup

Thanks Milo and Rafael!

[AlexW]

@rafaelmelo Haven’t much experience with post scripts, any tips on how I’d go about re-parenting these?

Didn’t notice this thread originally, my issue is listed here:

Metacarpal controls

So with Mgear 4 we have a setting to add metacarpal controls: [meta_controls] The problem is that these controls don’t actually control the metacarpals: [metacarpals_no_control] Is there any way (without post scripts) to have these work independently ? Also the parenting is set up for the main meta control: [parented_ to_each_other] instead of being connected to the hand bone: [parented_to_arm_L0_end_jnt] I get that this is due to the main meta control for splay functionality. I gues…

[rafaelmelo]

I used a meta_01 component for metacarpals, named ‘meta’, meta ctls enabled.
I used four chain_01 components for the fingers, all named ‘finger’ (indexed from 0 to 3).

If you have the same kind of setup, with Left and Right hands, this should take care of the reparenting :

import pymel.core as pm

for side in 'LR':
    for meta in range(4):
        metaCtl = pm.PyNode('meta_{}0_meta{}_ctl'.format(side,meta))
        fingerRoot = pm.PyNode('finger_{}{}_ik_cns'.format(side,meta)).getParent()
        pm.parent(fingerRoot,metaCtl)

[AlexW]

that’s great thanks rafaelmelo, I’ll give that a whirl