Newbie Question about Bind Poses

[abergstrom]

I have a dumb newbie post. How does mGear put a character back into its default bind pose?

I’ve searched through the menu system, I’ve searched through Google, and I’ve searched through the documentation.

I see that there is a dagPose node in the file. I tried putting the character into this Bind Pose by calling the cmds.dagPose(“bindPose1”, restore=True) function, but doing so just produces a bunch of warnings, and nothing happens.

I’m a programmer who’s developing a Maya file exporter for an open 3D standard. I’m trying to add support for various rigging systems. As I’m not an animator, I’m attempting to figure out how mGear works by using someone else’s content. Specifically, I downloaded Emilio Serrano’s Icarus model.

I’ve added exporter support for HumanIK and Advanced Skeleton. HumanIK calls the “hikGoToStancePose()” mel function, and AS calls its “asGoToBuildPose()” function. Is there a similar function in mGear?

I’ve been at this for hours, and it’s driving me crazy that I can’t find anything on it.

Thanks,

Aaron

[sakaro]

I could be wrong here as i am not great at coding, but couldn’t you just set the transform and rotation to 0 and set scale to 1 for all the ctrls as this would reset the pose back to it’s default?

[chrislesage]

A bindPose is for a skeleton. But the skeleton is driven by the rig, so you want to reset the rig.

1. Enable “mGear Viewport Menu” and right click on a control(s) to reset.
2. mGear → Animbits → Smart Reset Attribute/SRT
3. Those commands can be added to shelf buttons, or hotkeys, or scripts, or anim pickers.

Depending what Shifter components and settings you used, sometimes the IK controls zero out to world space t-pose instead of your build pose. In that case, you might need to change your guide settings or add npo groups to set a different neutral pose. Or maybe those commands take that into account. I always add offset groups to my IK controls.

(I’m way behind on versions, so some of those names might have changed if you’re using the latest 5.x versions.)

[abergstrom]

@sakaro - I appreciate your response.

In theory, the code could do it that way, or some version of that way. But with rigging systems, it would tend to break the rigging. Especially complex rigging like I’ve come across with Advanced Skeleton.

There is really a somewhat difficult interpretation that has to take place in order to get an artist’s vision and intent out of Maya (and whatever rigging system they chose) and into the open standard’s 3D format.

From working with Advanced Skeleton, I’ve learned the hard way that plowing through the rigging plugin’s methodology with my own code is a bad way to proceed. In that case, the improved understanding of the plugin’s methodology and learning its underlying function calls really led to much better export results for me.

Understanding mGear’s methodology and functions will hopefully best achieve an mGear artist’s intent if they ever want to export using my plugin. Although I do not expect a lot of mGear users to incorporate my plugin into what they do, I very much want to make it as easy for them to use as possible, should they ever find a need to do so.

[abergstrom]

@christlesage - Excellent, thank you for this information. Getting into something new is always difficult. This gives me a great place from which to start. My brain was looking for “Restore Bind Pose” in the menus, I figured that I just didn’t know mGear’s terminology well enough to search for the correct terms.

Thank you so much for your response, it is much appreciated!

[abergstrom]

@chrislesage - So I tried the “Smart Reset Attribute/SRT” menu option, but it didn’t seem to do anything. It appears that there is some node selection context that impacts the mGear menu system, so I’m still trying to work that out in my head.

However, by poking around in what you suggest, that gave me a better idea of what I need to search for.

To be honest, my terminology is not the best. The animation stuff is very much “on the periphery” of my knowledge and skillset. In my mind, every pose/position etc is a “bindpose”.

This is just me justifying my ignorance, but I’m rambling now.

Anyway, with my improved mGear terminology for searching, I explored the RFB Manager and the SDK Manager, and watched some of the RFB Manager tutorial.

It appears that what I was initially looking for was the “reset_to_default(mode=all)” function found in the “mgear.rigbits.sdkmanager.core.py” script, and normally accessible through the SDK Manager menubar via the “Reset > Reset All Ctrls” menu option.

I apologize in advance if I’m using the incorrect terminology with the following question.

Can you tell me, does the reset_to_default() function always override any keyed info and force the mGear character/rig/skeleton/controls/drivers into its initial default rest pose?

[Miquel]

Hello

We have a bunch of options to reset poses in the right-click context menu.

Some important distinctions:

• Reset All will reset all attrs (Transforms and other configuration atters, like IK/FK or spaces)
• Reset to BindPose: Reset the Transforms to the build/bind pose. Some components has a distinction on between reset pose, and bindPose: For example: Bind Pose is A-Pose but reset pose is T-Pose
• Reset all SRT: Reset only all the transforms (Scane, Rotate, Translation == SRT )

[abergstrom]

Thanks for this. However, I must be doing something wrong. Possibly, I didn’t install something I should have?

I’m running Maya 2025.3 on Windows 11 with mGear 5.1.0.

When I enable the mGear Viewpoint Menu, I don’t see that menu popup when I right-click in the viewport. Doesn’t matter what I have selected.

The only time I see an mGear menu when I right-click in the viewport is when I have the top-level transform “rig” selected, as seen in the screenshot below.

If I select anything else in the scene, I just get the standard Maya right-click menus.

Because of that, I just tried re-installing mGear and got the following error message.

2025-12-07 13:48:13 : C:\Users\abergstrom\Documents\maya\modules\mgear
2025-12-07 13:48:13 : Unloaded ‘mgear_solvers.mll’ plugin
2025-12-07 13:48:13 : Uninstalled Successfully!
2025-12-07 13:48:14 : Moved: C:\Users\abergstrom\Documents\maya\modules\icons
2025-12-07 13:48:14 : Moved: C:\Users\abergstrom\Documents\maya\modules\mGear.mod
2025-12-07 13:48:14 : Moved: C:\Users\abergstrom\Documents\maya\modules\platforms
2025-12-07 13:48:14 : Moved: C:\Users\abergstrom\Documents\maya\modules\scripts
2025-12-07 13:48:14 : Removed: C:\Users\abergstrom\Documents\maya\modules\mgear
2025-12-07 13:48:14 : Added to PYTHONPATH: C:\Users\abergstrom\Documents\maya\modules\scripts
2025-12-07 13:48:14 : Loaded ‘mgear_solvers.mll’ plugin
2025-12-07 13:48:14 : Traceback (most recent call last):
File “C:\Users/abergstrom/Documents/maya-plugins/mgear_5.1.0\drag_n_drop_install.py”, line 594, in load_plugin
cmds.loadPlugin(plugin_name)
RuntimeError: Plug-in, “weightDriver.mll”, was not found on MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH.

2025-12-07 13:48:14 : Error: unable to load ‘weightDriver.mll’ plugin!
2025-12-07 13:48:14 : Installation Unsuccessful, errors occurred!

[Miquel]

@abergstrom
For the right click menu you have to select a control not the root.

The other error, I am not sure right now.

[abergstrom]

@Miquel - Thanks for responding.

I just want to be clear. I did try selecting the controls and then doing a right click in the viewport. When I did that, I still just got the standard Maya menus.

I recorded a video of me selecting several different controls, and still only getting the regular Maya menu.
https://youtu.be/zB755Cs-Ra8

If you have time, please view the video to verify that I am actually selecting mGear controls before I right-click to pop up the appropriate context menu.

My guess is, maybe I didn’t install something correctly? Or maybe the Icarus model was built from an older version of mGear, so it is somehow missing something 5.1.0 requires?

I see there is the following message on the downloads - release page for 5.1.0:
https://github.com/mgear-dev/mgear/releases

Removed the original weightDriver from SHAPES. It has been replaced by the mGearWeightDriver fork version. You can still use the original weightDriver, but it now needs to be installed separately.

I’m guessing that this has something to do with the error message I get when I attempt to install:

RuntimeError: Plug-in, “weightDriver.mll”, was not found on MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH.

I thought maybe I might be getting some error message in the Maya script window each time I did a right click, but an mGear menu didn’t pop up. However, there were none.

If the mGrear dev team doesn’t have any further insight as to what might be my problem, I’ll just assume my system is wonky and try doing a fresh install of Maya 2026, and then do a re-install of everything else in the hopes that a fresh install will fix the issue.

[Milio]

Icarus rig is pretty old, and the contextual right menu is not working. Try one of my latest for up-to-date mGear functionalities.

[abergstrom]

Sounds good, I’ll try one of your newer characters. Thanks!

[chrislesage]

Just a small side note: In the Outliner, when animating, you should consider hiding shapes. You don’t really want to be selecting or animating shape nodes.

@abergstrom

I’ll try one of your newer characters

Or just build one of the Shifter Biped templates and test there. Then you’ll know you are testing a rig that was built on your exact version. (For a lot of things, working with the rigs is flexible between versions if it isn’t too far apart. But for testing, you always have templates available. Then you can spot build errors too.)

[abergstrom]

Yep, it was Icarus.

Shame though, I really like the look of Icarus.

But now I at least know what is going on.

I will also try out the Shifter Biped templates.

The menus are definitely working with the mGear 5 rig.