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Picker inquiry about selections

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#1

picker
picker1667Ă—918 1.87 MB

With zero knowledge of mgear, asking a question that is perhaps simple to answer. I have a rig that was not built by me and I want to use the picker.
It happens to me that the select all button does not select all the rig controls.

Looking inside the button with the picker editor I see that it contains a code, my question is the following.
The name of the controls controllers_grp without the name of the character seems to me suspicious and the culprit of not selecting all the controls, can this be possible?

When editing the picker, what is the best way to click to select everything?

Thank you very much.

#2

Assuming that is the default picker template that ships with mGear, and they didn’t edit it, then yes. That is the problem. Sort of. Actually ignore “controllers_grp”. I’ll explain.

The “Select ALL” button in the default picker template that comes with mGear looks for:

rig_controllers_grp
or
namespace:rig_controllers_grp

(It doesn’t have to be in a namespace. But if you don’t have a namespace, then it would only work with one character.)

The confusing part here is that in mGear “_grp” is actually referring to a selection set. The word “group” is a throwback to names in Softimage XSI. Groups were collections of objects, just like selection sets in Maya.

So the picker is looking for a selection set named rig_controllers_grp

Your rigging artist used a transform group named “controllers_grp”, which I guess is the parent that holds the rig? Anyway, ignore this. It doesn’t matter! It’s just a misleading coincidence that the name ends in “_grp” :slight_smile:

They also seemed to have deleted any selection sets. In a default Shifter build, assuming your rig is named “billy”, you should end up with selection sets like this:

image

So if you want that button to work, you’re going to have to make a selection set that has ALL of your controls. Or ask the rigging artist to fix that.

IF you had a character named “billy”, and you DID have a selection set named “billy_controllers_grp”, then yes, you would also need to either:

  1. Rename the selection set to “rig_controllers_grp”
  2. Make a duplicate selection set and name it “rig_controllers_grp”
  3. Edit the code in the picker. And change that to “billy_controllers_grp”
  4. Write some different code that is able to find all your controls without a selection set. (For example, by *_ctl name.)

Bonus information: When you say “use the picker”, I want to point out an important thing. The template picker that ships with mGear is not “the picker”. It is just a template that ships with mGear as an example. It should work by default with a standard mGear Shifter Biped template.

But if you make any customizations to the rig, then you almost certainly also have to customize the picker. The Anim Picker is a tool that is helpful for making custom selection buttons and script buttons. It is not meant to work out of the box with any rig that is built by mGear Shifter. That would be impossible.

If you want to test the Anim Picker and learn what all the buttons are doing, then you should build a quick Biped template from the Shifter menu. Then it will be compatible.

I hope that was all clear! Sorry I didn’t have time to write a shorter reply. :wink:

2 Likes
#3

Impressive answer, very clear. :smiley:
This guide gives me hope to be able to work more comfortably when animating, I will follow your instructions.
Thank you very much!