If converting rig to Rigify when Autokeying is enbled, model will be scaled down

[blackears]

I've been playing around with the human generator, and noticed that if you try to generate a Rigify style rig while Autokeying is enabled, the human mesh will be shrunken down to 1/10 size.

Steps:

• Enable autokeying
• Create a new default human
• Add a Game Engine (with breast) rig
• Open the Convert to Rigify tab and press the Rigify button
• The human will shrink to a tiny size

[joepal1976]

This does not happen for me when I check it now. Did you use a non-default scale on the rig?

As a side note I keep meaning to move the "convert to rigify" to some less visible place, such as under operations. The workflow with first adding a standard rig and then converting it is a very old workaround from before proper rigify support was added. The recommended workflow is to add a rigify meta rig and then "generate".

[blackears]

I did this with a new blender file and all default options in Blender 5.1.0.

Somehow a keyframe with scale .1 is being added to the mesh on the timeline. You can see it if you open the Dope Sheet window.

It also happens if I generate the rigify style rig and then press the Generate Rig button that comes with the rigify addon.

[blackears]

I think you need to have autokeying enabled before creating the character. Otherwise the keyframe isn't created.

[joepal1976]

Do you scale the character manually in the start of the sequence? Most of the rigging stuff presupposes that the base mesh has an applied scale.

But anyway, it makes a lot of sense that autokeying gets confused if it is enabled before character creation. The character is loaded at a gigantic scale (since the wavefront obj file is using that coordinate system) and then scaled down to the preference scale during the creation process.

I guess it would be possble to automatically and temporarily disable autokeying during the creation process and re-enabled it once the creation process has finished.

[blackears]

I don't scale the model at any point in the process.

[blackears]

If "Convert to Rigify" is deprecated and to be removed, what is the intended pipeline to convert the rig to rigify? If I just do it through Rigify's Generate Rig, the mesh is not bound to the rig. If I then try to bind it manually, it binds strangely and a lot of the joints don't work properly.

On the other hand, if I create the game engine rig and then use your button to convert it to rigify, the rigify rig is set up properly.

[joepal1976]

The idea is that you add a rigify meta rig as a start, not a game engine rig. This way you have a native rigify pipeline the whole way, rather than trying to force a conversion in the middle.

I won't be removing the game engine pipeiline, since it is the only possible path when importing from MakeHuman. But I intend to change the UI so that the recommended path shows up as the first one users see.

[blackears]

It's not so much that I need a game engine rig. It's just that for everything except the rigify pipeline, your addon is automatically handling binding the mesh to the rig. If I generate the rigify meta rig and then treat it the way I would with just rigify and an arbitrary mesh, I'm interfering with the automatic binding that your addon is doing.

A bigger problem is that the generated rigify setup from the rigify meta rig just doesn't work. If I generate the rigify rig from the rigify meta rig, select all the mesh objects and parent them to the rig with automatic weights and then try to pose the figure, the model deforms in odd ways. Especially the fingers which don't seem to follow the generated rigify rig at all. So either I misunderstand the intended procedure here, or generating rigify rigs this way won't work with your addon. The older "Convert to Rigify" does produce correctly bound rigs, though.

[joepal1976]

The workflow that was assumed when building the functionality was:

• Create base mesh
• Add meta rig
• Add child meshes such as eyes and clothes, model etc and refit
• Generate rigify rig

That will generate something which will work as far as I can see:

Now, I fully realize that this is a workflow which might not fit all use cases. If there is a problem or a required alternative workflow, I'll be interested to hear about it. Obviously, the goal is that the rigify stuff should be there to be helpful rather than stand in the way.

[blackears]

How are you supposed to generate the rig? If I select the metarig and press the Generate Rig button in the properties panel, it generates a rig but then if I try to pose it, none of the meshes are bound to the generated rig.

Am I supposed to bind them myself with automatic weights? If I do that, the model deforms in strange ways when I pose it, especially in the hands:

[joepal1976]

There's something we're missing here, some hidden variable which differs between what we do.

On my side I get everything bound, rigged and weight painted if I use the MPFB generate button after having used MPFB to add a rigify meta rig.

I will be be very interested in seeing what happens here. Maybe you could share a blend file of how it looks before clicking generate?

Just to check though: are we talking about the same add rig and generate buttons? That is, the ones on the MPFB "Rigging" -> "add rig" panel? They do quite a lot of magic which the buttons provided by rigify do not do.

Anyway, it is pretty obvious that at the very least something is missing in the UX in MPFB. Maybe some check, warning or error message about things not being as expected.

[blackears]

Okay, that workflow works for me. I thought you had wanted me to use the Generate Rig button in the Properties section of the armature panel.