"link with" expressions in rigging - good or not?

Date : Tue, 25 Sep 2007 15:55:35 -0400
To : XSI(at)Softimage.COM
From : "Bernard Lebel" <3dbernard(at)gmail.com>
Subject : "link with" expressions in rigging - good or not?
Hello,

Not really a support question, but rather getting a feel people's
experience in general compared to my own.


We have a bunch of characters, that I have not rigged.
The modeler created some shapes.
The rigger created a cpset to control the shape weights, with nice sliders.
The thing is that the relationship between the shape weights in the
mixer and the cpset parameters are not (=) expressions, but "link
with" expressions.

Now, the problem we're continually having is that somehow the
relationship between the shape weights and the sliders break. It
doesn't look like it's broken (I've checked 100 times, every element
of the expressions is there and valid), but moving the sliders has no
effect anymore on the shape weights.

In time I have written lengthy scripts to workaround this problem.
It's ugly but it works. However, even though it's no longer a
show-stopper, animators are keep reporting that they have to use my
scripts to repair the shapes. The typical case happens when the
animator exports the mixer and imports it back onto the model.

We're not using reference models.

Perhaps there is something wrong we did in the first place, I don't
know. I don't know all the details of the rig (it's extremely
elaborate). However nothing seems non-legit to me.

Obviously, my faith in "link with" expression has taken quite a toll
as a result. I could have fired this to support but we're not on
maintenance.



So my question is this: how much use of "link with" expressions do you
make in rigging? Is my experience unique? What are the things to do
and not do when using those?



Thanks!
Bernard
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