Skelegon Manager

Introduction

Skelegon Manager is a tool that lets you select, find, replace, delete, and mirror groups of skelegons.

The mirror function will also allow you to flip the bank handles across X if you wish. Lightwave's mirror tool does not flip a skelegon's bank handle for the mirrored side. Instead, it just copies it. I'm not sure if this causes problems or not, but I provided the option to flip in case it does. To illustrate, here's a skelegon I want to mirror:



Let's try with Lightwave's mirror tool. What I end up with is this:



If you look at the bank handle in this picture for the mirrored skelegon, it's parallel to the original skelegon's bank handle. Here is the result when using Skelegon Manager's mirror function with Flip Bank Handle on:



As you can see, the bank handle for the mirrored skelegon is now flipped across X. I thought this would be better when I first created the plugin, but upon further experimentation, I found that it doesn't really make much difference. If you select two bones on opposite sides in layout, they'll inconsistently rotate on bank and heading axises whether or not you use this option. As a result, I've left it optional since it doesn't seem to help the situation at all (it might help IK, not sure).

Using Skelegon Manager



Note: the model above is a modified version of the rig supplied with SimpleRigger, a cool plugin for generating a quick IK rig. It uses the prefix "B_L_" for the left side and "B_R_" for the right.

When you open skelegon manager, you will see a multiselection list box that displays the skelegons in your object. The list box can be manipulated like a regular multiselection list box in Windows. To select groups of items, click a source row and then hold shift and click a target row. All the rows between the source and the target will be selected. To select/deselect individual items, hold control and click in the list. You can also scroll through the list with your keyboard using up, down, page up, page down, home, and end keys (you can also hold shift to select multiple items with the keyboard).

Note: a couple of developers have asked me how I made Lightwave's list box work like this. The truth is that I didn't. I simply created my own control using drawing functions and handling mouse/keyboard callbacks.

Here are the functions:

Select All - selects all rows in the list.

Select None - deselects all rows in the list.

Find - finds and selects specific skelegons in the list based on a text search. See Find SGons to get an understanding of how to use this feature.

Replace - replaces the names of specific skelegons in the list based on a text search. See Replace SGons to get an understanding of how to use this feature.

Select Bones - Selects the skelegons whose names you have selected in the list. This is mainly a visual tool.

Delete Bones - Deletes all the skelegons whose names you have selected in the list. If you want to delete the right side of a model, you might first do a 'Find' for 'right_' (assuming that's how you name skelegons on the right side), then hit 'Delete Bones'.

Mirror Bones - Mirrors the bones you have selected. A dialog will pop up which looks like this:



These options will determine how the mirrored skelegons will be renamed.

If you have a naming convention where the left bones are prefixed with "left_" and the right bones with "right_" like "left_hand", "right_hand", "left_shoulder", "right_shoulder", etc., you should type "left_" for the left naming convention and "right_" for the right naming convention and select 'Prefix' for the naming style.

If you name bones with a suffix like "hand_l", "hand_r", "head_l", "head_r", etc., use "_l" and "_r" for the naming conventions and select 'Suffix' for the naming style.

Use anywhere is you use a naming convention that involves labeling things in the middle like "john_left_hand" or "john_right_hand". In this case, you can use "_left_" and "_right_" and 'Anywhere' for the naming style. However, you could also use "john_left_" and "john_right_" and use the 'Prefix' option.

After selecting the options, the bones you had selected will be mirrored and selected. The associated weight maps will also be renamed (note that this doesn't rename the physical weight maps, only the name of the weight maps associated with the bones). If bones and/or weight maps were selected that did not match your specified naming convention, the prefix "mirror_" will be added to mirrored bones and associated weight map names.

Quit - closes the panel and allows you to resume modeling.

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