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<li><a class="reference internal" href="#">Creating A Module</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#ide-and-style-guide">IDE and Style Guide</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#getting-started">Getting Started</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#create-an-icon">Create an Icon</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#create-the-python-file">Create the Python File</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#defining-the-module-class">Defining the Module Class</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#add-attributes">Add Attributes</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#skeleton-settings-ui">Skeleton Settings UI</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#building-the-joint-mover">Building the Joint Mover</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#testing-the-joint-mover">Testing the Joint Mover</a></li>
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<div class="section" id="creating-a-module">
<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id3">Creating A Module</a><a class="headerlink" href="#creating-a-module" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1>
<div class="topic">
<p class="topic-title first">Overview</p>
<p>This page details the steps in creating your own module derived from the base class. The sections are presented in
the order you should write your module.</p>
<table class="docutils field-list" frame="void" rules="none">
<col class="field-name" />
<col class="field-body" />
<tbody valign="top">
<tr class="field-odd field"><th class="field-name">Date:</th><td class="field-body">Jun 05, 2017</td>
</tr>
<tr class="field-even field"><th class="field-name">Author:</th><td class="field-body"><strong>Jeremy Ernst</strong></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
<div class="contents topic" id="contents">
<p class="topic-title first">Contents</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#creating-a-module" id="id3">Creating A Module</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#ide-and-style-guide" id="id4">IDE and Style Guide</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#getting-started" id="id5">Getting Started</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#create-an-icon" id="id6">Create an Icon</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#create-the-python-file" id="id7">Create the Python File</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#defining-the-module-class" id="id8">Defining the Module Class</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#add-attributes" id="id9">Add Attributes</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#skeleton-settings-ui" id="id10">Skeleton Settings UI</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#building-the-joint-mover" id="id11">Building the Joint Mover</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#testing-the-joint-mover" id="id12">Testing the Joint Mover</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="section" id="ide-and-style-guide">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id4">IDE and Style Guide</a><a class="headerlink" href="#ide-and-style-guide" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>The preferred IDE for developing ARTv2 modules is <a class="reference external" href="https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/">PyCharm</a>,
since we can specify our code style and inspections in the settings.
Below are the settings used for code style and inspections to set in PyCharm.</p>
<p>To access the settings in PyCharm, go to File -> Settings (or hit Ctrl+Alt+s). On the left, find Editor, then Code
Style.</p>
<img alt="_images/pyCharm_codeStyle_0.png" src="_images/pyCharm_codeStyle_0.png" />
<p>Now, go to the Python section under Code Style. These are the settings for each of those tabs:</p>
<img alt="_images/pyCharm_codeStyle_1.png" src="_images/pyCharm_codeStyle_1.png" />
<img alt="_images/pyCharm_codeStyle_2.png" src="_images/pyCharm_codeStyle_2.png" />
<p>For Inspections, browse in the settings to Editor -> Inspections. There are two sections in here we will edit:
General and Python.</p>
<p>For General, items that have changed are denoted in blue text:</p>
<img alt="_images/pyCharm_inspections_0.png" src="_images/pyCharm_inspections_0.png" />
<p>For Python, items that have changed are denoted in blue text:</p>
<img alt="_images/pyCharm_inspections_1.png" src="_images/pyCharm_inspections_1.png" />
</div>
<div class="section" id="getting-started">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id5">Getting Started</a><a class="headerlink" href="#getting-started" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<div class="section" id="create-an-icon">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id6">Create an Icon</a><a class="headerlink" href="#create-an-icon" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>To begin creating a module, the very first thing you’ll want to do is create the icon for the module so it shows up
in the UI. To do so, browse to ARTv2/Core/Icons/System and open moduleIcons.psd in Photoshop. Every module needs two
icons: the standard icon and the hover-state icon. The photoshop file is setup to easily accommodate this.</p>
<p>Standard icon for the Torso module:</p>
<img alt="_images/torso.png" src="_images/torso.png" />
<p>Hover icon for the Torso module:</p>
<img alt="_images/hover_torso.png" src="_images/hover_torso.png" />
<p>Your icons will be saved as a png in ARTv2/Core/Icons/Modules. The syntax is moduleName.png and hover_moduleName.png.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="create-the-python-file">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id7">Create the Python File</a><a class="headerlink" href="#create-the-python-file" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>In the ARTv2/Core/Scripts/Modules folder, add a new python file for your module following the existing naming
conventions (ART_moduleName.py)</p>
<p>To get started on the class, open ART_Head.py and copy from the docstring down to right before the class definition.
This will save time instead of having to write all this from scratch. If you have any new file attributes, update the
docstring with that information. Most likely, the import statements won’t need to change, so let’s skip down to the
file attributes and redefine these for our module.</p>
<img alt="_images/fileAttrs.png" src="_images/fileAttrs.png" />
<p>File Attributes:</p>
<div class="highlight-rest"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span>*icon: relative path to the standard icon we created ("Modules/moduleName.png").
*search: search terms, separated by a ":", that you want your module to be found by ("joint:leaf").
*className: the name of the module class, following the naming conventions ("ART_Head").
*jointMover: the relative path to the joint mover file (Hasn't been created yet, we'll come back to this).
*baseName: when a module is created, the user can specify a prefix and suffix which wrap the base name.
For example, if our baseName is "head", the module name will be ("optionalPrefix") + "head" + ("optionalSuffix").
*rigs: a list of the rigs this module will build (for example, ["FK::IK"]).
*fbxImport: a list of the available options when import motion onto the rig from an FBX,
(for example, ["None", "FK", "IK", "Both"]). "None" should always be an option.
*matchData: if the module has more than one rig type, you may want to add the ability to match between rig types.
This attribute allows you to specify whether or not the module can match (first argument in list) and if so,
what are the match options (a list of strings). For example: [True, ["Match FK to IK", "Match IK to FK"] ].
If you do not want your module to have the ability to match, you would simply have [False, None]
*controlTypes: this will make sense much later, but this is a list of the attributes you will create on the
network node that hold your different rig controls, and a label for what type of control those attributes
contain. For example: [["fkControls", "FK"]] means that on the module network node, there is an attribute called
fkControls that holds a list of the rig controls, and those controls are of type FK. This is used by the select
controls tool (ART_SelectControlsUI.py).
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>At this point, your file should look something like this:</p>
<img alt="_images/yourModule_1.png" src="_images/yourModule_1.png" />
<p>If at this point, you were to launch the Rig Creator under the ART 2.0 menu, you should see your module now in the
module list (just don’t click on it yet!)</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="defining-the-module-class">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id8">Defining the Module Class</a><a class="headerlink" href="#defining-the-module-class" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p><strong>Steps</strong>:</p>
<blockquote>
<div><ol class="arabic simple">
<li>Update docstring.</li>
<li>Update base class init arguments.</li>
</ol>
</div></blockquote>
<div class="highlight-rest"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span>Once again, it's probably easiest to just open a module like ART_Head.py and copy the class definition and the
"__init__". All modules should inherit from ART_RigModule as there is a ton of functionality in there that you'll
get for free. This guide assumes you will be inheriting from ART_RigModule.
</pre></div>
</div>
<img alt="_images/headModule.png" src="_images/headModule.png" />
<div class="line-block">
<div class="line"><br /></div>
</div>
<div class="highlight-rest"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span>All you really need to change here is any docstring info, and the call to the base class "__init__", replacing
the first two arguments with your module's information. Those first two arguments are: moduleName and moduleType.
The moduleType is the same string you defined for your className at the top of the file. The moduleName is the name
the network node will be given on creation. (For example: "ART_Head_Module", "ART_Head"). The network node will
store all our module's attributes and connections. Maya will automatically add a number to the end of the moduleName
if a node of the same name already exists, which is what we want. Usually, the syntax for the moduleName is
simply the moduleType + "_Module".
</pre></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="add-attributes">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id9">Add Attributes</a><a class="headerlink" href="#add-attributes" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p><strong>Steps</strong>:</p>
<blockquote>
<div><ol class="arabic simple">
<li>Add Created_Bones attribute and set its default value</li>
<li>Add baseName attribute and set its value to baseName (var)</li>
<li>Add canAim attribute and set its value depending on whether you want
your module to be able to have “aim mode” functionality.</li>
<li>Add aimMode attribute and set its default value to False.
(This is whether or not the module is currently in aimMode.)</li>
<li>Add any additional attributes your module will need.</li>
</ol>
</div></blockquote>
<div class="highlight-rest"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span>The next function we need to implement will add any attributes we need to our module's network node.
These are things like: can this module aim? how many spine joints? etc.
The base class handles the creation of the network node, so if you were to launch the Rig Creator, and add your
module, there would be a network node in the scene with your defined moduleName. There are some generic attributes
that are always added by the base class, but this function will add attributes we want to track for our module.
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>If you were to try and create your module now, you would still get errors, but a network node with your defined attrs
should be created:</p>
<blockquote>
<div><img alt="_images/networkNode_attrs.png" src="_images/networkNode_attrs.png" />
</div></blockquote>
<p>There are four attributes you must add for your module, as the tools will be looking for them.</p>
<img alt="_images/addAttrs.png" src="_images/addAttrs.png" />
<div class="highlight-rest"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span>For Created_Bones, you will set the value to be whatever your default joint mover configuration will be:
"joint_01::joint_02::joint_03::" (ART_Chain). Since we haven't built our joint mover yet, this may change,
but know that you'll need to revisit this attribute so the default value is equal to your default joint mover
configuration.
baseName is pretty self-explanatory. For canAim, if you want this module to have "aim mode" functionality, set this
to True. You can leave aimMode set to False by default regardless.
Any additional attributes you know you'll need, you'll want to add them in this function. This is anything that your
settings UI will have options for, like number of toes, or number of neck joints, etc.
</pre></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="skeleton-settings-ui">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id10">Skeleton Settings UI</a><a class="headerlink" href="#skeleton-settings-ui" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p><strong>Steps</strong>:</p>
<blockquote>
<div><ol class="arabic simple">
<li>Call on base class method to get basic structure</li>
<li>Add Mirror Module info (if applicable)</li>
<li>Add Current Parent info (Always)</li>
<li>Add Change Name and Change Parent buttons (Always)</li>
<li>Add Mirror Module button (if applicable)</li>
<li>Add Bake Offsets button (Always)</li>
<li>Add any custom widgets needed for your module.</li>
</ol>
</div></blockquote>
<div class="highlight-rest"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span>It's best to reference another module's implementation when writing this function. You'll likely be able to
copy/paste quite a bit from another module for steps 1-6. If you're writing a module that does not support
mirroring, open up ART_Head to copy/paste from for those first six steps. If your module can mirror, open
up ART_Leaf.
</pre></div>
</div>
<img alt="_images/skelSettings_chain.png" src="_images/skelSettings_chain.png" />
<p>Open up ART_Chain.py and look at skeletonSettings_UI to view the code that created the above interface in the image.</p>
<img alt="_images/skelSettings.png" src="_images/skelSettings.png" />
</div>
<div class="section" id="building-the-joint-mover">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id11">Building the Joint Mover</a><a class="headerlink" href="#building-the-joint-mover" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p><strong>Steps</strong>:</p>
<blockquote>
<div><ol class="arabic simple">
<li>Build the joint mover geometry in a similar style to the existing joint movers.</li>
<li>Create the global mover curve object and color it yellow. <em>(”.overrideColor”, 17)</em></li>
<li>Create the offset mover curve object (usually duplicate the global, and scale down) and color it light blue.
<em>(”.overrideColor”, 18)</em></li>
<li>Create the geometry mover curve object (usually duplicate the offset, and scale down) and color it light pink.
<em>(”.overrideColor”, 20)</em></li>
<li>Name the joint mover curve objects according to the naming convention (list below)</li>
<li>Create a group node for each global mover that is in the same space as the mover control. Name these according to
the naming convention.</li>
<li>Create the LRA node (pull from an existing file, making sure material names are unaffected) and the LRA group.</li>
<li>Setup the hierarchy of movers.</li>
<li>Set geometry to referenced, check naming, check materials, finalize hierarchy.</li>
</ol>
</div></blockquote>
<p>The next step is to create the joint mover. There are a few basic rules when creating a joint mover for a module.
It’s best to look at an existing joint mover file to review how they’re setup.
When building the joint mover, try to adhere to the aesthetic that has been defined by the existing joint movers. The
first step is to build the mesh that will be our proxy geometry.</p>
<blockquote>
<div><div class="highlight-rest"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span>The geometry has a style to it that also uses two materials that you can see from an existing file.
proxy_shader_black and proxy_shader_tan. Your geometry should also use those material names with those exact
colors. It may be easiest to open an existing file and copy/paste the materials into your current working
file. Make sure to also follow the naming convention for the geometry.
In this example, I am building the chain module. For now, I will completely build out one link of the
chain and deal with the other links later.
</pre></div>
</div>
<img alt="_images/proxy_geo.png" src="_images/proxy_geo.png" />
</div></blockquote>
<p>After we have our geometry built with the correct naming and the materials assigned with the correct names and
colors, the next step is to build the global mover curve object. This can be as simple or complex as you want. In the
chain module, I’ll just use a simple circle.</p>
<blockquote>
<div><div class="highlight-rest"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span>As noted in the steps, the global mover has to be a specific color. You can achieve this with selecting
the object and simply running:
cmds.setAttr(cmds.ls(sl = True)[0] + ".overrideEnabled", True)
cmds.setAttr(cmds.ls(sl = True)[0] + ".overrideColor", 17)
Also, the naming convention is controlName + "_mover", so for this link of the chain, it will be
"chain_01_mover".
One important thing I should note is that you should make sure your pivot on the control is where you
want it! For this chain control, the pivot will actually be at the origin, right at the head of the chain.
</pre></div>
</div>
<img alt="_images/global_mover.png" src="_images/global_mover.png" />
</div></blockquote>
<p>Now we need to create the offset mover, which is simply as easy as duplicating our global mover and scaling the CVs in.</p>
<blockquote>
<div><div class="highlight-rest"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span>As noted in the steps, the offset mover has to be a specific color. You can achieve this with selecting
the object and simply running:
cmds.setAttr(cmds.ls(sl = True)[0] + ".overrideEnabled", True)
cmds.setAttr(cmds.ls(sl = True)[0] + ".overrideColor", 18)
Also, the naming convention is controlName + "_mover_offset", so for this link of the chain, it will be
"chain_01_mover_offset".
</pre></div>
</div>
<img alt="_images/offset_mover.png" src="_images/offset_mover.png" />
</div></blockquote>
<p>The last mover control is for the proxy geo itself, so the user can move, rotate, and scale the proxy geo itself,
which doesn’t actually affect the joint position at all, it’s just for aesthetics. Again, duplicate the offset mover
and scale the CVs in to quickly create this mover.</p>
<blockquote>
<div><div class="highlight-rest"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span>As noted in the steps, the geo mover has to be a specific color. You can achieve this with selecting
the object and simply running:
cmds.setAttr(cmds.ls(sl = True)[0] + ".overrideEnabled", True)
cmds.setAttr(cmds.ls(sl = True)[0] + ".overrideColor", 20)
Also, the naming convention is controlName + "_mover_geo", so for this link of the chain, it will be
"chain_01_mover_geo".
</pre></div>
</div>
<img alt="_images/geo_mover.png" src="_images/geo_mover.png" />
</div></blockquote>
<p>Now we can setup the hierarchy of our movers. For the global mover, create an empty group that is in the same space as
the global mover control. This can be achieved by creating an empty group, point and orient constraining the group to
the global mover, and deleting the constraints. The name of the group will be controlName + “_mover_grp”. At this
point, make sure that the orientation of your group is what you want your control to be. For instance, if you want
rotateX to be your twist axis, make sure to adjust the group orientation to address this. For this chain control, I
wanted Z to be my pitch axis, Y to be my yaw axis, and X to be my roll axis, so I needed to adjust the rotate values
until this was the case.</p>
<blockquote>
<div><img alt="_images/mover_group.png" src="_images/mover_group.png" />
</div></blockquote>
<p>Now that the group orientation is as desired, go ahead and parent the global mover to the global mover group. Then
parent the offset mover to the global mover. Then parent the geo mover to the offset mover, and lastly, parent the
proxy_geo to the geo mover. Your hierarchy should look like this:</p>
<blockquote>
<div><img alt="_images/mover_hierarchy.png" src="_images/mover_hierarchy.png" />
</div></blockquote>
<p>Select the global mover (not the mover group) and freeze transforms on translate, rotate, and scale. Now our movers
have the correct orientation that we want and we can move onto the next step.</p>
<blockquote>
<div><img alt="_images/mover_hierarchy.gif" src="_images/mover_hierarchy.gif" />
</div></blockquote>
<p>The next step for the joint mover is to add the LRA control (local rotation axis) to display the orientation of the
“joint”. To do this, I usually will open another joint mover file, and copy an existing LRA control, and then go back
to this scene and paste it, like so:</p>
<blockquote>
<div><img alt="_images/lra_control.gif" src="_images/lra_control.gif" />
</div></blockquote>
<p>We’ll need to unlock the translate and rotate channels on the LRA control (using the channel control) in order to be
able to properly set the space of the control for the next step. Now you can point/orient constrain the lra to the
global mover control and delete the constraints. The display of the LRA should match the true orientation of the
global mover.</p>
<blockquote>
<div><img alt="_images/lra_control2.gif" src="_images/lra_control2.gif" />
</div></blockquote>
<p>Just like the global mover, we need to create a group node for the LRA control. The naming for the LRA control is
controlName_lra, while the group will be controlName_lra_grp. Point/orient constrain the newly created group to the
LRA control and remove the constraints. Name the group correctly, then parent the LRA under the group. The group will
be parented under the offset control, so that your hierarchy looks like this:</p>
<blockquote>
<div><img alt="_images/lra_hierarchy.png" src="_images/lra_hierarchy.png" />
</div></blockquote>
<p>Real quick, since we copy/pasted our LRA control into this scene, let’s make sure the materials are still named
correctly. As you can see, they have “<a href="#id1"><span class="problematic" id="id2">pasted__</span></a>” in the name, so let’s remove those prefixes from the materials before
continuing.</p>
<blockquote>
<div><img alt="_images/lra_mats.png" src="_images/lra_mats.png" />
</div></blockquote>
<p>We also need to lock down the LRA control’s translate and rotate channels again, as we don’t want the user to be able
to directly manipulate this control, as it is just for visualization.
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For each joint in your module, you would need to repeat all of these steps. Each joint’s “mover” group would then get
parented under its parent’s global mover. For the chain module, if the joint mover had 3 links in the chain, this is
what that would look like:</p>
<blockquote>
<div><img alt="_images/chain_module_hierarchy.png" src="_images/chain_module_hierarchy.png" />
</div></blockquote>
<p>Another thing we need to do real quick is set our proxy geo and LRA geo to be referenced by enabling overrideEnabled
and setting the display type to reference. You can use this script to easily achieve this:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="c1">#select a piece of geometry, then run this to set that geometry to be referenced.</span>
<span class="n">cmds</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">setAttr</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">cmds</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">ls</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">sl</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="bp">True</span><span class="p">)[</span><span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">]</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="s2">".overrideEnabled"</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="bp">True</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="n">cmds</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">setAttr</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">cmds</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">ls</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">sl</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="bp">True</span><span class="p">)[</span><span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">]</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="s2">".overrideDisplayType"</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">2</span><span class="p">)</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>Lastly, we need to add a mover_grp as the very top group node to our joint mover. Simply create an empty group, name
it mover_grp, and parent your top-most global mover group underneath. It should look like this:</p>
<blockquote>
<div><img alt="_images/mover_grp.png" src="_images/mover_grp.png" />
</div></blockquote>
<p>This concludes the basic guideline to creating a joint mover for your module. Definitely take a look at existing
joint mover files and their applyModuleChanges functions to see how other modules are set up.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="testing-the-joint-mover">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id12">Testing the Joint Mover</a><a class="headerlink" href="#testing-the-joint-mover" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>With the joint mover file now built, we should be able to test adding our module and making sure the joint mover file
comes in. You will still get errors, as there are a few other functions that need to be added, but we can at least
make sure our file is coming in properly. Remember that the file the class is looking for is defined at the top of
the class file.</p>
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