Back in the sunshine!

Quick recap of my trip to Michigan, if anyone's interested - my youngest niece is now a year old; I got to see my younger brother's new house for the first time; got to hang out with my best friend for a couple days, and meet his service dog.  Also my oldest niece is now raising chickens (and some ducks!), but since they don't have a proper coop yet, they were kept in the room just on the other side of the wall from where I sleep...  something those feathery little bastards apparently don't do, so I had to sleep with earplugs in.  I don't know why I even bothered taking my gear up with me, when I knew that I wasn't getting any work done between all of this...

Actually I did get one little thing done - the script that assembles Daisy's pelvis and butt controls.  Also part of a commission on the flight up.  I'll have to finish that one and get started on the other two this week.

Whether I like it or not, this month is turning out to be fairly heavy on scripting.  If I were just building Daisy's core rig by hand, it might be done by now.  Instead, I'm writing a script that will build it.  The hope is that if I do it right, then when I need to update her rig, or rig a different version of her - or even a completely different character - I can just run this script and be done with it.

Here's a list of the scripts I've worked on in the past couple weeks, if you're curious -

• copyPastePoseTool - added a "quick mirror" option, which mirrors a pose without first having to store it.
• IK/FK matcher - redesigned UI, new matching procedure.
• jlMenu - a simple menu with access to important scripts, so I don't have to type the commands.
• Pose Reader - a UI for creating a UV-based pose reader.
• fingerRig - rigs fingers, and perhaps toes.
• jntStore - stores the local pose and parenting of the selected joints.
• jntRestore - uses the stored info to restore a joint hierarchy to its original state. Useful if a rig needs to be deleted and/or rebuilt.
• stretchyBone - simple, single-bone stretching.
• foot rig - generates the pivots and control shapes for a foot rig. (still need to write the rig procedure itself)
• ribbonRig - creates a ribbon and follicles from joint chain. Useful for characters' spines.
• spineRig - adds the controls to turn a ribbon rig into a spine rig.
• limbTools - updated the UI so that my usual settings are now the defaults. Added a 'quick rig' option, so that a limb can be rigged with a single click after the joints and name are entered.
• daisyRig - uses my other scripts to assemble Daisy's rig.