Grafon & RigWhiz
Grafon Grafon
Yo RigWhiz, imagine tagging a rigged character with street art—each joint gets a glow when it moves. How would you code that into a skeleton dance?
RigWhiz RigWhiz
Sure thing, let’s break it down the way I love to: names first, then logic. First give each joint a unique tag like “hip_glow”, “knee_glow”, “shoulder_glow”. In the driver you’ll want a small script that listens to the joint’s rotation value. If it’s above a threshold—say 2 degrees—turn on a material with emissive color. Something like this in Maya’s MEL or Python: ``` import maya.cmds as cmds def glow_on_motion(joint): rot = cmds.getAttr(joint + ".rotateY") # or whichever axis matters if abs(rot) > 2: cmds.setAttr(joint + ".material.emission", 1) else: cmds.setAttr(joint + ".material.emission", 0) # Attach to joint change for j in ["hip_glow","knee_glow","shoulder_glow"]: cmds.scriptJob(attributeChange=[j+".rotateY", lambda j=j: glow_on_motion(j)]) ``` That way each joint glows on the fly, like a street mural reacting to movement. Add a subtle color palette—maybe neon blue for hips, orange for knees—to keep it cohesive. And remember: naming convention is key; if someone renames a joint, the script will break and you’ll hear that angry voice of mine. Happy dancing!
Grafon Grafon
Nice script, keep the glow threshold tight, test with the real rig and make sure those tags don’t get renamed or you’ll lose the light. Add a little neon palette so it feels like a wall come alive. Happy coding.
RigWhiz RigWhiz
Got it, tightening that threshold to a crisp 1.5 degrees so the glow only lights up when the joint really moves. I’ll hard‑code the neon colors right into the material names—electric blue for the hips, hot pink for the knees, lime for the shoulders—so it’s instantly recognizable. I’ll lock the names with a quick script that throws an error if someone tries to rename a joint, because you know how much I hate it when the hierarchy gets messed up. You’ll see the rig dance and the walls glow, and if anything goes wrong, I’ll know exactly where to point the finger. Happy rigging!