IMAGE G RIG DRIVER SCRIPTING FOR MAYA

This is Casey Schatz over at Image G, and welcome 
to the beta of the IMAGE G Maya Bulldog simulation:

The basic idea is that you can animate a MAYA camera 
and then 'hook' the Bulldog to it and watch how the rig
will accomplish the move. Meanwhile a MEL expression
generates a Kuper file which can be plugged into the real
rig and do the identical move!

As the GUI isnt all the way there yet, I wanted to quickly
describe the general workflow and explain what the buttons do.

1) Open up a scene with your favorite camera move
   and then import the scene "RIGDRIVER_MAYA3.mb" .
   Make sure our shelf "SHELF_BULLDOG2.mel" has been loaded also.
   Set the shelf preferences to "icon>text below" to
   see the button labels. Remember: IMAGE G WORKS IN INCHES
   and the models are scaled to their "real size"

2) In our scene, there is a camera called "AnimateMe".
   This should be POINT and ORIENT constrained to your
   camera so that it is doing the identical move.
   (This is for the sake of having the proper name
    in the MEL scripts, within the next few days I will
    have it so that you can enter a string for your
    camera name and be able to skip this step.)

3) Once this is done, hit the "Hook Rig" button and the
   rig will do the move of the previously animated camera.
   After this, use the "Move Rig" button to place the rig
   wherever you want and the constraints to the camera will 
   remain intact. 


Here is a quick recap of the shelf button functions:

CamDrag - Before the "HookRig" has been executed, this will
          let you manually move the rig around from the point
          of the camera pivot.

HookRig - Attaches the rig to the "AnimateMe" camera which
          was animated itself or constrained via point and
          orient to an already animated camera.

MoveRig - Before the "HookRig" command has been executed, this
          will move the entire rig around and establish the 
          lens nodal start position.
    
	  After the "HookRig" command, this button will move
          the entire rig but the camera and lens nodal points
          will remain constrained. This is ususally where the 
          command is most helpful because with the move running,
          you can rotate and translate to find the best initial
          position for the rig. 


Kuper Off
Kuper On  - This toggles the node state of the expression that is
            streaming the Kuper data. If you are annoyed by the 
	    numbers streaming into the Command Feedback window, 
            hit the "Kuper Off" button. When you want generate
            a Kuper file, hit Kuper On, then go to your first
            frame and open the Script Editor window. From here
            simply play the animation (make sure in Animation
            Preferences is set to "Play Every Frame") and the
            Kuper file will be generated. Copy this to Notepad
            and save it as "YourSceneName.KUP"

==========================================
Note to SONY IMAGEGWORKS:

 As is common with charactor setups, there can be a certain
 amount of rotation after which the IK falls apart and/or 
expressions generate errors. With this version, if you
try to pan the arm beyond 90 degress it will stop. This is
 because the node in charge of translating the dolly is confused
as to whether you want to continue rotating or proceed translating
in Z. To previz the Charlies Angels motorcycle shot, I reconfigured
 the setup to control the the Dolly translation via forward
kinematics and everything else the IK approach. If you have a
move the 'breaks' the IK or the expressions, send us the original
move and we will customize the setup to suit that particular move.


Please let me know right away if you have any questions or suggestions. The
best ways to reach me are:
G = (818) 761-6644
cell = (661)312-6950
email = casey@ImageG.com

Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!