APEX Rigging | H20 MASTERCLASS

In this masterclass, William Harley shows us how to rig in APEX. He begins by creating a simple rig using Components (scripts) and Subgraphs (similar to HDA's). Once the essentials are explained, we take a look at a more complex rig and how it was created (the Chicken rig, which you can download and follow along). While the Chicken rig is not shown "from scratch" (pun maybe intended), all the key essentials as pole vector, look-at constraints, neck/spine, pose blends, control shapes and output, are reviewed.
Download the Chicken rig here:
www.sidefx.com/contentlibrary/...
TIMESTAMPS:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
00:00:40 Simple Rig - Components
00:07:58 Control Hierarchy
00:25:00 Subgraph - Squash & Stretch
00:35:15 Chicken Rig - Walkthrough
00:42:08 Chicken Legs - Pole Vector Look-at
00:47:53 Chicken Eyes - Look-at Control
00:48:30 Chicken Leg - Twist
00:50:02 Chicken Toe - Look-at Metacarpals
00:51:26 Chicken Neck
00:52:19 Chicken Face Pose Blend
00:57:40 Chicken Pose Blend
01:00:34 Chicken IK-FK Blend
01:05:42 Configure Control Shapes
01:09:00 Control Shape Material & Colour
01:09:40 Output & Export Rig

[@jzbrothersurgut]

Please show us with simple examples how to set up LOOK Att eye tracking for the controller and a simple blendshape in APEX, not on ready-made rigs, but from beginning to end with simple examples, thank you in advance!

[@skareeg]

This is really good content, but I do think that APEX as an execution graph alone should be thoroughly explored by anyone viewing this *first*, before attempting to truly understand how to apply it to complex rigs, or even just rigging in general. The ability to build "metarigging" tools is awesome, but requires some very.. interesting ways.. of thinking about building rigs. Especially for someone coming from rigging tools like those made in Blender. You've basically given us a nuclear reactor when some of us only know how to work portable generators. I look forward to learning this, though, and thanks for the video!

[@carlosrivadulla8903]

I hope to see along this year an APEX tutorial like the fur dude.

[@TreyWojo]

I just started diving into APEX today, perfect timing!

[@junechevalier]

I've been waiting for this since the launch! Thank you

[@SmallRobotStudio]

I literally started looking at rigging a few hours ago, nice timing!

[@jzbrothersurgut]

it is difficult to understand anything on the film, there is a lot of everything, I would like to understand how BlendShape and LookAT work with simple examples, it is on simple examples and not on ready-made bulky rigs

[@chr1st0pher]

it's here!!!

[@williamharley_]

🙌

[@ArmeedogMZ]

Thank you!

[@TechnicalArtist-dd1mb]

awsome

[@maxrose8845]

YES!! Never clicked on a link so fast! Thank you Will

[@williamharley_]

ha ha, awesome man. hope it helps🍻

[@jzbrothersurgut]

how to implement Eye Tracking of a target using APEX, please show?

[@MitzuTa]

Amazing!! thank you very much!

[@3sisters3000]

Awesome masterclass, William, thank you! I am still trying to figure out two key things in APEX. 1 - How to make a simple skeleton blend like in KineFX, for animators? Can we actually have a slider in parameters, or it could be only connected to a control, like the IK/FK switch on the chicken in 3D space? 2 - How can we bring an existing animation to APEX? We have motion capture, perfectly retargeted to a skeleton (with KineFX). So the demo of Esther of KineFX/APEX is nice, but it's actually retargeting to the controls, and there are some jumps and flips etc. If we have the animation on the exact same skeleton, can we bring it to APEX (I think Warren mentioned some rig inversion in a chat, but couldn't find any info about it), and animate with a rig on top of mocap? Thank you!

[@maxrose8845]

1. For blends, you'd use a "Transform Blend" node within your APEX graph, and you'd need a float value to adjust the "Blend" parameter in the node. To adjust float parameters you'd have to use a abstract control, or use a transform object and use it's transform parameters to control the blend's float value. 2. So far there doesn't seem to be any way to create animation layers as you would in something like Maya, but considering how channel primitives work, I wouldn't be surprised if SideFX is developing this for their next update. In terms of the flipping, it could be a position issue. Are you matching the skeleton's position before transfering the animation?

[@mattestela]

killer stuff!

[@parkercoleman8078]

loveeeee the masterclasses sidefx! if i could recommend oneee thing it would be running izotope rx cleanup plugins on the audio, some of the mouth noises in these videos are hard to listen to

[@vodahlava]

In general, I do use Izotope RX to tune audio. I guess the mouth noises may be more preferential thing, as over the time, I have chosen to retain some more 'natural' noises (clicks, breathing, etc).... was too heavily editing them out in the past. Anyway, I'll tweak the 'balance' next time, thanks for feedback.

[@pogo575]

Thank you thank you thank you thank you.

[@playboy8303]

Let's fucking go...... awesome

[@phinnaeusoconnor]

Great tutorial mate, the rop output squash didn't work for me when I tried to tab it back into a fresh Houdini

[@yjr4998]

me too

[@yjr4998]

I found the answer. You need to add a node "python" and write: import apex; apex.Registry().reloadSubgraphs() Then you can find the squash_graph node you created.

[@ViralKiller]

Spending 1 hour to rig a ball is just not practical. I can follow along but this is way too complex for normal people...

[@pernillajonsson1335]

Thanks for making the video. I'm getting stuck on a couple places with the simple example. Can't seem to get the controls selectable. I see you're on an older version so UI looks a bit different, but setting the guidesource to Base.skel in the autorigcomponent node does nothing for me, can still only select the joints :/ It's a polygon mesh I'm using for controls (and am I understanding correctly that NURBS aren't working as control shapes?)

[@nisgia]

Same here with 20.0.724. When i write Base.skel on "guidesource" parameter doesn`t give me the shape highlighted. Checked names so many times and it nothing is misspelled. So did you have any luck with that?

[@jonassorgenfrei3966]

Thank you very much! I've got an issue after creating the custom graph. The Autorig Component shows the warning: The provided graph must have a character output Any idea what' wrong? I set the parameter name on the subnet output to character as shown in the tutorial.

[@fastlearner292]

I don't think you have to set the parameter name to "character" explicitly, the "updatecharactergraph" node has that output already no? You just connect it to the subnet output. Only other thing I can think of is maybe you didn't connect the "scope" from the for loop start to for loop end

[@simonvandenbroek6384]

I have the same issue. right at the start where we are just getting the data in. I did not even modify it yet I think it might be related to renaming the graph to "rigname" . when I renamed it back to "graph_name" it somehow started working. apparently the names of the other nodes like "parms" and "output" also seem to be important

[@CGRowdy]

I had the same issue a couple of times. It usually goes away after restarting Houdini. "rigname" is correct.

[@phoenix2gaming346]

😂❤

[@ripvangu]

hm,i think this tutorial should have started with him making the rig from scratch,and it could also have benefited from different topics being explored categorically.

[@fastlearner292]

Well, subgraph isn't showing up, no clue how to fix it because the way seems to be "save to some directory and hope it shows up", no errors or anything. Anything else I can do? Edit:- Okay anybody else facing this problem write this in a python sop (preferably on the top of your network) import apex; apex.Registry().reloadSubgraphs()

[@williamharley_]

Hi, we still needs some ui elements to better handle reloading of the subgraphs. I just restarted houdini in the masterclass which will reload all the subgraph’s. As for the directory, subgraphs need to either be in your hip dir in a apexgraph folder or even better in your houdini home dir in a apexgraph folder.

[@fastlearner292]

​@@williamharley_alright, will keep that in mind. Thanks!

[@priyeshpv]

Sigh. I appreciate your efforts but is there any hope for an auto rigging system or whatever? If a three joint setup like this already gets so complex then I can`t even think how an actual character may end up like...

[@williamharley_]

Hi, Apex is still in beta. We will be adding more components to use in the autorig system. It should be a lot simpler to set up in the future :)

[@ziyaddin88]

@@williamharley_ I think the problem with APEX in current state is not the lack of premade components, but the whole approach of the APEX. The APEX as new context is very unintuitive. Some nodes in APEX graph require to rename inputs, other require to rename nodes themselves. Also u have to refresh the nodes constantly. Rigging in kinefx looked way easier, although it is more difficult to animate complex rig with all rig pose nodes in kinefx. In any case, thanks for the masterclass:)

[@priyeshpv]

@@williamharley_ Thanks a lot for taking the time to reply and for the info, William! :)

[@KodraStudio]

An actual character will need 5000~10000 APEX nodes. (mine takes about 6000) Anyway the general advice of rigging in Houdini is: don't.

the controls are not showing at this stage. kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y2Guk4OqpLVog7c

[@jzbrothersurgut]

Tell me how to implement the simplest LookAt so that the eye follows the subject, just explain it as simply as in this lesson

[@johnli4006]

man, give it a year or two to polish, we will finally be able to get rid of Maya

[@jzbrothersurgut]

please do the simplest lesson on BlendShape in Apex, from the very beginning and not already on the finished scene, just take a ball and change its geometry by moving the control point, what is so difficult?

[@gregorybennings8718]

stop spamming the comments section weirdo

[@polimpiado]

ffs

[@gregorybennings8718]

Yeah turned this off 30 minutes in. Way too complicated for a 3-joint setup.

[@charlesnyiha4641]

😂

[@Royalkg2005]

Like! Wated this part)

[@rajibrazib]

people thinking how to make easy day by day...... but they are trying to make complex ......

[@LaikaBossGames]

Exactly

[@IgorDiachenko]

automatic setting? 😀A whole bunch of nodes just to give names to primitives

[@lenxie4501]

my cpu is smoking

[@wesleysin]

I feel this masterclass is only for the "masters" after watching it for 15mins. It's so unfriendly to someone who wants to dive into APEX right away. Maybe reading the docs first could help? If rigging a simple tube takes so many steps and know-how, then it will never be popular. It's also not about how easy it would be with a lot of pre-made scripts, I personally feel unsafe to use pre-made setup for production. Now, It's like the whole thing is too difficult for rigging artists to grasp so that pre-made scripts are desperately needed.

[@JorgeIvanovich]

So Maya still have some decades on the safe side.After all this time sidefx still dont have a clue how to make something simple.All the nodes to make a stupid constrain...

[@heytraile]

havn't watch this in full yet I just quickly browsed through, but notice it was showing how to use the rig components shipped with houdini; will thee be a class on how to build your own rig component from scratch? @houdini3d

[@williamharley_]

I am setting up a component from scratch in the video, I also build a subgraph, which is like a hda that you can use in apex

[@heytraile]

@@williamharley_ Awesome, sounds like exactly what I needed! Thanks much.