ABSTRACT
A character should exist in a scene inventory as a single node, and all of the rig and model components should be children of this node. This “master,” “all,” or “god” node lives at the origin (x = 0, y = 0, z = 0) and is not only the hierarchical parent for the character, but also acts as the inventory nodewhich can be used to querywhich characters are in a scene. Attributes about the character and the character’s name are often stored on this node.Within any animation system, the character’s name must be unique. Therefore, it is a good idea to have the top-level node of
the character be something along the lines of name_char so that the character is identified and noted as a character. Just the character’s name will suffice. Often times, characters will have special attributes on their top-level node that defines them as type “character.” To create an inventory of characters that populate a scene, all top-level nodes with this character attribute can also be queried. Not only should the character’s name be unique, but also must all of the nodes that make it up, so as to avoid any potential conflict with other characters or objects in the scene. Making sure that all the nodes have meaningful names will make maintenance that much easier down the line. As such, prepending the character’s name to all of the nodes that make it up is an easy way to achieve uniqueness. Scripts are often written which analyze a rig to look for node names that repeat and potentially clash with nodes in other characters or itself. Utilities such as this are good to run at fixed intervals in character rig development and ideally at each point that the rig is published.
