Hi!

What's the best way to hide controls I'm not interested in? For example, if I am animating some walk cycles and from the side view I am constantly grabbing the Master translate/rotate control. I tried locking the parameters but the control still shows up. I also tried unlocking the HDA and hiding the control, but when the HDA is unlocked tons of irrelevant animated channels are now exposed to the public. Is there a way to temporarily move rig controls out of the way, the same way we can temporarily move Houdini Handles out of the way with the ' key?

Thanks!

P.S. I guess second-best would be if there were a way to highlight the rig control in the viewport when I chose that channel in the Channel List. I know I can select a channel in the Channel List and then J-Drag in the viewport to move things around but it would be nice if the handles themselves appeared.

Hi nicholasralabate. Your problem description is relevant. Unfortunately I'm not aware of any such "built in" feature for character rigs. If anyone is aware of any such thing please enlighten us.

AFAIK with Houdini you build your own assets including the UI for them. However, it is relatively easy to build a UI in the Parameters pane to add sliders and buttons. The "hard" part could be to learn how to use Python to control things, or how to connect built in operators for that.

However, there should exist many tutorials on that topic i.e. to build a UI (for example Magee's Fur Dude project). So a solution could use a button in each control group that displays only the handles for that group. If I would ever do something like that the buttons would simply call python functions.

Edit: You can check the features in the Rig Pose node.

Makes sense! I can totally see this existing in a hypothetical rig, I was just wondering if there was anything out of the box for hiding/nudging things out of view in the viewport. I am more interested in the animation side of things than the rigging side of things, but I will take a look at that Fur Guy tutorial soon.

I did notice that of the four built-in rigs -- Toon Character, Simple Biped, Simple Female and Simple Male -- Toon Character did have some per-body-part checkboxes for rig control hiding.

I also did find that my second request sort-of-almost already exists. If you create a group in the Animation Editor, you can hit Shift+S on the group name and all controls corresponding to that set of channels will become selected in the viewport. I just wish that behavior auto-happened just by selecting (ungrouped) channels in the Animation Editor.

Thanks for the feedback!


Nicholas

nicholasralabate
Makes sense! I can totally see this existing in a hypothetical rig, I was just wondering if there was anything out of the box for hiding/nudging things out of view in the viewport. I am more interested in the animation side of things than the rigging side of things, but I will take a look at that Fur Guy tutorial soon.

I did notice that of the four built-in rigs -- Toon Character, Simple Biped, Simple Female and Simple Male -- Toon Character did have some per-body-part checkboxes for rig control hiding.

I also did find that my second request sort-of-almost already exists. If you create a group in the Animation Editor, you can hit Shift+S on the group name and all controls corresponding to that set of channels will become selected in the viewport. I just wish that behavior auto-happened just by selecting (ungrouped) channels in the Animation Editor.

Thanks for the feedback!


Nicholas

Hi Nicholas. To show something working and to investigate this in real life I did a quick setup for a test rig. Unfortunately I do not like the way the Rig Pose node handles the show/hide thing and it makes the controls look cluttered.

SWest
Hi Nicholas. To show something working and to investigate this in real life I did a quick setup for a test rig. Unfortunately I do not like the way the Rig Pose node handles the show/hide thing and it makes the controls look cluttered.

How did you do that tho.

raincole

SWest
Hi Nicholas. To show something working and to investigate this in real life I did a quick setup for a test rig. Unfortunately I do not like the way the Rig Pose node handles the show/hide thing and it makes the controls look cluttered.

How did you do that tho.

Like this

Edit: My second video show some more. I like when the rig is hidden during posing, except for the selected control. However, when hiding other controls they appear during posing. This probably should be dealt with, or what do you guys think?

After submitting a support request pertaining to this topic I'd like to know if other users have the same experience? (i.e. the hidden rig controls appear during interactive posing like in the video out.mp4)

Hi all. The issue I refer to in this thread has been confirmed to be solved at least in version 19.5.567. The technique mentioned in this thread is easy to implement, and works fine and look good. Cheers!