Advanced Rigging Pipeline

[user_deleted]

Hi all,
I'm wondering how to make an advanced rigging pipeline to avoid some stuff that slow down rendering times.
I explain:
My natural pipeline is create a model(and also a low-details model), reference it to a rig file(where I also skin it), than reference this file to every animation's file.
Now imagine that I've got a very complex character, and bake the animation is predictable...if I import the animation file in the environment I import a lot of useless stuff as well in render pass (for example rig icon's, contraints and so on...)

now think about that:
I create a skeleton file with only joints and the geometry skinned to these joints(I suppose that I don't use any deformer or blend shape). Now I reference this file to a rig scene and I create my interface to animate.this file will be referenced in the animation scenes as usual. But when the animation ends, I create a text file with the rotations of the joints at every frame. Now I open the skeleton file with no icons at all and import the text file. The result?a file with the complete animation and no extra stuff...ideal for render with no loss time...

so...

model file -->
skeleton file (joint and geometry) -->
rig file -->
animation file --> export joints rotation and go back to skeleton file -->
create a file with the skeleton and the txt file previously created-->
import the last file in the environment and render

here's a sketch

http://img413.imageshack.us/my.php?image=schema3dq.jpg

what do you think about it?

[joojaa]

Usualy the rig generates in a matter of fractions of seconds. So crating aextra pipe where you read the baked deformations form disk is umly realy jsut a hyuustel thats a extra step and does usualy only decrease you rendertime by a second or so!

So if your rendertimes were at the range of 1 sec per frame then ther MIGHT be something to gain if not then... not realy.

And maya can bake this for you. ALSO incidentaly if you export the anim to mi files then thats exactly what maya did MAya stripped the rig for just geometry per frame for mr. YOu can use theese mi files as is instead.

its very rare indeed to se a rig that takes more time to evaluate then a few seconds. And in thet cas ethe rig is VERY complex indeed! I mena i can have 30 blendshapes and muscle sim and is still wouldnt drop down my rendertimes with more than maybe by 2 secs per frame if i wouldnt baked the muscle sim beforehand. Offcourse the baked data needs to be done at some points so if its a extranal task it still takes 2 seconds per frames to do, but now maya need sto evaluate the point loader wich too takes time so in REALITY youve only made MORE calcs thius slowing redrer down.