Current use of 'Character Sets', 'Assets' for Character Rigging/Animation

[haggis]

I'm not new to 3D, or even to Maya, but am fairly new to the art and science of character rigging/animation.
I've been trying to get my head around the tools and commonly used workflows, tools, setups ...

I've been reading about Maya's new (to 2009) Assets functionality, which combines encapsulation, data hiding, means to provide a public interface (published attributes).

Then, it is also clear that one Maya's earlier character animation-oriented design paradigms was Character Sets, which have direct support in the main UI (lower right corner, next to Animation Layers), and have integrated support in tools like Trax. They aren't node/object containers, but also provide the means to provide a "public data (attribute) interface" to a character.

However, I'm not seeing any mention at all of Character Sets in the recent books I've been using to get up to speed on CA ("Body Language", Eric Allen et al), Autodesk's 2009 "Modeling and Animation Handbook", and some other tutorials, so was wondering why that was...

Unfortunately, Assets are a fairly new feature, and since people don't change their production-stable workflows on a dime, I haven't noticed a lot of discussion yet on how/whether they are being widely adopted into Maya-centric production pipelines. On the face of it, they sound like a powerful encapsulation and abstraction feature, but I know sometimes in real production features which sound like a great idea don't always turn out to be in practice.

I'd like to hear comments from you creature TDs out there on how Assets and Character Sets are currently being used in production.

-Tom

[joojaa]

They accomplish completely different things:

They aren't node/object containers, but also provide the means to provide a "public data (attribute) interface" to a character.

Not exactly, a set is a collection. Its like a list that holds pointers to whatever the set is to contain. In this case  animation channels that relate to the keying setting. There's nothing private about a character set. Its just a list, list can amke things easy. in this case they are just lists wich provide easy way to trasfer one list to another and say do this to list quickly.

and have integrated support in tools like Trax

Trax does not encapsulate anything, it just marks up the list and drops things into the list. So the caracter set is jsut used as a drop zone by trax. It just drop the first attribute into the fort item in teh set and so on. Thats what you sue sets for, Or to isolate set key sets for example. Basically a set is juat a collection you want to call something so istead of saying person a, person b, person c...person z+1. You make a common denominator and call them for instace politicians.

Autodesk's 2009 "Modeling and Animation Handbook", and some other tutorials, so was wondering why that was...

You will find that MOST tutorials dont actually teach you anything complex, so almost all tutorials would skip anything that would need serious explaining. Even auto desk course ware. Keep readnig tutorials and i guarantee you will never get things Think.

Now a asset is something completely different, it collapses a number of nodes as if it was ONE NODE. Sure it can be fairly complex and even for the suer seem as many nodes but for all intents and purposes for maya its one node. Whatever goes in goes into the slots yous specify and whatever comes out goes out trough your interfaces. Now a set can do a lot thet a asset could do except a set can not deal with you removing or reorganizing things inside the set. The asset does something esle it creates a play gorund for you whatever is inside is and will be inside that container, you can create your own front for it and so on. But essentially it isolates your internals form the user, meaning you can change things inside without doing anything the user will notice. And thereby isolate you form the problems outside. Form a simple lest transfeer this attribute its the same thing but beyond taht its far deeper ist like making a new node type in the api.

[haggis]

I'm interested in learning whether Maya's Assets feature is being used in larger scale production, and if so how it has improved your workflow.

(original post was edited because: 1) it was too long 2) it asked about 2 mostly different things. Both bad ideas for a forum post)

[joojaa]

and if so how it has improved your workflow.

It has not*, but thats because I dont need to work with too many transient people at a time. So i have no bigger need for making a huge top down design hierarchy. But rather I operate in a norther European democratic business hierarchy where there are NO BOSSES whatsoever (even very big opeartions work with very minimal bossing structure in specialist busnesses).

Im pretty sure the technology was developed by and for a big studio so presumably at least they are using it

*Its just made it more work, but its a also a question of volume once i start to reuse this stuff its going to hopefully do