CloudRig

This update includes two major new features, which required a number of changes which cause animation backwards compatibility breaks.

If you re-generate your rig with this version of CloudRig, any pre-existing animations will likely need tweaking, most notably the IK pole controls.

See the bullet points starting with "!!!" below for a full list of breaking changes.

Rig Preview Overlay

• This is a new overlay drawing system showing a live preview of what the generated rig will look like, before you generate it!
• Can be disabled or customized in the overlay settings.
• Bendy Bone scale is no longer used to define the size of bone shapes in the generated rig. Instead, the custom shape transforms of the metarig bones will be propagated to the generated bones. And of course, you can see a live preview of this as you tweak the values.
  • Metarigs will be automatically updated so that their Bendy Bone Display Size values are converted to Custom Shape Scale.
• A new operator called "Scale Custom Shape" can be used with Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S or via Pose->Transform menu. You can use this to quickly tweak bone shape sizes.
• Metarigs no longer use Bendy Bone display type by default, but Octahedral instead, since bendy bone size no longer has any special meaning or purpose.
• Ctrl+Alt+E -> Edit Custom Shape Properties now shows relevant properties on metarig bones (different from regular rig bones.)

Bone Widgets Overhaul

• Widgets can now be selected with an icon selector, both in the "Assign Custom Shape" operator, and the "Appearance" parameters of rig components.
  • Size of the icon selector can be customized in the preferences. The default is 2.0. At greater values, name labels will also be shown.
• Default custom shapes of many components have been changed. Rigs should look more professional and clean by default.
  • Note that in existing metarigs, these new defaults WILL appear, but ONLY on parameters where you haven't assigned a shape manually.
• New operator: 3D View->View->Render Bone Shape Thumbnails
  • Renders .png's of selected objects into a /thumbnails folder, which will be automatically detected by the custom shape selection UI.
  • Useful if you want to add your own widgets to CloudRig (which you could already do in the Preferences) and give them proper icons.
• New Widgets: 23 new widgets have been added, and WGT-None has been removed, to get a total of 72 widgets in CloudRig's built-in library.
  • 2 by me
  • 4 from Rigify
  • 8 from Bone Widget
  • 9 from BlenRig
• Renamed Widgets: Widget names were made shorter so they fit easier in the icon selector.
  • These changes get versioned automatically on metarigs. (May need to reload the active .blend once after updating the add-on.)
• !!! Most widget changes have versioning, but the orientation of these widgets need to be updated manually if you use them:
  • WGT-Roll: Rotated -90 on X.
  • WGT-Eyes: Rotated 90 on X, then Z.
  • WGT-Finger_Curl, now called WGT-Wave: Scaled -1 on Z.

Popover UI

• CloudRig's generation and component parameters are now accessible from the 3D View's header, which you might find easier to access than the Properties Editor.
• Sadly this doesn't remember the open/closed state of sub-panels.
• This can be disabled in the add-on preferences, with a new Interface Location option: Properties Editor/3D View Header/Both (default).

Other New Stuff

• New "Smart Rename" (F2 in 3D View only) operator: Renames symmetrical bones and objects, and warns you if your desired name is already taken and would have to get incremented. (It also increments with CloudRig's increment logic, not Blender's .001 convention.)
• New Post-Generation script template.
  • You'll find a button to create it next to the Post-Generation Script property under Properties->CloudRig->General, only with Advanced Mode on, and when you haven't yet specified any script.
  • Also, post-gen scripts will no longer error if you change the active object or mode within the script and don't reset them.

Component changes & fixes

• !!! Fix Spine: Cartoon component various issues:
  • In case of only 3 bones (such as on the base human metarig, yikes), Chest control was having way too little influence.
  • In case of many bones, it was getting forced to a straight line shape by the constraints.
  • Rotating the hips a lot would introduce undesired opposite rotation higher up the chain.
  • This component type now has pose consistency tests for both the 3-bone and the 5-bone version, so hopefully no more breakage in future. Apologies for any inconvenience.
• !!! Chain: IK(/Limb/Leg)*
  • !!! The meaning of "vertical" for the foot roll limits was changed from world Z axis to the axis of the knee bone. The foot will roll until it's parallel with the knee's rest pose.
  • !!! IK pole control's roll is now aligned towards the first bone of the IK chain.
  • Fix #258: hard error when an IK chain is perfectly straight.
    • This case now falls back to offsetting the IK chains, and raising a warning in the Log, with a Quick Fix button provided to add a kink in the IK chain in a suggested direction. (-Y direction for legs, +Y direction for all other IK chains.)
  • IK bone is now assigned to an "IK Secondary" collection by default. This control is rarely used, so it doesn't need to be visible most of the time, but it is needed for IK->FK snapping (especially if the first FK bone was translated, a'la detachable cartoon limbs), in which case it will be revealed automatically.
  • Fix IK/FK snapping wasn't setting the active bone to the last affected bone.
• Curve
  • !!! Bone rolls are now aligned to curve tangents. (Previously the bones were rolled towards the component root bone)
  • Now supports mixed spline types in a single object.
• !!! Finger: Should've always had "World-Aligned IK Master" param forced to False, because otherwise the rest pose gets affected. Now it is forced to False.
• Lattice: Lattice object size now depends on custom shape scale, so you can see how big the lattice will be in the preview overlay. Existing set-ups will be versioned accordingly.
• Fix adding a metarig/sample would not link its helper objects to the scene, ie. the Curve sample's curve object.
  • Also, now if you generate with a helper object not in the scene, you'll get a log entry with a Quick Fix operator.
  • Physics Chain component also no longer fails if the cloth mesh is not in the scene.

Misc Changes

• Orphan bones in the metarig (not just the generated rig) are now auto-parented to the root (if the root is specified in the General settings.)
• Parent Switch Snap/Bake UI now shows the parent bone name next to the selected option.
• The generation process no longer needs to enter Edit Mode on the metarig. Probably a minor rig generation speed boost.
• Parent Switch list now shows the bone names as placeholders in the UI name input boxes if you don't enter anything, since those are the fallback values.
• Bone Set color selector UI was slightly shuffled and no longer repeats " - Theme Color Set" on every option.
• Metarig sample list doesn't repeat the word "Cloud " on every option.
• Releases page got some updates for old CloudRig versions: I verified that each old CloudRig works with its corresponding Blenders. In some cases they did not!

Other Fixes

• Fix Shoulder component would create a whole FK chain instead of just one bone.
• Fix #257: Constraint relinking failure case on Face Chain component.
• Fix NOHLP Constraint Relinking rule was not documented and didn't work in some cases. This can be added to the name to NOT create a helper bone.
• Fix "Edit Custom Shape" wasn't taking armature object transforms into account when matching the widget mesh to the bone's transform for quick editing.
• Fix Toggle Metarig (Shift+T) wasn't syncing the active bone state as cleverly as it should between metarig and generated rig.
• Fix Symmetrize operator not cancelling itself early enough with ambiguous selections.
• Fix "Dissolve" in the X pie menu wasn't working correctly in Edit Mode when only a head/tail is selected.
• Fix "Base Name" parameter was not documented.