CloudRig

Changelog

Just fixes.

• Add Metarig/Sample menu: Improve tooltips & sort alphabetical.
• Fix Symmetrize not symmetrizing (copying) custom bone colors.
• Fix #348: Error symmetrizing subtarget of constraints that haven't got one (Shrinkwrap)
• Fix Copy Bone Shape (in Ctrl+Alt+E pie) not copying "Affect Gizmo" and "Use as Pivot" properties.
• Fix #347: Generation error caused by Poliigon add-on defining an enum with 0 items on the metarig
• Fix #349 part 1/2: Custom Name not showing for parent switch set-up of Curve components.
• Fix #349 part 2/2: Parent Switch set-up not supporting left/right sides
• *Fix #351: Individual Pole Parent Switch not working with Duplicate IK Master param
• *Fix a remaining issue with Face Intersection Controls; When they use Armature Constraint and Smooth Spline param, rotation inheritance was incorrect.
• Fix Finger component's default_fkik value not working.
• Fix UI editing pop-up was no longer allowing to select properties directly on the metarig object itself.
• Fix Storm character rig performance issues with many bones selected. Caused by that rig being a bit hacky and having some toggles enabled that make CloudRig think it's a metarig.
• Add test coverage for the recently added IK Curve component type.
• Add test coverage for some configurations of Finger components.

*: These bullet points now also have test coverage.

Changelog

This patch fixes 2 crashes, but may also affect animations using intersecting Face Grid components at the centerline. See the note below marked with !!!.

One day, the bugs will stop coming. Any day now. If I just add enough tests... they will stop... right guys? Right??

• !!! Fix several issues in Intersection controls of Face Chains:
  • *They had incorrect orientation and sometimes incorrect shape scale. This fix will affect existing animations.
  • *They were still flipping when using the "Smooth Spline" option. Not anymore!
• Work around #346: Crash when assigning Corrective Action triggers.
  • Underlying issue fixed in Blender 5.2 by the devs! <3
• Fix #330: Crash on Better Bone Duplicate/Extrude -> Undo
  • The key you have to hold if you want to avoid renaming the bones has changed from Shift to Alt. This is because Shift is used for precise placement.
• Tweaks to the recent "Improve Link/Append" feature:
  • @tone-watson: Fix "Improve Link/Append" not working after opening a new file.
  • Fix console error triggered by other add-ons linking/appending via Python.
• Action Set-up system:
  • Fix Action set-up auto-initialization should not happen when control is not keyed.
  • *Fix Action Set-ups were no longer creating shape key drivers in most cases, since 5.0, since the Action Set-up names now included the Action Slot. Shape Keys now need to be named after the Slot. Updated documentation and added test coverage.
  • Finish Sintel metarig's facial actions, since they were always incomplete.
• Leg component:
  • Fix #343: Preview overlay for IK feet was incorrect
  • Foot roll control now visually follows the foot more precisely. Should feel a bit nicer to use, but it's not a functional change.
  • Foot roll control placement slightly tweaked to deal better with very long feet.
• Snapping:
  • Fix #342: IK/FK snap UI not displaying all affected bones
  • *Fix non-IK/FK snap operators would insert keyframes unnecessarily
  • *Fix non-IK/FK snap operators would not insert keyframes when necessary because there are other keyframes but the current pose is not keyed.
• Misc:
  • *Fix #340: Error with Smooth Spline without Tip Control
  • *Fix #341: Generation fails with AutoRubberHose since Context Sensitive UI implementation
  • Fix #226: Include Selection Sets in Quick Select menu. The keybinding for this has now returned to Shift+Alt+W.
  • To celebrate our regime change, I added Hungarian translations. :)

*: These now have regression tests.

Changelog

Update brought to you by my broken dexterous (right) hand, and an increasing number of community contributions! Thank you to everyone who submitted bugs, code, or translations. Keep it coming!

New stuff

• New Simplified Chinese translation!
  • Contributed by user 一点点 (Yi_Dian_Dian). If you are also familiar with the language and see issues, feel free to submit suggestions in this task.
  • Translators for further languages Like Spanish, French, etc, would be most welcome! See the translation task to see how you could help.
• New Curve: IK with Hooks component type that combines IK with curves, contributed by @tone-wattson! Thanks!
• New "Improve Link/Append" user preference, enabled by default:
  • Automatically override linked rigs.
  • Automatically execute scripts that come with linked or appended rigs.
  • Could step on your toes in some workflows, that's why it can be disabled.
• New Push Bone to Metarig operator.
  • Can copy a bone over from the generated rig to the metarig, either as a Raw Copy or a Bone Tweak component.
  • Will preserve component parameters, constraints, custom properties, and drivers. Parenting is preserved using an Armature constraint.
• Action Set-ups now pre-fill action frame range, transform channel, and transform ranges when you select your control bone or enable Corrective checkbox. For this to work, you should keyframe the control bone in the action itself. Action constraints will not be created for the control bone, so you won't get a dependency cycle, don't worry.

Improvements

• Root bone no longer has to be the "true root" - it can now have parents, and it won't result in any errors or Generation Log warnings.
  • Orphan bones, FK Hinges, and IK controls will still use this Root bone as their parent, as before.
• Bone Tweak component's "BBone Properties" (formerly "BBone Settings") param now affects curve/scale properties.
• "Base Name" param now affects display name of parent switching properties.
• IK Chain: Don't use Override Transform for the IK masters. This was an experiment, but after a while, it turned out more annoying than helpful.
• More tweaks to how the UI Editing operators remember their settings, so hopefully it's more convenient to add Bone Collections in particular now.

Fixes

• !!! Toon Chain: Fix first/last bones of Smooth chains missing 0.5 influence on Damped Track constraints.
  • Beware when updating to this version mid-production; This change could affect existing animations of eyelid or lip rigs that use Toon Chain components with the "Smooth Chain" param enabled.
• Fix #323: Center intersection controls were messed up.
• Fix #331: Root Bone generates with Deform on
• Fix #326: The "Bone Organization" UI section disappears when "Create FK Chain" is enabled on Spline IK component
• Fix #329: Shoulder shape was not customizable
• Fix #322: Rare error during UI editing + improve error messages & translatability
• Fix #328: Rig UI scripts now automatically update on file load
• Fix #325: UI lag with many Action Set=ups
• Fix Constraint Relinking not allowing you to move constraints to the STR-P- parent helpers by prefixing a constraint name with STR-P-, and similar cases.
• Fix Sintel metarig trigger actions disappearing when loading into Blender 5.1 and above.
• Fix incorrect bone shape size of double foot IK control.
• Fix parent switching options of left/right limbs masking each other.
• Fix IK Double Control not working with Context Sensitive UI.
• Fix "Hide During Transforms" and "Context Sensitive UI" options not being library overridable.
• Fix relinking on Chain: Toon resulting in error when BBone Segments is 0.
• Fix "Spine: Cartoon" component had an empty "Stretch" parameters section.
• Fix case where inherited component type is incorrectly displayed in UI.
• Fix Scale Custom Shapes poll function letting it run in some cases when it would do nothing.
• Fix implicit Raw Copy components (not meant to be shown in component list) were causing empty drop-down arrows to appear for their parents in the component list.

Changelog

New stuff:

• Context-sensitive rig UI
  • Optional and off by default for now.
  • Deselect all bones to see full UI.
  • Feedback welcome; If you feel a slider doesn't appear when you'd expect it to, feel free to open a report.
• In Wireframe shading view, the rig preview overlay now draws with x-ray.
• Spine: Cartoon component's custom property settings were exposed.
• Aim component now propagates its rotation locks to the control bone.
• Implement #301: Allow specifying property storage of Single Control component. Only affects the parent switching property, not Custom properties on the bone itself.
• Metarigs and samples now use "World Align Controls" instead of deprecated "Flatten Controls".
• Sintel metarig now showcases parent switching set-up on her eye components.

Fixes:

• Fix Parent Switching on Aim components would only work if it was assigned to the last component in a given "Aim Group".
• Fix corrective actions on a metarig saved in blender 5.0 not working on blender 5.1. This is a one-way conversion, so going back to 5.0 will break corrective action references.
• Fix Spine: Cartoon error with BBone Density of 0.
• Fix #317: Pole Target object of IK constraints not remapped from metarig to target rig (with Raw Copy).
• Fix #314: Curve modifiers not always removed on re-generate, resulting in accumulation.
• Fix #315: Properties UI editing pop-up not clearing prop_name when selecting a bone/collection
• Fix Raw Copy components were using Root Parenting/Parent Switching, despite not displaying their UI. They now no longer inherit this behaviour.

Bone Display Fixes:

• Fix custom shape scale operator (Alt+Shift+S) goes crazy with symmetry when bone has no opposite.
• Fix custom shape scale being incorrectly calculated in some cases, most notably for STR- controls after being symmetrized.
• Fix #312: Bone shape versioning for pre-4.5 metarigs failing on Bone Tweak/Raw Copy.
• Fix #313: Versioning code was unnecessarily running for armatures that started out as a Single Bone armature. Most notably, this was causing custom shape scales to get messed up after a save and reload.
• Fix Bone Tweak component not affecting new "Affect Gizmo" and "Use as Pivot" properties.
• Fix length of IK controls not staying consistent with Flatten/World-Align params, affecting size of the IK bone shape.
• Fix Forefoot control's shape on leg component was not customizable.
• Fix #318: Duplicate IK Master not displaying correctly with World-Align
• Fix Spine: IK/FK component's chest control displaying with incorrect rotation when using World-Align

Changelog

CloudRig development may slow down for a while, as my other responsibilities ramp up. This patch fixes current known bugs, and I aim to keep fixing any new ones I encounter or get reported. I'm pretty happy where we're at for now, though I couldn't quite finish the "Convert Rigify Metarig" feature, but it will get finished and merged one day. :)

• Fix Spline IK scale propagation issue when rig is scaled in object mode. Added a first regression test for Spline IK.
• Fix #298: Small visual issue but other potential issues due to lack of foolproofing in BoneInfo API. Creating a bone without a "source bone" can now only be done by explicitly passing None as the source.
• Fix #303: Symmetrize not flipping constraint target obj/vgroups.
• Fix #308: Symmetrize fails with >1 @ in constraint name. Added regression tests for both this and the previous fix.
• Fix #306: Errors when parent helper creation for STR controls is skipped.
• Fix #300: Errors in tweak component. Added more thorough regression test for Tweak Component.
• Fix #309: Disable syncing of action selectors in Blender 5.0 where it doesn't work properly.

Changelog

• "World-Align" parameter on Spine and IK Chain components now aligns affected bones strictly to Blender's world axes, rather than just to the nearest world axes of the bone's initial transforms. This is closer to Rigify, and results in more predictable axes for animators. The old behaviour is now under a new "Flatten Controls" param, which is deprecated and will be removed in Blender 6.0.
  • Contributed by Wayne Dixon, thanks!
• Component Types can now have "soft defaults", which are parameter values assigned when the given component type is assigned, but can still be manually changed. Used only in two cases for now:
  • "Sharp Sections" param will be set to True when assigning an FK Chain component or any of its derivatives.
  • "IK Master Shape" param will be set to "Foot" when assigning a Biped Leg component. This foot shape was the last remaining non-customizable bone shape.
• Fix #291: Preview overlay laggy with many orphan bones in the metarig
• Fix #293: Scale Custom Shape operator was not mirroring correctly
• Fix #292: IK flatten had poor results at small scales
• Fix #295: Single Control's "Ensure Free Transforms" can cause self.root_bone to be set to None, resulting in error

Changelog

Rig Components

• FK Chain: New "Curl Each" param. Got regression tests too.
• FK Chain: Renamed "Create Curl Control" to just "Curl Control".
• Limb: Biped Leg: New "Forefoot Control" param. This creates a control at the ball of the foot, like what you have in Rigify.
• Fix scale inheritance on Toon Chain when BBone Segments is at 0.
• Fix Toon Chain creating parent helper bones even when not needed.
• Fix #289: Unnecessary Damped Track Constraint on Toon Chain.
• Fix #290: Hidden dependency cycle in IK chains
• !!! Fix Face Intersection controls not always being aligned correctly when two symmetrical chains meet at the center.

UI/UX

• Rig Samples can now be added into the active edit mode armature, from the 3D View Header->Add menu.
• Do not propagate .hide property to generated bones, so metarig bone visibility doesn't affect generated rigs anymore.
• Un-assigning a component type now resets all component parameters.
• "Forced Parameters" are no longer drawn in Advanced Mode to reduce clutter. These are params that were inherited from a parent class but locked to a hard-coded value.
• Improve how Bone Collections UI handles Soloing.
• Fix "Reset Transforms" checkbox of Reset Armature operator being ignored, always acting as if it was set to True.
• Fix expanding/collapsing Bone Collections wasn't selecting them.
• Fix Bone Collections pop-up (Shift+M) not working in Weight Paint mode.
• Fix various console errors about None icons in UI editing

Generation Log

• Added Quick Fix operator for the "Ignored Root Parenting" log warning.
• Added log reporting and Quick Fix operator for cleaning up leftover unused properties.
• Fix an error in log checks about Action Set-ups.
• Fix the Quick Fix operator for renaming bone collection wasn't redirecting Bone Set references.

Changelog

• UI: Unify "CloudRig Component" panel and "CloudRig->Components->Active" UI.
• Log now warns against using Blender's built-in bone colors, and prompts user to apply one of CloudRig's bone color presets instead.
• Fix UI wasn't allowing re-enabling a disabled component.
• Fix overlay terminal spam with disabled components.
• !!! Spline IK
  • First and last FK bone's rotation is now fully propagated to their hook controls instead of by 50%.
  • Fix Constraint Relinking not working for Hook controls.
  • Fix first DEF bone not being parented correctly.
• !!! Fix multiple issues with last STR/DEF bones parenting in IK Chains with various combinations of Tip Control/IK At Tip parameters. There are some tests for these now as well to reduce future breakage.
• Fix Raw Copy not propagating Deform checkbox.
• Fix Tweak/Single Control Ensure Free Transforms only working when there's a constraint present.
• Fix Physics Chains messing with each other's physics objects when there's more than one in the rig.
• Fix bad error message when trying to generate an IK chain with only 1 bone.
• Made some more strings translatable.

Changelog

CloudRig now welcomes Translation contributions!

• Languages with large userbases like Chinese, Spanish, French, etc, would be super welcome!
• Translations submitted by the community will be verified to the best of my ability, and then included in CloudRig.
• This relies on users (like you!) submitting translations! It's very easy!

Chain: IK

• CloudRig finally uses "Soft IK". This is a Blender feature which helps avoid IK popping at the cost of slightly shrinking the bones along their length. To help with this trade-off, Soft IK is only enabled when IK Stretching is enabled in the rig settings.
• !!! This introduces a noticable shrinkage in limb lengths of existing animations that have IK Stretch enabled, even if the limbs are not extended to their maximum length. You may want to disable IK Stretching if you're not actually using it.
• IK Stretching is now disabled by default, but not for existing metarigs.
• The default values of the FK/IK switch and the IK Stretch can now be customized under the Custom Properties parameter panel (Advanced Mode only).

Chain: Biped Leg

• Footroll control can now be rotated on Y to rock on the sides of the foot/shoe, like in Rigify.
• Fix #6: Foot rolling w/o IK Stretch wouldn't let leg fully extend.
• !!! Footroll control rotated on Z axis no longer bends the foot, it just swivels from the tip of the toe.
• Heel bone in the metarig now has to be placed differently, but versioning code will take care of it for you.
• Roll of the metarig toe bone is now irrelevant; Will be aligned to the foot during generation.
• Heel control's default shape changed from Roll 2 to Heel, to better represent the supported rotation axes (now all 3 axes), and to feel more familiar for Rigify users.

Single Control & Bone Tweak

• "Move Constraints to Parent" param was renamed back to "Ensure Free Transforms", and it now also moves any drivers on transform properties (loc/rot/scale) to the "CON-" helper bones.

Fixes:

• Multi-line strings in the UI now take UI scale preference into account, so they do a bit better job of splitting the string successfully without getting "..." showing in the middle of the string.
• Fix #287: Aim components with parent switching set-up broke in v2.2.10
• Fix error on bone extrude/duplicate in Blender 5.1 and above only.
• Fix bone select ops (Alt+D) not extending selection when holding Shift.
• Fix "Single Control" wasn't propagating use_connect ("Connected") property.

Changelog

• CloudRig now has a proper icon on the Extension Platform :) Thank you Vivi.
• Implement #277: Separate parent switcher for IK Pole.
• Bone Tweak component now copies over drivers on bone properties. (Previously only drivers on constraints worked.)
• Fix Chain: FK component's Curl control flipping at 180 degrees of rotation.
• Fix #265: Overlay updates delayed by 1 viewport re-draw.
• Fix #279: Symmetrize breaks with Lattice Objects.
• Fix #281: Metarig list doesn't load when double-clicking .blend.
• Fix #282: Parent Switching is broken for Lattice Component.
• Fix #283: HeelPivot bone unnecessarily exposed.
• Fix Single Control component's "Create Custom Pivot" was showing incorrect overlay preview & would lock the child's location.
• Fix Scale Custom Shape operator (Shift+Alt+S) failing on non-CloudRig armatures
• Finger component was simplified under the hood, should still behave same as before, but may get a re-work soon.
• Minor metarig tweaks.

Changelog

• Added new "Control Shape" param to "Single Control" component type. This will be grayed out if you assign a shape on the bone itself, as that will have priority. Both workflows are valid.
  • This is now used in metarigs, so they don't reference any widget objects.
• Bone collection names with .00x ending now result in a generation log entry with a quick-fix button.
• Fix unintentional backwards-compatibility break on bone names of generated Face Chain intersection controls in some cases (center bones when not using an Anchor), introduced in v2.2.10.
• Fix tests were failing to fail when metarig generation of the built-in metarigs had warnings, which let the above issue slip through.
• Fix some controls on built-in metarigs were still assigned to incorrect bone collections.
• Fix 278: False positives on Ambiguous Pole Direction warning due to a floating point precision issue.
• Fix "Jump to Bone" op having to be clicked twice (in Generation Log on most log entries)
• Fix both "Raw Copy" and "Single Control" components were not preserving display shape wire width in the generated rig.
• Fix "Raw Copy" component was unintentionally displaying Parenting parameters and empty parameter panels.
• Fix incorrect bone sets displaying in Ctrl+Alt+E pop-up when the "Components" UI is set to List view.

Changelog

• Fix #276: Versioning code affected rigs like Storm, which is a generated rig pretending to also be a metarig for crazy reasons.
• Fix #271: Properties UI element order sometimes lost when editing UI data.
• Fix some errors with straight IK chains.
• Fix bone names weren't always correctly derived when side indicator was a prefix (eg. "Left_Hand").

Changelog

This update contains most of the non-backwards-compatibility-breaking changes for the upcoming Rigify Metarig Conversion feature, coming soon! Also a ton of fixes.

New Component Type: Raw Copy

• Does what you'd expect, and is implicitly assigned to all bones.
• Makes it significantly easier to mix procedural and non-procedural rigging; Just add manually rigged elements to your metarig, no need to assign anything. Any constraints and drivers pointing at the metarig itself should work as you'd expect in the generated rig.

Bone naming rules greatly relaxed

• Side indicators at the start of the bone name (eg. Left_Hand instead of Hand.L) are now supported.
• Side indicators not using a period (eg. Hand_R, Hand-left) are now supported.
• Trailing zeroes (.001) will now result in a warning instead of an error.
• Overall, any remotely sane bone names should now result in successful rig generations without breaking Blender's built-in symmetry functionalities. This hopefully makes CloudRig more compatible with a wider range of pipelines and conventions.

Misc:

• Renamed "Bone Copy" component to "Single Control". Over the years, this component type got features which made it do more than "just copying the bone". The original intent for this component type is now better served by the new "Raw Copy" component.
• New Generator parameter: "Base Wire Width". If you want to make all wire widths thicker or slightly thinner.
• Chain component: Bendy bone size of deform bones is now set according to bone length, unless the source metarig bone was displaying as a bendy bone.
• Aim component:
  • "Flatten X" param has been turned from boolean to a float, interpolating between the two options.
  • "Appearance -> Root Shape" property only visible if "Create Root" is enabled.
  • "Create Sub-Control" renamed to "Create Highlight Control".
• Scaling custom shape scale with Shift+Alt+S now takes armature symmetry setting into account.
• Metarig tweaks:
  • Loaded metarigs with widgets will now also add their widget collection to the scene. This is currently only relevant for Sintel.
  • Loaded metarigs will now use widgets already in the local file if possible, instead of bringing in duplicates.
  • Renamed metarig "Wrist" bones to "Hand".
  • Bone Collection organization improved; Arms and Legs are now organized separately, Stretch controls are now spread out more, etc etc.
  • Toon Chain sample now has more useful parameters: Smooth Spline: True -> False, Stretch Segments: 2->1.
• Custom shape tweaks:
  • Root (2/3/4/5/6) rotated 90 X
  • Mouth rotated 90 X
  • Diamond rotated 90 Z
  • Heel rotated 180 X

Fixes

• Generator's "Custom Shape -> Preserve Properties" option now works with the Rig Preview overlay, and grays out relevant options in the "Appearance" component parameters.
• If you rename a bone collection which has been added to the rig UI, the reference will no longer break (the rig UI data will be updated with the new collection name - But not the button's display name!)
• Fix Smart Rename (F2) would replace .L with .R when trying to add suffix to a bone that didn't already have it.
• Fix #266: Rig Preview not drawing in some cases when it should.
• Fix #268: Error generating Copy Bone component with Create Custom Pivot param.
• Fix #269: Symmetrize not working when opposite bone doesn't exist yet.
• Fix #272: Properties Editing UI could get confused when bone and bone collection names have overlap.
• Fix bone duplicate/extrude not always resulting in expected bone selection.
• Fix Pose Mode X-Mirror setting not preserved on re-generate.
• Fix various bugs on the Curve component, particularly with the "X-Axis Symmetry" parameter, which was throwing hard errors. This also has tests now.
• Fix widget collection was getting initially created in the active collection rather than the scene collection.
• Fix quick-fix for perfectly straight IK chains wasn't working if the bones were quite long. Offset amount is now always 1% of the bone's length, instead of 10mm.
• Fix overlay settings were shown in the pop-over even if you're not on a CloudRig metarig.
• Fix missing null check resulting in console spam from the new "Hide UI During Transforms" checkbox.
• Fix Tweak Bone was failing to tweak bone collection, color, and rotation mode since v2.2.4.
• Fix an error in overlay drawing after running Symmetrize.
• Fix potential errors when duplicating bones or using Smart Rename.

Changelog

Ignore this version!

Changelog

• Add option to hide rig UI during transformations, so it can be disabled. This optimization was bothering several users because it reset the scrollbar. It's still enabled by default for now.