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.

Changelog

Ignore this version...! >_>

Changelog

Minor tweaks and some fixes based on recent user feedback.

Overlay tweaks

• Added a transparency slider.
• Exposed dash length parameter, and increased its default from 0.3 to 1.0.
• Improve performance of the overlay when navigating by mouse scrolling or interacting with other UI such as pie menus.
  • This should be a significant improvement on lower-end PCs or when showing previews of a lot of components. Otherwise, a minor improvement only.
  • No longer re-generate virtual bones when bone selection changes while Overlay Mode is set to "Visible", since in this case the selection state doesn't matter.

MetaRig tweaks

• Fix Sintel metarig had the generated rig attached to it in the previous update. Tweaked auto-cleanup script of MetaRigs.blend` to prevent this in future.
• All shipped metarigs' bones now have Deform=False, so new users have a better chance of understanding they're not meant to weight paint anything to them.
• When the rig is generated, there is now a Log entry warning if the metarig has any child/deformed objects. There is never a scenario where this would make sense, except maybe sub-metarigs, which are exempt from this warning.
  • There's also a button to fix all such issues with a single click.

Etc

• Minor UI tweaks to Component Parameters panel, now called just "Components".
• Added a UI notification informing you if your metarig was built with a newer version of CloudRig than what is currently installed. This warning only disappears when manually dismissed, and it also creates a warning in the Log.
• "Flatten IK Chain" operator now only affects the first two bones of limbs and legs, rather than the entire IK chain. For "IK Chain" components however, it's still the entire chain.

In the meantime, I'm working on various features to welcome Rigify users over to CloudRig. Coming soon!

Changelog

• Ctrl-Alt-Shift-S hotkey to scale display size was changed to just Shift-Alt-S.
• Rig Preview now always draws bones in collections whose visibility is driven. (Unless a non-driven parent collection is hidden.)
• Tweak some visual things on the Sintel metarig.
• IK/FK snapping: Don't insert keys if we're not baking and if there aren't any keys yet on a given property.
• Fix #262: Miniscule visual scale on Face Intersection controls.
• Tweak display size logic of STR bones to make more sense with face chains.
• Fix an error in drawing code of Smart Rename operator.
• Fix First IK bone's shape was way too big.

Changelog

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+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 in Blender 5.0 due to a bug that is fixed in Blender 5.1.
• 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.)
  • First 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.

Changelog

Backwards comp breakage marked with !!!.

Snap & Bake improvements

• Improved UI pop-up. It's now wider, the snapped bones are drawn in aligned columns with bone icons, and baking options are visually better separated.
• IK pole snapping precision is now perfect, as long as your rig generation didn't complain about imperfect IK chains.
• Inserted keys now use the "Generated" key type, so they are visually distinct from other keys in the dope sheet.
• We now insert keys on all transforms rather than only available.
• We now insert keys before doing any snapping, so result is more in line with expectation in an edge case where you moved already keyed bones without auto-keying.
• Now remembers baking settings, and only initializes to the scene range the first time the operator is run. (Per blender session.)
• Bake range start/end properties now nudge each other, so the first frame is never after the last frame.
• Baking performance should be 2x faster since I could remove a hack that involved having to run everything twice, lol.

!!!Foot Roll rework

• Fix #246: Recently introduced bug where the foot IK bone rolls were incorrect, especially noticable when the feet are far from the center.
• Previously, rotation values were arbitrary and hard-coded to standard human proportions wearing flat shoes, and worked poorly with any other proportions or with high heels.
• Rotating the roll control by 90 degrees on X will now always result in the foot bone rotating until it is perfectly vertical (tip-toeing) in object space.
• Rotating the roll control by an additional 45 degrees on X will make the toes also fully vertical (ballerina-style tip-toeing).
• "Use Foot Roll" parameter's tooltip now describes these behaviours.
• Now works well for eg. high heels, long toes, any proportions.
• Removed the "Toe Roll Threshold" custom property, since that was a hacky solution to these same problems.
• Heel pivoting (rolling back on X) and Twisting (rotating on Z) now have greater ranges.
• These changes will affect existing animations which use foot roll.

Constraint Relinking fixes

• Fix Armature constraints relinked to STR- bones were not getting their drivers sent through.
• Fix #248: Missing warning when constraint relinking fails. Will give a generation failure with a useful error message for now. In future, this may change to only give a warning instead.
• Fix #247: Constraint relinking using @ syntax not passing weights for armature constraints.

Misc

• The effort of implementing tests has continued, and the existing tests have already caught bugs for me that would've otherwise gone unnoticed into this release.
• Fix new "Affect Gizmo" and "Use as Pivot" properties not being copied by Bone Copy.
• !!!Fix rotations of Chain: Face intersections weren't propagating when Smooth Chain is enabled.
• There's now a generation log entry for invalid constraints (usually caused by missing constraint target)
• Changed defaults of the Reset Armature operator, so it resets fewer things by default. (Only bone transforms & custom props, like before more options were added in v2.2.0.)

Changelog

Some backwards comp breakage in this update, see points marked with !!!.

There's been significant effort in implementing tests for the first time, to provide greater stability in the future.

• !!! Spine: Cartoon now has consistent bone names with Spine: IK/FK so they are easier to swap out.
• X -> Dissolve now behaves differently from core Blender; Only dissolves the selected bones, not any bones they're connected to.
• Fixes:
  • !!! Fix Spine: IK/FK component not behaving at all as intended since 2.2.0, sorry!
  • Fix Log entry was not being created for missing parent bones in parent switching set-ups, and invalid parent switching set-ups would get generated. Now, the parent switching set-up is completely bypassed in this case, and you get a warning about it.
  • Fix error in Feather component type.
  • Fix error in Curve sample rig.
  • Work around a Blender issue where warnings were printed when trying to draw color properties.
• UI Improvements:
  • "Rig Components" panel now has a sub-panel showing the same UI as the "CloudRig Component" panel.
  • When clicking the "Jump to Bone" button on a log entry, the Rig Components panel will now also set that component as the active one. This means you can now troubleshoot issues without hopping between the Bone and Armature tabs of the Properties Editor.
  • Renamed "Generation" panel to "General" since all panels relate to rig generation anyways.
  • Added "Advanced Mode" toggle to "General" panel. This was previously only available on the "CloudRig Component" panel.
  • Fewer options are now displayed with Advanced Mode off, since it's easier to find.
  • Renamed "Generation Log" to "Log: x Issue(s)" so the number of issues is more eye-catching. I often get reports of false "bugs" that are caught and reported in this UI.
• Metarig updates:
  • Sintel Metarig now showcases a hip deformation set-up that's been gaining popularity, the same one used for Snow and Ellie.
  • Human Metarig now uses the new Spine: Cartoon rig component.
  • Spine bone names have been changed to reflect new best practices.
  • Use new Base Name property for better bone and property names.

Changelog

Hotfixes from the day's reports:

• Fix error in Better Duplicate/Extrude in 5.1 only
• Fix constraint relinking not working correctly on Chain: Toon component
• Fix Intersection controls not being created for the whole rig when the last chain component happens to be a Chain: Eyelid component.
• Fix potential error if you install CloudRig immediately after installing and opening Blender for the first time, when the config folder doesn't exist yet.

Thanks to everyone for reporting bugs, please continue to do so.

Changelog

CloudRig for Blender 5.0

This update comes with a silly amount of minor improvements, along with a better-late-than-never Blender 5.0 support.

As you can see, this is a massive update, so please report any issues you find. User reports are incredibly helpful to me and greatly appreciated.

Care was taken to keep metarigs alive through these updates, but it's hard to guarantee compatibility for existing animations.

New features

• It is now possible to extend CloudRig with your own component types as a Python developer without having to fork CloudRig.
• Custom Shape customization:
  • All bone custom shapes can now be customized under the Appearance panel of the rig component parameters. Either by selecting a custom shape name from CloudRig's shape library (default) or selecting an object (must start with "WGT-") from the current .blend file.
  • New Preserve Custom Shape generator options, contributed by Zakman150.

New component types/parameters

• New "Base Name" param used to help name certain bones and UI sliders better:
  • If you set Base Name to "Leg" on your leg rig component on a bone named "Thigh.L", the IK properties will be called "Left Leg" rather than "Left Thigh".
  • Also affects bone names in some cases, like with the spine rig.
• New Spine: Cartoon component type, designed for cartoony characters, and used in the new Storm character rig.
• New Chain: Sphere component type. This was made for the Singularity open movie, but in the end never used.
• Curve: Spline IK: "Bendy Segments" & "Create FK Chain" parameters.
• FK Chain: "Create Curl Control": Creates a control that transforms each element in the chain equally.
• FK Chain: "Counter-Rotate Stretch Controls"
• Bone Sets: "Wire Width" to customize the thickness of bone shape wireframes. I recommend a range of 1.5->3.0. The defaults are also in this range.
• Toon Chain: "Volume Variation": Control the intensity of automatic squash & stretch.
• Bone Tweak: "Move Constraints to Parent": Creates a parent helper bone to store constraints on, leaving the tweaked bone free to transform.

Improvements

• Properties Editing UI
  • New bone collection selector, so you don't have to type in the RNA Path to add bone collections to the UI.
  • New "Draw as Slider" toggle for int/float properties, so they don't always have to be drawn as a slider.
  • Enum Properties are now supported, which also have an "Expand Enum" option when added to the rig UI.
• "Reset Armature" operator can now reset the object's viewport display settings, bone visibility, and un-assign the action.
• Rig UI now has documentation.
• Built-in metarigs were updated to make use of the various improvements in this update.
• Action system now supports Action Slots, and was generally updated to the new Python API for FCurves in 5.0. Metarig versioning should mean riggers don't need to do anything to update their rigs.
• Hotkey save/load system was removed, since this is now finally handled by Blender natively as of 5.0.
• Bone Collection custom properties and their drivers are now copied to the generated rig.
• Custom properties of the Armature datablock and their drivers are now copied to the generated rig.
• Library overridden rigs will now get their armature data overridden so that bone collection visibility changes aren't lost on save/reload.
• Improved Parent Switching set-up UX and troubleshooting. Should now be more clear that specifying a bone name is necessary, but a UI name is optional.
• Dissolve Bones has been added to the Bone X pie.
• Bone Collection filter now updates as you type.
• Swap "Constrained Bones" and "Constraint Targets" in the bone select (Alt+D) pie, so bones depending on the active one vs bones the active one depends on are grouped on the left/right sides of the pie respectively.
• Display inherited component in the UI. For example, when you select Forearm.L bone, you'll see it's inheriting Limb: Generic component from the Upperarm.L.
• Toggle Meta/Generated Rig operator is now discoverable in the CloudRig menu, which is now also visible on generated rigs, not just metarigs.
• Widget filepath in the preferences is now to be pointed at a file with additional widgets on top of CloudRig's built-in set of widgets, rather than replacing them.

Fixes

• Fix everything to do with IK pole angles: Generation log warnings, and the quick-fix button to make your IK chains perfect, now both work reliably. Previously, none of this code was accounting for bone rolls, which made it quite useless. After making your IK chain perfect using the button, you're welcome to add 90 degree increments to your bone rolls.
• Fix scale inheritance in bendy bones in many situations. If you find any more that is broken, please report.
• Fix active collection was not getting synced properly on Toggle Meta/Generated Rig (Shift+T).
• Fix generating when all metarig bone collections are hidden would result in an error about 0-length bones.
• Fix bone collections pop-up (Shift+M) not working in edit mode.
• Fix Rig Components UIList not selecting corresponding bones
• Fix custom_shape_wire_width not copied by Copy Custom Shape operator in the Custom Shape pie (Ctrl+Alt+E).
• Fix bone selection pie (Alt+D) failing in Weight Paint mode.
• Fix incorrect constraint icons in the Alt+D bone selection pie menu.
• Fix Python Stack Trace was displaying for non-bug errors with Advanced Mode off.
• Fix footroll heel bone direction being unintentionally hard-coded.
• Probably many other fixes I forgot to write down.

Renamed

• Toon Chain: "Preserve Volume" -> "Squash & Stretch".
• Bone Copy: "Ensure Free" -> "Move Constraints to Parent".
• FK Chain: "Display FK at center" -> "Display Centered".
• Custom Property params: "Custom Property Storage" -> "Storage Bone".
• "Reset Rig" operator -> "Reset Armature".

Removed/Deprecated

CloudRig for Blender 4.5 will no longer receive updates because Blender 5.0 introduced a tremendous amount of backwards compatibility breakage in the Python API (which I approve of), as well as new features I'd like to make use of.

• Versioning very old metarigs (Blender 3.x) is no longer supported. These metarigs have to be opened and saved in Blender 4.5 first, with the corresponding CloudRig version then in 5.0.
• FK Chain: "Position Along Bone" parameter was removed, please use the new "Counter-Rotate Stretch Controls" param instead. It's different, but solves the same problem and imo better.
• Spine: Squashy: This component type is now deprecated, and will be removed in an upcoming version. Please use the new "Spine: Cartoon" component type instead, it's far superior.

What's next?

There should be active development in the coming weeks. I still have a handful of smaller features on my TODO list. I'd like to tackle those before working on bigger, long-awaited features again, such as a better face rig preset, better game support, context-sensitive rig UI, and converting other popular rigging systems to CloudRig.

Changelog

• Re-write hotkey registration system, should work better now especially in Blender 4.5, but even in 4.4 and below.
• Add an operator to restore deleted keymap items. Use this if a hotkey says it's missing!
• Should also have addressed a rare crash, at least in 4.5. (Update: Maybe this fix didn't work after all!)
• Fix a minor error in the bone parenting pie menu.
• Some new post-gen utility functions contributed by tone-wattson

Final CloudRig for Blender 4.5.

Changelog

It seems like not all intended fixes were actually included in the previous version.

Changelog

Mostly fixes to issues reported by users.

• Snapping operators should now insert a keyframe when that is needed to preserve transforms, even without the Bake option enabled.
• UI Editor's "Batch Add" option will now skip over properties that won't be drawn properly anyways, such as add-on defined data like Python dictionaries and lists.
• UI Editor now warns better when entering a full data path to a property into the "Property Owner" field.
• Fix an issue with IK parent switching where the pole target didn't stay in place after the switch.
• Fix add-on hotkeys not drawing in the sidebar Hotkeys panel after a rig generation.
• Fix hotkey preferences for the Shift+M bone collection pop-up UI and the Quick Select pop-up menu (Shift+Alt+W) not being preserved. Now they will be, but only when the add-on is enabled. Without the add-on enabled, these hotkeys are still available and customizable for animators, but customizations will not be saved when restarting Blender.
• Fix Symmetrize operator not mirroring bone names (This was due to a fix in Blender to an issue I reported, funnily enough!)
• Fix Bone Tweak not working with parent switch helper bones.
• Fix UI Editor not supporting non-custom properties.
• Fix Datablock Pointer custom properties not propagating to the generated rig.

Changelog

Minor fixes for user-reported bugs:

• Fix Bone Tweak component not working for collections, bone colors, and wire width.
• Attempted fix of an un-register error causing a crash in cloudrig.py (rigs need to be re-generated to get the latest cloudrig.py attached to them)
• Fix "Flatten Chain" operator would throw an error on a perfectly straight bone chain.
• Bone Tweak component no longer shows bone sets in the UI, since it's pointless. Will assign the tweaked bone to whatever collection the Tweak component bone is assigned to in the metarig.

Changelog

Two small bug report fixes:

• Fix FK chain with double control but no root having incorrect parent switching
• Fix curve controls with symmetry and separate radius control having incorrectly unlocked scale

Changelog

Minor improvements:

• "Curve With Hook" component now supports NURBS curves again, better than ever.
• Sidebar UI won't be drawn while transformations are happening, to boost posing performance when there's a lot of custom UI elements. This can become optional in the future.
• Fix console spam when an operator present in a rig UI isn't actually registered, eg. when the rigger added an operator of an add-on that you don't have installed.
• Minor UI tweaks and fixes.
• Minor updates to documentation.