So, many moons ago(years ago) I had begun documenting via a blog, the process of making a custom character template. I never finished it. I think, with this COVID induced break, I will try to go through the process again. I've had conversations with people regarding making their own templates, and there have been some hesitations. Most, invalid in my arrogant ass opinion, but there has been on fair person(Gene Magtoto) who I will let slide for not using it. The rest of you, no excuses. :)
So what I want to do with this first post is cover some of the reasons why you should take a rig you use regularly, and convert it into a template. So let's dive in!
Let's begin with who should use the Character Object templates that come native in Cinema 4D, and who should make their own custom templates. To know what to do, you simply need to answer the following questions. 1. Have you made your own rig before? 2. Have you needed to use the rig you've made but on another character?
If you answered no to either of those questions, my advice is to just use the standard character object templates that ship with Cinema. I'd highly recommend the Advanced Biped and Advanced Quadruped. Don't let the names scare you away. They are the templates that are the most well planned out, and tested of the bunch. I should know, I built them and maintain them, and use them regularly. They are effectively my custom templates. I built them because I answered yes to both questions. And so I use them regularly, and they've been very successful for me over the years. If you think you have something super simple, still use them. If it's a simple biped, then use Advanced Biped, but you can avoid the bendy arm and leg components if you want.
If you answered yes to those questions, then guess what, you should make your own template! Why? Because re-rigging from scratch is for suckers, and re-fitting a rig manually without the character object system is a series of very annoying steps that if you do wrong can break your rig. If you only do a couple of these kinds of jobs a year you can forget the process each time you need it. Creating a custom template simplifies that process and speeds it up for you.
So much easier than enabling and disabling expressions!
In addition to that speedup, the character object also poses some nice benefits for animation. There are highlights and huds and visibility options that can be nice. The filtering of what is displayed in the object manager is nice because it prevents animators from messing with the rig, etc. It handles displaying multiple user datas across a component really well too. It gives you selection sets of each component which is super nice. Lot's of perks. But it's not all sunshine and rainbows. Some of those perks come at a speed hit. Keeping the Character Object can be a bit slower(some of it can be helped by turning off some of the selection highlighting and hud stuff, but its for sure going to be slower). So that's a balance.
Don't want a speed hit? Hit that C button.
Except, if you ask me, it's not. Don't want that speed hit? If that's too big of a hurdle for you, collapse the character object. You still will reap the bigger speed benefits of the adjusting of a rig and you get the Selection Sets for all the components as well which is cool, too. So if you're rigging, you can quickly refit a rig to a new character. Real fast and everything and then you have a rig that you like. A rig that fits your needs. Not my needs like the Advanced Biped.
So, there you have it. Whether you should or shouldn't make your own custom template.This post was very word heavy. So here's a cat:
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