Creating Custom Templates Again Part 2-Key Concepts of Template Building.

Key Template Concepts

    Alrighty, so you want to build a template, but you're not too sure where to begin. Let's start with some key, very confusing concepts:

-Template: A template is a file, stored in the library>characters folder of your user prefs that houses objects with Component Tags and more.

-Character Object: This is the thing that will consume your template. This is where you do all the building of components, adjusting, and eventually animating

-Component Tag: This is the tag primarily used for creating templates. 

-Component: This is a piece of a template. Components are what the buttons you'd see when you are building your character. They represent a complete portion of the template(ie an arm or leg etc)

-Component Type: This one's a bit confusing. Component Tags can be set to various types, and one of them is 'Component'. This is like an element of a...Component listed above. 

    So, that's not confusing at all, I know. But the gist of it is, you add a component tag to something that would be a buildable component(like an Arm, or fingers, or whatever). It's possible in that component, you would have an object with a component tag, set to be a component type. This just means it's part of the bigger component, but you probably need to insert the object elsewhere.

    Ok, now that some of that confusing bit is out of the way, when it comes to building a component, in a template, you should approach it in 4 steps. 

1. Building

2. Inserting

3. Adjusting

4. Assigning

    The build step, makes it so you can choose your template from the drop down. In addition to that, it involves making sure everything needed for your component to function is included. Once you have that sorted, it's time to insert your component where it belongs. It is during this step you will encounter that special Component Type mentioned above. In case Part A of your component needs to insert in one place, and Part B needs to insert in another. When you can build it and it's put into the right spot, you need to be able to adjust it to fit to a different character. Once that's done, you can focus on the assignments(what's a controller, what is a bind joint, etc.).

    It's not required you follow in that order. Some of it needs to be done first, Building and Inserting namely. But you can do Assigning at any point. It's really quick to do for the most part. So even though they are in that order, you might not do it in that order.

Component Tag Overview

A breakdown of the tabs and which step they belong to. Dark blue tabs are considered Assignment tabs, but they are not really required.

When you create a Component Tag, you get bombarded pretty quickly with a plethora of tabs. This all depends on which Component Type you have set. There is a long list of component types, but they generally can be broken down into a few categories. See the image below.

    With this picture, you should see 4 colors: Blue, Yellow, Green, and Gray. All Blue component types are the exact same*. They just have a different Icon. But all the Blue ones can be buttons in the Character Object. The yellow ones are more helper types. They let you tag something as controllers, or a component type. Both let you place objects wherever you want and not just where the Blue component is. The Green is what defines a character. Every template needs this on the top level group of your rig.  Then the Gray...well, no one knows what the Gray does. So you likely don't need it. The picture of the tabs of the Component tag is showing one of the Blue Component types.

    This seems like a good place to stop for now. Next post we will actually begin making our component. 

*There is some minor differences with the hand and foot as they can show their children's User Data as well. But in terms of setup they are all identical