[Bf-python] autorigging script for blender

[Bassam Kurdali]

As per Martin's request, I'm moving this discussion from our personal
mail to this list.
I'm in the process of writing rigamarule; this is a script/collection of
scripts that aims to facilitate making rig retargetting and autorigging
for blender. The suite is at the very starting stages, full of
incompleteness and bugs, but it has already proven useful for both tube
and the richmond 48 hour project.
For Tube, I used it to rig cockroach legs from a template
for the 48 Hr club, I used it to rig 2 characters. The first took a few
hours, the second only took 20 minutes or so. Based on these results,
I'm optimistic about the approach.

Relevant links:
First blog post with preview videos:
http://tube.freefac.org/post/autorig-script-for-tube

Release blog post: http://tube.freefac.org/post/rigamarule-0-2-release

The download link: http://freefac.org/rigamarule/rigamarule0.2.tar.gz

The script has a long to do list, which probably needs to be better
organized into a roadmap. I'd also *love* to see external
contributors/users, both from other projects (perhaps Durian could be
interested, with their need to rig characters for epic scenes) and other
riggers/TDs/Studios/Projects. 

A brief explanation of 'how it works':
You tag bones (and in future perhaps other objects) with ID property
'rules'. These rules are based currently on the position of the
'geometry' bones that define the character joints.

The script uses these rules to run methods with correct arguments, and
actually modifies the edit mode position of the bones. In the future, it
might also do things like copy objects, or edit IPO curves and Actions
(for drivers and action constraints).

The easiest way to extend the functionality is just to add rules, these
are all contained in one file, and are automatically parsed by the
script on launch. Look in marulez.py to see the current collection, and
you can easily add your own in there.

In the interest of collaboration , it would be good to have SVN hosting
for this project, that way we could easily have a repository of people's
latest rules, as well as modifications to the script itself. Martin has
suggested using the blender python svn repository, which is currently (I
believe) not being used for much.

Cheers, and sorry for such a long email message.
Questions?
Bassam