Make a Maya Rivet With Matrix Nodes

Make a Maya Rivet With Matrix Nodes

Vasil Shotarov has been taking a look into costly constraints in his rigging work and replacing them with systems that use native Maya Matrix Nodes. Vasil already documented his dive into creating a matrix node based twist calculator, crucial for rotating forearms on a character rig. He has also had a look at creating simple matrix node constraints too. The last of the three, offers a look into creating a Maya Rivet using Matrix Nodes.

“Rivets are one of those things that blew my mind the first time I learned of them. Honestly, at the time, the ability to stick an object to the deforming components of a geometry seemed almost magical” Shotarov says. Using the traditional methods for creating a Maya rivet can become slow. The rivet needs to wait for all the underlying geometry to evaluate before it can do its thing. Maya’s parallel rig evaluation has increased that performance significantly, yet it is still worth simplifying Maya rivets.

Shotarov presents the differences between the Maya follicle and aimConstraint rivet with his article, and makes a case for using matrix nodes rather than follicles. “If you are anything like me, you would really like the simplicity of the graph, as we literally are taking care of the full matrix construction ourselves.” Shotarov says. It also becomes much cleaner without constraints or follicle shapes in the outliner.

Some of the links on lesterbanks are "affiliate links", a link with a special tracking code. This means if you click on an affiliate link and purchase the item, we will receive an affiliate commission. The price of the item is the same whether it is an affiliate link or not. Regardless, we only recommend products or services we believe will add value to our readers. By using the affiliate links, you are helping support our Website, and we genuinely appreciate your support.