Help with using scripts to replace assets and streamlining character animation

[samanthah84504875]

I'm going to be animating around 20 characters ranging in gender, age and clothing, they'll be doing a range of activities on a 3/4 or profile angle.

I need to streamline my process and want to try to build/rig (in duik) one character per gender (adult and kid). and then be able to swap out clothing or hair on top of animating.

Is it possible to use duik to rig and animate a character and then using a script—swap out the variable assets with the replaceSource() script? and then control the process of when the swaps happen with keyframes or something?

Also, is there a better method to be able to streamline the process of making 2 characters into like 20?

thanks in advance

Sam

[Mylenium]

You're not considering the obvious: Pre-compositions for every limb. That's basically all there is to say about the matter. anything else is just a waste of time, even more so that given with DUIK's unreliable nature it's more likely that any interference from other scripts will break your setups.

Mylenium

[Justin Taylor-Hyper Brew]

Have you checked out Rigomator? Think it solves a lot of the problems you're facing:

https://aescripts.com/rigomator/

[Martin_Ritter]

You cannot keyframe a script, it will only helpful to replace the artwork at once.

However, you can put all artworks into pre-comps (make a precomp for all right hands, for all left foots, for all hairs and so on) and use DUIK connector to switch between them.

Just pay attention that all artworks in a precomp has the same size and postion. If your character needs to grow over time, precomp everything and scale this pre-comp.

*Martin