xForm Nodes

xForm Nodes

The first main category of nodes is xForm Nodes. xForm is short for "transform" and is essentially a thing that has a matrix: a bone, an armature object, a mesh object, a curve object, an empty object, etc. There are three kinds of xForm Nodes.

Armature Node

The Armature node is the node which represents an armature object in Blender. A typical rig consists of a single armature object with a number of bones as children. Usually the armature node is the first node in the graph, the root node.

Armature nodes have the following inputs:

• Name
  • The name of the object to create. Warning: if you use the name of an existing object, it will be overwritten.
• Relationship
  • The parents and constraints that this object receives.
• Rotation Order
  • The rotation order of the object. Usually, Auto is just fine.
• Matrix
  • The Matrix used to set the object's location, rotation, and scale.
  • Usually, you don't need any input. If you do plug a matrix in, it will probably be the matrix of the Meta-Rig you are using.

Geometry Object Node:

The Geometry Object Node represents a Mesh or Curve object.

Geometry Object Nodes have the following inputs:

• Name
  • The name of the object to create. Warning: if you use the name of an existing object, it will be overwritten.
• Geometry
  • The name of the Curve or Mesh datablock to use for this object's geometry.
• Matrix
  • The Matrix used to set the object's location, rotation, and scale.
  • Usually, you will use a Matrix of xForm node to fetch the matrix of a prototype object or bone.
• Relationship
  • The parents and constraints that this object receives.
• Deformer
  • The Deformers that this object receives.
• Hide in Viewport
  • Whether to hide this object in the viewport or not.
• Hide in Render
  • Whether to hide this object in the final render or not.

Bone

The Bone node represents a Bone in Blender, which can only exist as the child of an armature node. Bones are the core of any rig, so they have a large number of important properties. Mantis hides and unhides them, depending on the context -- but if something is hidden automatically, you can always unhide it by pressing ctrl-h.

Bone Node inputs are separated into a few categories:

xForm inputs:

• Name
  • The name of the bone to create. Warning: if you reuse the name of an existing bone, Mantis will fail to execute the graph..
• Rotation Order
  • The rotation order of the bone. You will want to set this based on the needs of the rig. Usually you want the most important axis of rotation for the bone to be the first Euler axis, then the second-most important to be the last Euler axis, and the least important to be the middle Euler axis. For example, if a control must bend first around Z, then around Y it should use the ZXY rotation order.
  • Blender supports Quaternion and Axis-angle rotation order, too. These are useful for situations where a bone needs to rotate on all axes equally, such as a root bone.
• Relationship
  • The parents and constraints that this bone receives.
• Matrix
  • The Matrix used to set the bone's location, rotation, scale, roll, and length.
  • Most of the time, you will use a Meta-Rig node to set this matrix. Otherwise, you may use a Matrix of xForm node, or some math nodes.

IK inputs:

• IK Stretch
• Lock IK
• IK Stiffness
• Limit IK
• X/Y/Z Min
• X/Y/Z Max

Display inputs:

• Bone Collection
• Custom Object
• Custom Object xForm Override
• Custom Object Scale to Bone Length
• Custom Object Wireframe
• Custom Object Scale
• Custom Object Translation
• Custom Object Rotation

Deform inputs:

• Deform
• Envelope Distance
• Envelope Weight
• Envelope Multiply
• Envelope Head Radius
• Envelope Tail Radius

B-Bone inputs:

• BBone Segments
• BBone X/Z Size
• BBone HQ Deformation
• BBone X/Z Curve In/Out
• BBone Roll In/Out
• BBone Inherit End Roll
• BBone Scale-In/Out
• BBone Easing
• BBone Start/End Handle Type
• BBone Custom Start/End Handle
• BBone Start/End Handle Scale
• BBone Start/End Handle Ease

Misc. inputs:

• Lock Location
• Lock Rotation
• Lock Scale
• Hide

Geometry Object

The Geometry Object node represents an ordinary Blender object with some geometry (such as a curve or mesh), or an empty if it has no input in its Geometry socket.

Object Instance

An Object Instance Node is like a Geometry Object node, except it is an instance of an existing object, spawned with Geometry Nodes.

Curve Pin

The Curve Pin node creates an xForm that represents the exact location, rotation, and scale on a curve object at a specific spline and factor (along the spline). It creates an Empty with a pre-configured constraint setup.