FAQ

Compatibility with ngSkinTools 1.x

Can ngSkinTools v1 and v2 be installed side-by-side?

Yes. They are set up as two independent plugins. If they interfere with each other, that’s a bug. Except if you put both on same skinCluster, then it’s your error.

What backwards compatibility does V2 have over V1?

Only high-level concepts. It’s a pretty big rewrite, some things had to go, while there’s other things that got

Is V2 API backwards compatible?

No.

Features

Is V2 feature-complete?

No, definitely not. It goes live with minimal feature set, and just like V1 back in the day, will adapt to user feedback.

Where’s a list of upcoming features & known bugs?

See Roadmap.

Are NURBS Curves/Surfaces supported?

No, polygon meshes is the only type of shape supported.

Pipeline

Is ngSkinTools compatible with game engines?

Internally, ngSkinTools is just a tool to set weights into standard skinCluster. You should be able to export just fine. There’s also an option to set max weights per joint.

I’m ready to give the rig to the animators. Do they need ngSkinTools to be able to use the scene?

Not necessarily. There is a menu item Edit | Delete All Custom Nodes which will remove any ngSkinTools special nodes from the scene. This will delete your layers! Only use on a copy of your working file, if you intent to continue working on the skinning.

I need to do the same, but in my script.

from ngSkinTools2.operations import removeLayerData

# remove all ngSkinTools custom nodes in a scene
removeLayerData.removeCustomNodes()

# remove custom nodes just from current selection
removeLayerData.removeCustomNodesFromSelection()

# remove custom nodes for a specific mesh
removeLayerData.removeCustomNodes(meshes=[mesh_name])

.. Or just delete nodes of type ngst2MeshDisplay and ngst2SkinLayerData in your own preferred way.