Installation
Install the Freeform Tools (Example for Maya 2020)
- Download the toolset.
Go to the Freeform Tools GitHub. There are 3 ways to download the toolset.
(Easiest) First you can download a Release of the tools. This is a vetted snapshot of the code from when the release was created and will be the most stable version of the tools. However it will not have any features or improvements made since the release was created.
Find the Releases section on the right side of the page under About.
Click on the release name(FreeformTools_27 1.0.0) to go to the latest release. Or click on Releases to see all available releases, including a Python 3.7 pre-release for Maya 2022.
On the release page click the link 'Source code (zip)' to download the release.
Right click on the .zip file and go to Properties. At the bottom of the properties window there will be a Security section with an "Unblock" checkbox. Check the box and hit Apply or OK.
When Windows downloads from a code hosting site like GitHub it will block the file incase there's malicious code. While the files are blocked any program running code will be unable to access the blocked files.
Extract the zip to the folder you want the code base stored at. We'll use an environment variable to point to this location, so you can put the code anywhere.
Second you can download the current code base.
On top of the page click the 'Code' button and choose 'Download ZIP'
Right click on the .zip file and go to Properties. At the bottom of the properties window there will be a Security section with an "Unblock" checkbox. Check the box and hit Apply or OK.
When Windows downloads from a code hosting site like GitHub it will block the file incase there's malicious code. While the files are blocked any program running code will be unable to access the blocked files.
Extract the zip to the folder you want the code base stored at. We'll use an environment variable to point to this location, so you can put the code anywhere.
(Advanced) Third, you can use GitHub command line or your Git program of choice to clone the code.
This method creates the easiest way to stay in sync with the latest changes without having to download new ZIP files and manually replace the code base. However, covering the topic here will be too much.
Once the code is downloaded, unblocked, and extracted you should have a folder that looks like this.
D:\FreeformRigging_Releases\FreeformTools-main
2. Set up the Install
In this example our installation folder will be called 'FreeformTools-main'.
Open the Installer folder and run Freeform.Installer.exe.
Choose the folder the tools are downloaded to. Accept the default value unless you have moved your Installer folder.
Choose the Maya version you want to install to.
Press Install
<Warning> This will over-write the userSetup.py file in Maya scripts folder
The install process will setup an Environment Variable on you machine pointing to this code base, copy the Python .NET package to your Maya's site-packages folder, and copy the tools userSetup.py file to your Maya scripts folder so that the tools will initialize on Maya start.
Setup your configuration file. See Tools Config for more information.
3. Run Maya
Open Maya
Once Maya is open open the Script Editor and scroll to the top. You should see a section that looks like the below screen shot. If it looks like this your tools are installed successfully and you're good to go!
To open the Rigger UI run:
import rigging.usertools; rigging.usertools.helix_rigger.HelixRigger().show()
If it does not look like this you will see some kind of error message under the DOTNET SETUP banner. The most common setup error is that Maya is unable to find HelixResources, Freeform.Core and Freeform.Rigging. If you see this goto Step 1 of 'Set up the Install' above.
For other errors feel free to contact me Discord or create an issue on GitHub.
