Achieving Real-Time Playback with Production Rigs

Rig speed is of paramount importance to animation pipelines. Real-time performance provides immediate feedback to artists thereby increasing the number of possible iterations and ultimately leading to higher quality animation. This paper presents a novel method for real-time playback of production rigs inside a host application, such as Maya, without sacrificing functionality or ease of use. Real-time performance is achieved by augmenting the host with "Nitro," a replacement strategy for OpenGL drawing events, "RigCache," a caching system for minimizing scene graph evaluations, and "Parade," a distributed system for scheduling cache updates. Only minimal rig changes are required for the three tools to collectively optimize playback. The result is a seamless experience that is natural, unobtrusive, and preserves familiar workflows.