Quickstart Guide

Welcome to Mikan, the modular rigging toolkit built for both Maya and Tangerine. This guide helps you get up and running with Mikan inside Maya — from creating your first rig blueprint to assigning controller shapes and binding geometry with deformers.

By the end, you'll understand the full rig authoring loop: building, binding, and rebuilding rigs that are production-ready and fully modular.

🚀 Launching the UI

To open the Mikan interface inside Maya, run the following Python snippet in the script editor:

from mikan.maya.ui import MikanUI
MikanUI.start()

🧭 UI Overview

The Mikan interface is divided into several tabs, each aligned with a core phase of the rigging process:

Tab	Purpose	Features
Templates	Build and organize the rig blueprint	Rig Outliner, Add/Edit tools, build logs
Shapes	Assign and customize controller shapes	Preset library, color and size adjustments
Deformers	Save and manage deformation data	SkinClusters, wrap deformers, backups, metadata injection
Posing	Facial pose system (WIP/optional)	Pose mirroring, management (early stage)

Additional tools can be found in the main menu bar : scene utilities, rigging tools, pipeline scripts, and other production shortcuts.

🏗️ Building Your First Rig

About Templates

Mikan rigs are built from Template modules. These are the components that define structure. Template modules contain metadata embedded within the hierarchy nodes, making it possible to reuse and export prebuilt blocks (like arms, legs, spines) across projects.

Template modules appear as joint chains in the scene. This means pre-built template parts can easily be exported, shared, and reused across characters and projects.

Creating a Biped Blueprint

Create a New Asset

• Go to the Templates tab → Add subtab → New Asset
• Name the asset, this will become the root of your rig

Add Template Modules

With your new asset created, the next step is to populate it with template modules — these are the rig building blocks (spine, limbs, props, etc.). Each one must be inserted manually and hierarchically, to reflect the structure of your character.

Step-by-step logic

1. Select the parent template module
   In the Template outliner, click the module you want to attach your new part to. For example, to attach an arm or leg, you’ll typically select the spine module as the parent.

2. Open the Add tab
   In the Templates > Add section, choose the category (e.g. arm, leg, spine, neck, etc.), then select a specific module.
   Module names follow a family.variant naming scheme. For example: spine.default, arm.legacy or world.character

3. Choose the right attachment point
   Once a parent is selected in the outliner, the Add subtab will let you pick the attachment slot. These are context-dependent and vary by module.

   For instance: To attach arms or the neck to a spine, choose the slot spine.torso

4. Click "Add New Template"
   This will insert the module in the scene as a guide, essentially a joint chain, that you can now position like any standard skeleton.

   You’re free to move, rotate, and align the joints to match your character mesh.

5. Configure Template Settings

   • Select a template module → go to the Edit subtab
   • Adjust build options like joint orientation types, mirror behavior, rotation order, and more

🧍 Quick Guide: Building a Basic Biped

Here’s a minimal and functional template setup to get a humanoid rig up and running:

1. world.character — defines the global root of the character
2. spine.default — creates the central spine chain under world.root
3. leg.default — add a left and right leg under spine.hips
4. arm.default — add a left and right arm under spine.torso
5. neck.default — add a neck (this module also includes the head)

Once these are placed and adjusted in the scene, you’ll have a complete rig structure ready for configuration and controller shaping.

⚠️ At this stage, the modules are only skeleton guides. No controllers or visual shapes are generated yet — that comes next.

📁 You can find a working example of this setup in examples/tpl_biped.ma. It’s a great starting point or reference if you want to see the result in context.

🎮 Controller Shapes

In Mikan, all rig controllers are NURBS curves. Initially, a new blueprint contains no shapes.

To generate them:

1. Select one or more modules in the Template Outliner (or just the Asset to do all at once)
2. Click the Shapes button in the main toolbar (Templates tab)

This creates default controller curves for each part.

Customizing Shapes

• Use the Shapes tab to change shape presets, colors, and scale quickly
• You can also manually edit the curves in Maya:
  • Move CVs to customize visuals
  • Adjust transform nodes if needed

As long as the curves remain correctly placed in the scene hierarchy, your edits will persist.

🚀 Building the Rig

With template placed and shapes assigned, it’s time to build the rig:

1. In the Templates tab, select any node from your rig in the Outliner
2. Click the rocket icon in the top-left toolbar to launch a build

By default, Mikan builds the rig in Animator mode, meaning it's immediately usable. To enable development-friendly behavior (e.g. easier inspection, custom debug modes), toggle Dev Mode using the wrench 🛠️ icon on the right side of the toolbar. This gives you more visibility into the rig internals during iteration.

Rebuilding and Cleaning

To make changes:

• Click the broom icon to wipe the rig and go back to the editable template
• Then make edits and rebuild as needed

♻️ This fast iteration loop is one of Mikan’s core strengths. You can build, adjust, and rebuild with minimal friction.

🔗 Binding Geometry

Default Setup

By default, Mikan integrates the bind joints directly inside the rig structure. This works well for most cases, especially during early development, but it doesn’t create a separate binding hierarchy for game-ready or export-friendly skeletons.

This can be configured later using custom build options, but the initial setup assumes everything is embedded.

Selecting Bind Joints

1. In the Templates tab, right-click on a module in the Template Outliner (preferably the top template world module)
2. Choose either Select Bind Joints or Select Bind Joints Hierarchy depending on how much you want from the outliner.

You can now perform a standard Maya Bind Skin operation.

🧩 Mikan supports many Maya deformers, though not all are fully covered yet. See the Deformers Guide for details.

💾 Saving & Reinjecting Deformer Data

Once binding is done, you'll want to save the skinning weights (and any deformers) back into the rig blueprint, so future builds can restore them automatically.

Step-by-Step

1. Select your bound mesh (or group of meshes)

2. In the Deformers tab, click the Create Backup button (📦)

   This generates a group at the root of the scene, which includes all the relevant deformer metadata (skin, wrap, lattice, etc.)

   📌 At this stage, the group is just a neutral transform and not yet part of the rig blueprint.

3. To link it with the rig:

• Parent the backup group into your Mikan template group in the scene
• If it doesn't appear, click the Refresh button in the toolbar

From now on:

• Rebuilding the rig will automatically restore your deformers
• Wiping the rig will also remove those deformers

⚠️ It’s crucial to ensure backups are properly saved in the rig blueprint before rebuilding — otherwise, you risk losing your skin weights.

✅ What’s Next?

In this Quickstart, you've seen the full authoring loop:

• Building a modular rig blueprint
• Assigning controller shapes
• Binding geometry and saving deformer data

Next, we’ll dive into more advanced topics like:

• Custom modifiers for extending templates
• Facial rigs and pose systems
• Publishing rigs for Tangerine scenes
• Advanced workflows like release vs anim layouts
• Shape correction and deformation layers

For now, you’re ready to start building rebuildable, production-grade rigs with Mikan.