Basics

Rigpp is a rigging system based on C++ runtime evaluation using LLVM/Clang. It uses LLVM and Clang of 14.0.0 version, which could be upgraded to any version you want. There are no additional dependencies as all the tools are already included.

This implementation is in progress as some issues are currently not solved (see below). No internal hierarchy here, but you can use numbers, Vector, Matrix, Quat and Nurbs Curve. API of these types can be found in maya_module\rigpp\runtime\include\rigpp_math.hpp.

Math implementation is mostly Imath based, but no templates used at all. API is more simplified and this is the way it should be here. Not well tested yet.

File structure

Folder	Description
maya_module	Ready to use tool for Maya.
/platform	Plugins for diffrerent Maya versions.
/runtime	Environment for your C++ rigs.
/scripts	Additional python scripts.
plugin	Sources for rigpp compilation.
vscode_project	Predefined vscode project to work with rigpp.
examples	Maya files with simple examples

Please make sure libs and default includes are packed into an archive. Just unzip all of them as described in readme.txt in each appropriate folder. Notice that debug libraries are not provided with the sources due to their large size (>6.5GB). They will be distributed separately (on release page).

Installation

Put the content of maya_module into your MAYA_MODULE_PATH (such as C:/Users/USER_NAME/Documents/maya/modules). Then in Maya make sure you have rigpp.mll loaded. If you don't like modules, load rigpp.mll any way you want and make sure you have set up RIGPP_RUNTIME environment variable to maya_module/rigpp/runtime.

How to use

1. Load rigpp.mll plugin.
2. Create rigpp node in Maya.
3. Add some input and output attributes.
   Use maya_module\rigpp\scripts\rigpp_utils.py for helper functions.
4. Write code for the node.
   Use extern type @var for your attributes to make them visible in your code.

If the value of rigpp._source attribute is a C++ file, then .bc file will be created near that file. Bitcode files are dependency free (no includes are required to load and evaluate them)!

Invalid main function means you have wrong extern declarations (not all symbols are resolved). Check attribute types.

Issues

Name mangling

I didn't find any appropriate way of finding mangle names of symbols. So in code there is a lot of ?var@@3HA things and it's good to find something more general here.

Question: How to find that int a will be mangled into ?a@@3HA?

Resource deallocation and smart pointers

How to release LLJIT and its context properly? When you try to use host shared_ptr<int> ptr and on the jit side you use ptr = make_shared<int>() then you'll get a crash on a free memory state (recompilation). This code itself works fine, pointer counters are considered and nothing strange occurs.

Question: How to properly setup LLJIT to make it possible for doing multiple compilations and evaluations? Do I need to remove all symbols manually? Should I call jit->deinitialize(jit->getMainJITDylib()) explicitly to run destructors? Actually I get a crash on doing this...

Exceptions

How to setup exceptions for LLJIT? I've read an article of Emmanuel Roche here https://wiki.nervtech.org/doku.php?id=blog:2020:0414_jit_cpp_compiler but I cannot make it work. I've tried SingleSectionMemoryManager as he wrote and define _CxxThrowException and do other stuff. But no solution at this moment.