MAYA: References

[Luigi Tramontana]

Referencing cannot be used as usual in maya due to some restrictions for it regarding the Maya SDK.
Until this issue has been solved you may use a practical workaround:
1. Create the model in a shared file.
2. Create a new scene, and reference the above model into this scene.
3. Now rig the model as usual.
4. In your action scenes finally import the scene with rigged model. The reference for the model is still inplace.

Only problem is that the model cannot change its pivots since this will not affect the rig. In this case the rig must be changed in the main scene.

[YMangolds]

Using constraints instead of parenting works really well for this method since it keeps the craft hierarchy and hirez hierarchy's separate. You can then parent both the hierarchy's under a new group/object (I like using a cube made of curves the size of the vehicle). Things like targetDirectionMesh's and other things that are outside the main cds top object can also be a child of it. This way the whole setup can be moved easily to the start position once it's imported into a scene. This also helps in organizing large complex scenes since each vehicle will have only 1 element as the child of world.

Another little trick that works nicely is to do the above but in the hirez file create a group or locator for every element that will be bound to a cds object (like a wheel or chassis). Place the group/locator where the elements pivot should be, then parent the element under it. Once the hirez file is referenced into the cds scene use the groups/locators to bind to cds geo instead of the hirez geo itself (if all the groups/locators were a child of world in the hirez file parenting them to cds geo instead of constraints is possible in theory, but I haven't tested the stability of it). This way object naming conventions don't need to be so strict, and future modification to the hirez geo is simple or can be completely replaced with different hirez geo. For example: say you wanted to change the tires of a car that's already animated in a scene with different already existing tire models. All you need to do is go into the hirez file, bring in the new tires and put them in position, then parent them under the appropriate group/locator and get rid of the old tires. Save the file, load up the animation scene and everything is automatically changed and ready to go. You don't even need to worry if the new tires geo's names differ from the old ones since it's the group/locator that's bound to the cds geo.