Skip to content

Concepts

RigFX is built around four concepts. Understand these and the rest of the docs fall into place.

  1. Sources — what feeds data into the hub (FIZ, lens, 1D motion, 3D pose).
  2. Camera Rig — the kinematic chain that produces a single 3D pose.
  3. Lens — turns FIZ(focus, Iris, Zoom encoders) into resolved lens parameters, or passes through a lens source.
  4. Camera tracking output — merges rig + lens and streams the result.

How it all fits together

graph LR S[Sources] --> R[Camera Rig<br/>kinematic chain] S --> L[Lens<br/>FIZ + lens file] R --> O[Camera tracking output<br/>FreeD / OpenTrackIO] L --> O

1 — Sources

What feeds data into RigFX

A source is anything publishing data into the hub. Each one surfaces as a card in Source and exposes typed channels — Pose3D, FIZ, Lens, or 1D motion — that downstream stages bind to.

Source Pose3D FIZ Lens 1D motion
FIZ (Canon / Fujinon / Angénieux / cMotion / Preston / Focus&Zoom) ✓
FreeD ✓ ✓
OpenTrackIO ✓ ✓
Canon CV ✓
OptiTrack (NatNet) ✓
Cartoni encoders ✓

2 — Camera Rig

Kinematic chain that produces the final pose

A list of Pose3D nodes that chain transforms together. Each node binds to one of:

  • a manual value (fixed offset),
  • a Pose3D channel from a source,
  • a 1D motion channel from a source (e.g. a Cartoni encoder driving translation along an arm).

The accumulated pose at the end of the chain feeds the output stage. Build it on the Rig page.

3 — Lens

FIZ + lens file, or pass-through

The lens stage produces resolved lens parameters (focal length, focus distance, entrance pupil, distortion, projection offset). Two flows:

  • FIZ + lens file — bind a FIZ source and a .mrxlens calibration file; RigFX evaluates on-device.
  • Pass-through lens source — bind a source that already publishes resolved lens data (e.g. OpenTrackIO upstream).

Configure it on the Lens panel; see the Lens pipeline reference for the valid flows.

4 — Camera tracking output

Merges rig + lens, streams to your render engine

Up to 3 destinations simultaneously, each picking from:

  • OpenTrackIO (recommended) — full pose + resolved lens.
  • FreeD D1 (legacy) — pose + FIZ only on the lens side (no resolved lens data).

Configure on Output; see Lens pipeline & outputs for the protocol details.