There is a way to scale characters in CAT with an animation layer.
Somehow scale inheritance is linked to an animation layer. So you have to set all scaling inheritance on. There's a simple maxscript to fix that, please note you have to be on an active animation layer.
local theNodes = selection.CATParent.CATRigNodes
-- Set scale inheritance to all nodes!
for n in theNodes do setInheritanceFlags n #all
This fixes the inheritance problem, that by default scaling inheritance is set to off (why I don't know it doesn't make sense either).
But for some rigs this only solves part of the problem. Why because of "Additive To Setup" is turned on. It's a nice thing to have, but it can't follow scale anymore, because the setup controller determines the position/scale of an object. If there are no special controllers in you used in the setup controller layer, you can safely switch this of (beware you're animation clips or whatever pose you saved before will be unusable after that, so it should be a design decision!).
Now how to switch all the Additive To Setup options to of is something I scratched my head over for a long time, but finally I found in witch interface this setting is set.
-- Turn additive to setup layer off!
for f = 1 to selection.CATParent.CATRigLayerCtrls.count do
(
try (
$.catparent.CATRigLayerCtrls.AdditiveToSetupValue = false
)catch()
)
You'll have to do some testing and play with creating a new layer and run the inheritance script after first applying the additive script. I have a some character now that scale during animation and all stays in one piece. One problem you have is that the hiphub doesn't scale in position when you scale from the ground plane for example, you'll also have to move the hub upwards to compensate. You can add a bone below the hips and parent the hips to it, but then you'll loose the cat motion as it breaks.
Hope this is of some help to someone.
I like CAT but I'd also like to see it gets some serious TLC,
-Johan