New plugins: ActionPack and ExpressionPack

[rush123]

Thanks for sharing.

R

[lanosrep1]

Thanks so much for sharing this with the community!!!.

Can't wait to dig in!!

[Ulven]

These plugins do not only rock,
they also roll.
Kick ass work Christopher!

[MikeBuckland]

Thank you! These look awesome

[DMack]

That's great - all helps Messiah's path!

[Julez4001]

Well ...it certainly has picked up around int he past month or so..in terms of community.


We need more ANIMATION however...can't wait till you guys wrap up on your projects so we can see.

[kursad_pileksuz]

Thank you Suricate!

[catizone]

Thanks Suricate..hope to get some time to play with them soon.

Best,
Rick

[timnhe]

Thaks Christopher, great pluggins as allways

[timnhe]

Hi again Crhistopher :)
I´m playing whit your armatures, the action pack is fantastic!, but i´m trying to mix ik / fk, using the AP_target, IK2D and a keyFader, but... i´m lost :( I don´t know if this control it´s possible..

Any ideas?
thanks!

[timnhe]

Sorry, it´s works! :p

[Suricate]

Good that you got it working ! :)

I've attached a solution with two seperate bone chains, one for FK and one for IK. I prefer this over the 'Keyfader' solution, as the interpolation is smoother.

Things to notice:
- The bicep and the hand bone use 'AP_Target', while the forearm uses 'AP_Pitch' (since this bone will only rotate along pitch and beyond +/- 90 degrees.
- The blending is done with 'EP_QuatBlend' for bicep and hand and 'MotionBlend' for the forearm.

[Ulven]

I've attached a solution with two seperate bone chains, one for FK and one for IK. I prefer this over the 'Keyfader' solution, as the interpolation is smoother.

This is by far the best solution to use on IK/FK blending limbs, this way, the IK's stability and angle will also not be affected by the FK rotations.

[timnhe]

Wow!, thanks Suricate :)
I think I have already said, but I was use your scripts since many years ago ...
Yet memories the autorigger for LW ... :D , great work!

thanks again

[lanosrep1]

Hello Suricate,

Was wondering if your plugs (ActionPack and ExpressionPack) are the same used in the Auto Rigger plug?. I have recently purchased AutoRigger from Useful Slug was curious to know if this release, (called the public release v.2.0 in your html) is the same as the ones included in the Autorigger?

Thanks for clarifying.

[Ulven]

- 'AP_DragButton', for creating sliders that don't slide.
- 'AP_SetOffset', which can be used for creating tab-like GUI elements
- 'EP_FlipPitchKey' which helps to 'fix' keys that suffer from pitch flipping (this might happen when rotating in local mode)

Were not in the ones we used in the autorigger, but you can safely overwrite the plugins from the autorigger with these. I'll try to update our download file today.

[lanosrep1]

Thanks Ulven.. exactly what I wanted to know:)

[kursad_pileksuz]

I cannot seem to get AP_HideGroup to toggle (setting hide works but not toggling) group objects visibility? Can someone confirm that this works or not?

thanks

[Suricate]

Kursad, when 'AP_HideGroup' is in 'Toggle' mode, the visibility toggles between 'NONE' and the display mode you have chosen in the 'Meshes' and 'Other Items' drop-down menu.

If that doesn't help, you can send me your scene file and I will have a look.

[kursad_pileksuz]

Hi Suricate

Ok it works now :) Great plugin!

thanks

[Suricate]

Just would like to let everybody know that 'ActionPack_v2_0' and 'ExpressionPack_v2_0' are now included in messiah 3 (in case that you haven't noticed yet :-) )

I will post updates in the first post of this thread. There's now a small update to the 'ActionPack' plugin, it's on version 2.1 now. An action 'AP_CopyPose' has been added.

[lanosrep1]

This is by far the best solution to use on IK/FK blending limbs, this way, the IK's stability and angle will also not be affected by the FK rotations.

Hi Vegard
Is this technique utilized in your autorigger?..

G.

[Ulven]

Hi Vegard
Is this technique utilized in your autorigger?..

G.

Yep it is indeed. I use this technique in all my rigs. I made a little tutorial that's on pmg's site about it.

[lanosrep1]

Nice!... thanks!

BTW... recently found a link to a rigger\animator named Victor Vinyals, a Maya user. His rigging demo shows striking similarity to the AutoRigger.. Have you ever seen this, or was it possibly something you are aware of. Here is the link:

http://www.luvictu.com/

G.

Yep it is indeed. I use this technique in all my rigs. I made a little tutorial that's on pmg's site about it.

[kursad_pileksuz]

thanks for the release!


I have not tried these in scripts or expressions so far but do you see any issues with possibility of using them in scripts or expressions?

[Suricate]

The functions and commands form the 'ExpressionPack' can be used in scripts just as any other functions and commands. The actions from the 'ActionPack' command are tied to armature actions. Do you think that it might be useful to have the functionality from the action also available as a command?

[kursad_pileksuz]

Suricate I think that some of them can be useful in expressions and some like "AP_CopyChannel " can be useful in scripts. If you will untie them please make sure that you put a note in your plugins that not all are suitable for using in scripts(like hidehandle would not be a good idea to run as script that is called within a command expression).

[Julez4001]

- 'AP_SetOffset', which can be used for creating tab-like GUI elements
.

Can you post an image of this?

[Suricate]

Kursad, I will have a look at it and try to untie the functionality.

Julez, here's a screenshot of a rig that makes use of the 'AP_SetOffset' action. To the left is a menu in a collapsed state, to the right in expanded state. Similar to messiah's GUI, you can expand/collapse different blocks and the other blocks will move down/up in the screen accordingly.

http://img125.imageshack.us/img125/3126/apsetoffsetsamplekk8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[Julez4001]

Nice work Chris.
I nominate you for a video tutorial on setting that up
:scream:

Nothing fancy.... anything like the videos on PMG site. A + B + C

[Suricate]

ExpressionPack is now updated to v2.3, see the first post of this thread. This includes (among others) new expressions 'EP_Retarget' (useful for retargeting MoCap data) and 'EP_StretchIK' (to create IK chains with stretching and pre-stretching).

[kursad_pileksuz]

Suricate thanks for the update.

I just opened retarget.fxs and it works under 32bit but it does not work under 64.

[Suricate]

Well, the plugin is 32bit only at the moment, so I guess it shouldn't work with 64bit. I hope to convert all my plugins to 64bit as soon as I upgraded my oldish hardware.

[kursad_pileksuz]

At least I can use 32 bit version and bake the motion if I needed. Thanks again for your contributions Suricate.

[notlongago]

Hi Suricate,

Any word on 64 bit version of your expressions and action pack?

Well, the plugin is 32bit only at the moment, so I guess it shouldn't work with 64bit. I hope to convert all my plugins to 64bit as soon as I upgraded my oldish hardware.

[Suricate]

Hi Suricate,

Any word on 64 bit version of your expressions and action pack?
Nothing new, sorry. I'm currently in a few projects, so I couldn't yet do any progress on the 64 bit compile.

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