kfc
05-05-2002, 09:23 PM
Ok... this is something which i would like to share with all of the maya users here. There has been quite a long time i've already know how to setup advanced skeleton. but i've been quite bz to find out how to do Keep Root in the middle of Feet expression. this is sorta like an automated walk cycle where when u drag right foot. the root (body) follows but still in the middle of both feet. this can greatly aid the speed of animating.
This morning i've send this question to maya users group:
"In usergroup yesterday. Tutors there has shown me how LW7.5 has evolved
in character setups. especially it has some new cool tools like
expressions builder where it has already got alot of presets expressions in
it. one of the coolest thing is it can easily setup a character to keep
the root(body control) to always be in the middle of both Feet(feet
control).
what is the way to setup this expression in maya? i need to know the
line of script that i need to set on this 3 objects.
Thanks in advance."
This is the feedbacks:
You can do it in two ways: one with oxpressions, one with point
constraints
expression would be......
Autocentering.tx = (LeftFoot.tx + RightFoot.tx)/2
(copy/paste this for translate Y and Z)
and make the locator a child of the root
you might want to add a custom attribute (boolean) for turning it
on/off
or you would just create a locator between both feet, point constrain
it to
one foot then to the other, and make again the the root child of the locator
theres a much simpler solution:
make sure you feet are on each side of 0,0,0
the group the root node to itself creating a group at 0,0,0
now pointcontrain the group to the feet, it will now be locked between
them...
and animationg the constraint can make it shift its weight..
THere is a lot of way t odo it in Maya, one cool way it is to use an
utility
node.
you use three groups , one for the left foot, one for the right foot
and one
for the pelvis, then you connect the translate of the feet group to the
pelvis group with a plus minus average node.
You can find an example of it also on the Art of Maya book.
Someone from Weta told me that they preffered to use utility instead of
expressions to avoid problems (also of name convention) with so many
character in the scene during the LOTR .
Hopefully this can be helpful to some of the ppl online in this forum tho. Good luck animating. and may the force be with u.
sincerely,
KFC
This morning i've send this question to maya users group:
"In usergroup yesterday. Tutors there has shown me how LW7.5 has evolved
in character setups. especially it has some new cool tools like
expressions builder where it has already got alot of presets expressions in
it. one of the coolest thing is it can easily setup a character to keep
the root(body control) to always be in the middle of both Feet(feet
control).
what is the way to setup this expression in maya? i need to know the
line of script that i need to set on this 3 objects.
Thanks in advance."
This is the feedbacks:
You can do it in two ways: one with oxpressions, one with point
constraints
expression would be......
Autocentering.tx = (LeftFoot.tx + RightFoot.tx)/2
(copy/paste this for translate Y and Z)
and make the locator a child of the root
you might want to add a custom attribute (boolean) for turning it
on/off
or you would just create a locator between both feet, point constrain
it to
one foot then to the other, and make again the the root child of the locator
theres a much simpler solution:
make sure you feet are on each side of 0,0,0
the group the root node to itself creating a group at 0,0,0
now pointcontrain the group to the feet, it will now be locked between
them...
and animationg the constraint can make it shift its weight..
THere is a lot of way t odo it in Maya, one cool way it is to use an
utility
node.
you use three groups , one for the left foot, one for the right foot
and one
for the pelvis, then you connect the translate of the feet group to the
pelvis group with a plus minus average node.
You can find an example of it also on the Art of Maya book.
Someone from Weta told me that they preffered to use utility instead of
expressions to avoid problems (also of name convention) with so many
character in the scene during the LOTR .
Hopefully this can be helpful to some of the ppl online in this forum tho. Good luck animating. and may the force be with u.
sincerely,
KFC