Technical Art for Games » Rigging

Adding Unity Tools

Adam — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 20:34:40 +0000

Waiting on videos to render is the perfect time to add and update site content, because everything else is bogged down. In that respect, I wanted to note that my Unity tools page is now open for business, where I will be posting more components and editor scripts in the future. For starters, I have uploaded two basic components (each zip file contains a UnityScript and a C# version).

The first component is an aim constraint, to simply mimic the behavior of Maya’s aim constraint. The benefit of using this over a simple call to Quaternion.LookRotation() is that you can specify arbitrary forward and up axes on the constrained object (just as in Maya). You could use this with the AssetPostprocessor class to automatically import constraints in your asset files (FBX, Maya, etc.).

The second component is a look rotation constraint. It allows you to not only specify arbitrary forward and up axes on the constrained object, but also constrain it to a world forward-vector and world up-vector (so it does not need to aim at a target, but can mimic the “pointing” direction of another transform).

AM Tools 1.03

Adam — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 09:38:58 +0000

I just uploaded an update to my AM Tools package, which contains some new goodies. In addition to including the AM_Ribbon plug-in that I previewed previously, I have also included an AM_ExposeTransform node, which I will be discussing in an upcoming Autodesk MasterClass that I am doing with Ryan. This node, much like its counterpart in 3D Studio Max, outputs transformation data for an object with respect to another object. In addition to basics like translation, rotation, and distance, the node also allows you to compute the angle between arbitrary axes on the objects as well as an angle from the exposed object’s arbitrary axis to the reference object’s position. Take a look in the example file to get some ideas of how you might use it. Special thanks to my friend, Sean Binder of Raven Software, for providing me with the torso model.

On top of these additions and the usual cleanup and bug fixes, I have made some further changes:

In keeping with Maya convention and planning for a future merge of hip and shoulder constraint commands and nodes, the node names are now lowercase (am_hipConstraint and am_shoulderConstraint) and the version numbering scheme has been changed. Please take note if you have any Maya ASCII files containing these nodes.
I fixed some errors with the Insert Parents tool (the module and the command) that could arise from naming conflicts.
I have added debug support for MDagPath and MObject objects in API debug mode.
I have added some source code documentation online generated using doxygen. It’s pretty bare bones for now, but I hope to expand it in the future.

AM Tools 1.01

Adam — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 20:41:15 +0000

I just uploaded version 1.01 of my AM Tools Python package today, which you can of course download from the Maya tools section. You can look through the files to see all of the changes that I made, but here are some of the major highlights.

amInsertParents is now a Python command. I have therefore retired the old MEL version.
Added API Debug Mode to menu. Enabling this mode overrides some Maya Python API classes for debugging. For this release, this mode overrides the __str__() functionality of MMatrix and MVector.
Substantially improved a number of utility functions for validating input.
Added validation for custom plug-ins.
Fixed some language-related bugs that existed for Maya 8.5.

As always, please let me know if you have any problems or other feedback!

Crane Wars!

Adam — Thu, 21 May 2009 03:43:51 +0000

OK so I have been super busy lately, as evidenced by the frequency of posts since GDC. Sorry world! Touch KO is wrapping up in a matter of weeks, as is our new Blurst game, Crane Wars. Ben did a little walk through today to show the internets what we’ve been doing. Around 2:00 to 7:00 I show a face rig I did up Monday for one of the characters. It is entirely bone-based. Take a look!

New Video Tutorial

Adam — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:26:12 +0000

I have completed my second rigging video tutorial. This one focuses on how to rig a twist structure in a forearm that is easily portable into game code, does not interfere with IK, and is not affected by Gimbal locking on the hand.