Anim Bizz

PATH ANIMATION WITH DEFORM Nice. For those path animations where you need the object to bend along the path like for example a snake, worm, tail etc etc. 1. Bind your object(s) to a joint chain 2. Create a spline IK solver 3. Cluster the IK curve 4. Attach those clusters to a motion path 5. Offset each cluster's U value by 1 successive frame down the chain Now you have each cluster following the motion path, driving the spline IK deformations. Sweet!

BAKING CYCLED CURVES I know this feature has been around for a while but - too damn cool again. Finding the right tools implemented in software when needed makes it all that much more exciting. Ever want a character to walk 5 steps in a cycle, stop then start walking again - without TRAX? Well you can bake out a cycled curve by using your bake curve tool and checking on the sparse curve bake option. CURVES/BAKE CHANNEL OPTIONS/SPARSE CURVE BAKE

AHH COOL! new tool discoveries always get me excited. In Maya 2008 one can now move joints around after binding. When you exit the tool, it re-enables the skin. EDIT SKIN/MOVE SKINNED JOINTS TOOL

PAINT WEIGHTS PROBLEM For some reason, a rig I was working on all of a sudden stopped working with the paint weights tool and no vertex info would show up in the component editor. No color feedback in the tool either. ERROR: value is out of range 0 would show up when trying to export weights or paint. I have no clue what happened but the fix was DELETE ALL BY TYPE/NON DEFORMER HISTORY Also I figured out that the skincluster node for the bind had lost all of the relationships to it's vertices. It was an empty deformation node. So I added them all back in with the edit membership tool. Also had to hack to remove history and get a clean unbroken bind.... - duplicated the bound mesh in it's bind pose. - smooth bound the duplicate to the skeleton. - used the "copy skin weights" to transfer it to the duplicate. - purged the history of the original as needed. - after everything is done, rebound the original to the skeleton. - used "copy skin weights" to get them