Just playing with some RBD in rigging, getting a robot leg to work…
The RBD is applied to the feet with a hinge constraint. The hinge constraint makes use of limits and high values for both damping and spring constant to prevent bouncing. There is no friction or elasticity on both the feet and ground, since the purpose here is to use the RBD to create secondary motion, not precise simulation.
I don’t think this is a final solution - which is likely to be a bunch of blended constraints.
It has been a week since this site got up and running, and my mind is now drifting towards the type of tutorial content I am going to produce. I am thinking the first batch (as they are likely to appear) will be a collection of tips and tricks for XSI. Nothing too grand, just some interface customisation stuff and small helper scripts.
Stay tuned.
Download (Requires XSI v5.0)
Description:
A rather pointless addon to make a Hue Cube, with some configuration options. A Hue Cube is a cube made up of a number of smaller cubes, whose colour is set from RGB values along the XYZ axes. In this implementation, the colour is set via Gradient shaders.
Usage:
Under Get>Primitive>Polygon Mesh is a new entry for called “Hue Cube”. This will open a small interface allowing you to change options such as the number of cubes per axis and the shading type. When ready, hit the “Generate” button to create the Hue Cube.
Installation Instructions:
Drag’n'drop the addon file into a viewport or Use the File>Addon>Install tool.
More information on installing XSI addons on XSI Wiki
Download (Requires XSI v4.0)
Description:
Another little addon that was made to help MAX users transition to XSI by allowing them to place primitives where the user clicks the mouse.
Usage:
Under your Get>Primitive menu you will find a new entry called “Draw Primitives” with a sub menu containing entries to create the main tpes of primitives.
When you click on a menu item, your mouse will gain a light green cross, which is the position of the placed primitive. Clicking on the viewport will place your chosen primitive. You can keep placing primitives until you click the right mouse button to exit the Draw Primitive tool.
Installation Instructions:
Drag’n'drop the addon file into a viewport or Use the File>Addon>Install tool
More information on installing XSI addons on XSI Wiki
So I have been using SOFTIMAGE|FACE ROBOT for a while now, and have got very used to its layout behaviour. If you haven’t seen the software, it basically has small buttons in the interface to quickly collapse/expand panels without the bother XSI’s optional panels.
Of course, once you are comfortable with a workflow, you want it to apply to as much as possible. So I spent a little time adding this behaviour to a new layout for XSI users as an example.
To make one of these layouts, you need to add two values to a switcher object in your layout using a text editor to edit the xml directly. The to values are:
In the example layout, I have added the buttons to the Left Main Toolbar and added a new switcher containing a bunch of views to the buttom of the View Manager. Check lines 67 and 82-92 for the major modifications.
Place the file in your Application\layouts directory and restart XSI. The new layout will be available from the View menu. Here is a screen capture…
