An alternative to XSI’s tail spring op
May 8th, 2008 by Helge Mathee - Viewed 9935 times - Popularity: 48% [?]Hey gang,
working on some characters with secondary motion I came up with a pretty simple spring op including some caching / plotting functionality and thought I’d share it.
It is a very basic radial spring, which comes with a DisplayInfo to control all parameters through the viewport. Additionally the objects created are put in groups for your convenience.
Here’s a video demonstrating the addon:
http://217.160.138.15/helge/rigtut/mt_spring.avi (Encoded in Techsmith Camtasia, 51 MB)
And finally, here’s the link to the addon:
http://217.160.138.15/helge/rigtut/mt_spring_addon.zip
Popularity: 48% [?]
Thank you,
Very useful.
:)
Thanks Helge,
I was working on a simple spring op like that for secondary motion as well (in Python though). I’m playing around with your’s to see if it could help me get further as I’m trying to make mine able to resume default state when it’s going at a constant speed in the same direction (same velocity). I didn’t think of adding a wind, nor a gravity like your’s. Very nice addition! It may well be the answer I was looking for. :)
Thanks for the tool. Looking forward to test it more and inspect it.
Thats really good Helge, thanks.
As always it’s gonna be very useful. :)
Thanks a lot Helge, very useful!!
wow really nice and useful … thanks a lot
cheers
faker
Many thanks Helge. This will come in very handy indeed!
Very nice tool, Thanks a lot for sharing it.
Oh helge, you are my guru. ( deep bow.. )
i notice this function in your MT_RIGZ. : ) hoho~and i extract as a tool, similar to this one.
i just post to say thanks, thank you for keep the MT_RIGZ open source. i learnd a lot.
Really nice creative solution. I love it.
This thing works Beautifully !!!!
Thank you so much Helge !!!!
the code is so intuitive.
great work as usual
Simply fantastic…I love the work flow for building the spring branches…perfect.
Helge, this looks awesome, but is it only for v6.5? (I didn’t see it noted anywhere, so I tried to
install as addon with v6.02, but no joy…)
@ justa_newbie
Hi, it works fine for me here on foundation 6.02. Be sure to select the null and create a model before applying the springs (follow instructions on the video).
Fantastic addon Helge. Thanks so much!
;)
still @ justa_newbie
Oh, and be sure not to be at frame 1 when moving the base, as its the reset frame. Say if you go at frame 5 and then move the spring base. Should work fine.
thanks, Richard…still having an issue just installing it via File->Add-on->Install (I can find the addon,
but the ‘install’ button is greyed-out)…if I install by just dragging into viewport, it shows up as an installed addon, but the MindThink toolbar doesn’t exist for me to even access. Never had a problem installing 3DQuakers or squid’s UVLayout plugins…prolly some newb error on my part tho. Will keep trying.
@ justa_newbie
I don’t have those issues. I tried to reproduce them on 6.02 but no luck. Maybe reinstall XSI or delete the user folder, I don’t understand what you are experiencing. Good luck.
Hi there,
THanks so much for this cool tool!
One question however, once you have created the spring objects, is it possible to adjust the point they pivot around in order to fit it to my rig? I understand there is the option to scale the chain elements but the first bone doesn’t seem to pivot from the center of the first null.
Pete
Fantastic! I can at least apply a good secondary motion to my characters !
Works fine!
Thanks a lot!
Hi there,
I’m using the spring addon and its great, but beyond a certain scale it gets unstable. Even when I scale the root null in a new scene it becomes unstable. Any help would be appreciated?
Thanks,
Chris
what glorious fun this is.
im going to attempt to assign it to a bunch of preexisting bones, or perhaps just read positions/ rotations and bone lengths from preexisting bones.
thanks helge, Its fantastic to see things like this done with production in mind.
Nice work Helge.
We are using it now on a hair setup to get secondary motion working.
So far its holding up really well in our referenced asset pipeline.
RSM
Hi
Im using the mt spring op for the first time, works great, very quick and simple.
but i cant seem to get mirrored sym. The method i use works but gives different dyn result for each side, (i duplicated my null, with Shared parrent on, & freeze negative scale off, then set neutral pose for the duplicated ob.., then created springs) is this wrong.
ps i need to get this duplicate sym work today if posible for this project.
can any one HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks
God I’m so happy I found this. Thank you so much!
I was getting there with the out of the box spring constaints, but this is so much more elegant and robust.
You’re my springy hero.
I’m rigging a fat character and will be using this to create jiggle.
Will send link later.
the files is not acessible for now… :(
Hey guys, the link is not accessible anymore, please help would also like to use this..please if you can forward the right link.
found the mt_addon here:
http://tinyurl.com/ltx44y