An alternative to XSI’s tail spring op
May 8th, 2008 by Helge Mathee - Viewed 2697 times - Popularity: 29%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
May 8th, 2008 at 10:04 am
Thank you,
Very useful.
:)
May 8th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
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.
May 8th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Thats really good Helge, thanks.
As always it’s gonna be very useful. :)
May 9th, 2008 at 3:37 am
Thanks a lot Helge, very useful!!
May 9th, 2008 at 6:48 am
wow really nice and useful … thanks a lot
cheers
faker
May 9th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Many thanks Helge. This will come in very handy indeed!
May 10th, 2008 at 2:44 am
Very nice tool, Thanks a lot for sharing it.
May 11th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Oh helge, you are my guru. ( deep bow.. )
May 12th, 2008 at 4:28 am
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.
May 12th, 2008 at 7:56 am
Really nice creative solution. I love it.
May 12th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
This thing works Beautifully !!!!
Thank you so much Helge !!!!
May 12th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
the code is so intuitive.
great work as usual
May 13th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Simply fantastic…I love the work flow for building the spring branches…perfect.
May 14th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
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…)
May 15th, 2008 at 6:30 am
@ 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!
;)
May 15th, 2008 at 6:56 am
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.
May 15th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
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.
May 23rd, 2008 at 6:02 am
@ 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.
May 23rd, 2008 at 6:56 am
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
May 30th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Fantastic! I can at least apply a good secondary motion to my characters !
Works fine!
Thanks a lot!